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The Bonnie Parker Story
USA 1958
produced by Stanley Shpetner, Samuel Z. Arkoff, James H. Nicholson for AIP
directed by William Witney
starring Dorothy Provine, Jack Hogan, Richard Bakalyan, Joe Turkel, William Stevens, Ken Lynch, Douglas Kennedy, Patricia Huston, Joël Colin, Jeff Morris, James Beck, Carolyn Hughes, Madeline Foy, Sydney Lassick, John Mitchum, Edmund Cobb, Lester Dorr, Raymond Guth, John Halloran, Fred Kohler jr, David McMahon, Bob Steele, Chet Huntley (voice), Vince Williams (voice)
written by Stanley Shpetner, music by Ronald Stein
Bonnie and Clyde
review by Mike Haberfelner
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The US-American South, the 1930s: Having just lost her job at a diner
because she wasn't open to the advances of the place's owner (Ken Lynch),
tough-as-nails Bonnie Parker (Dorothy Provine), a bit of a pariah ever
since her husand Duke Jefferson (Richard Bakalyan) has been thrown into
the slammer, is easily impressed by wannabe tough guy Guy Darrow (Jack
Hogan) - or rather his tommy gun. It's not long before they hold up a gas
station - and get away with enough money to lay low for a while. But
laying low in some God-forsaken hicktown isn't Bonnie's thing, especially
since the hold-up excited her, and that she had to kill a patrolman in the
process was just an added bonus. So when Guy's brother Chuck (Joe Turkel)
and his girlfriend (Patricia Huston) arrive and Chuck has a big job to
propose, Bonnie's all over it - and pretty much forces Guy to tag along.
For a time, the four of them are a successful quartet, but of course their
crime spree gets the Rangers, let by Tom Steel (Douglas Kennedy) onto
their tail - and soon enough they walk into an ambush that gets Chuck and
his girl killed. Again, Guy wants to lay low, but Bonnie has other ideas -
and soon enough they spring her husband Duke from a chaingang. This is to
Guy's dismay, as he figured Bonnie as his girl, but Bonnie isn't
actually sexually interested in one or the other - but develops feelings
for neighbour Paul (William Stevens), a honest yet modest wannabe
architect. However, for her career in crime, springing Duke was just the
thing, as Bonnie, Duke and Guy form a trio that soon becomes notorious in
these parts of the country for their daring and ruthless bank robberies,
and they frequently leave dead bodies in their wake. Then though they
decide to rob a money transport, and while their plan is pretty much
infallible, it's foiled by a group of boy scouts (led by Sydney Lassick)
witnessing the thing and reporting it to the police. in the shoot-out that
ensues, Guy mows down a few cops but also Chuck. Bonnie's pretty sure that
was not just an accident, yet she sticks with him - until their next job
lures them into an ambush laid by Steel, and they die under massive
machine gun fire ... Ok, so the film was made on too low a
budget to get the story's period onto screen too convincingly, and several
aesthetic choices (including the film's score) were clearly made to
attract a teenage audience rather than stay faithful to the 1930s, but
once you can accept that, The Bonnie Parker Story turns out to be a
pretty cool movie, one that's slick in handling its action and contains
hardly a dull moment, but that said it also presents the audience with a
pretty disturbing portrait of its lead character, a girl who's turned on
(even sexually) by violence and thus has little in terms of moral
boundaries - but a strong performance by Dorothy Provine still makes the
audience relate to her in some way, supported by a solid ensemble. A
hidden gem really, that deserves more recognition than it gets.
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