Following the death of her father – a cropduster sent to work in a faulty biplane by The Man – Bertha Thompson (Barbara Hershey) strikes out across Arkansas. She loses her virginity in a boxcar to a labor activist named Big Bill Shelly (David Carradine). Bertha then falls in with Rake, (Barry Primus), a “Yankee” gambler. She returns to help Bill when she discovers union busters are after him.

Breaking Bill, Rake and her friend Von (Bernie Casey) out of a chain gang, Bertha goes along on a train robbery. Bill wants to donate his take to the union cause, but they don’t want anything to do with a fugitive from a chain gang. Instead, the crew targets the business interests of H. Buckram Santoris (John Carradine), railroad boss and labor exploiter.

Their crime spree draws the attention of the McIvers (Victor Argo and David Osterhaut), brutal security men employed by the railroad. Bertha and Bill get naked often, but Bill’s obsession with destroying the railroad leads to a bloody climax.

Directed by Martin Scorsese and adapted by Joyce Hooper Corrington & John Corrington from Ben Reitman’s fictionalized biography Sister of the Road, Boxcar Bertha was Scorsese’s first feature length film. It made its auspicious debut June 1972 in drive-ins across the land courtesy Roger Corman’s American International Pictures.

Corman assigned the 28-year-old director $600,000 and 24 days to complete the picture. Those looking to draw parallels between this exploitation quickie and Scorsese’s later work can find the neurotic New York character of Rake, Christ parallels in the character of Bill, and a love for movies displayed throughout.

Hershey, Carradine and Casey are all good actors, and it is kind of neat to see John and David Carradine face off against each other in two brief scenes. The Tin Pan Alley inspired music is decent, and Scorsese storyboarded a couple of interesting shots here and there, though the schedule precluded any of the elaborate camera setups he would later become noted for.

The ability to cut a little movie like this some slack only goes so far though. The script is rank amateurism, a brainless slapdash of Bonnie and Clyde and AIP’s outlaw pictures. The structure is lazy, melodrama over-the-top bad, and dialogue laughable. Never before in the Great Depression have there been stickups as cheesy as the ones staged here.

Scorsese has some fun with the blood soaked finale, sending Pinkerton agents flying through the air in shotgun blasts and crucifying Carradine’s character to the side of a boxcar. Other than that, he never really embraces the exploitation genre, as Jonathan Demme, John Milius or Jonathan Kaplan did early in their careers when they went slumming for Roger Corman.

Little moments – like the reaction Bertha gets when she breezes into a black juke joint and embraces Von – are overwhelmed by the cornball script. Boxcar Bertha opened on a double bill with Ray Austin’s 1000 Convicts and a Woman, which really says it all. Scorsese makes a cameo as a john who asks Bertha if he can pay extra to spend the night.