The Wrath of God (released in 1972) - Starring Robert Mitchum, Frank Langella, Rita Hayworth and Victor Buono

“They offered them a choice - the firing squad . . . or The Wrath of God.”
The Wrath of God, sourced from a book by Jack Higgins (under the pen name James Graham) was released in 1972; having been filmed in Mexico and was directed by Ralph Nelson. The story is about three nefarious men with a reprehensible past. Emmet Keogh (played by Ken Hutchinson) is an Irishman with a violent, bitter past. He is desperately trying to get out of the violent state in Mexico. He manages to put together enough funds to buy a train ticket out of Mexico, where revolutionaries are lined-up in the streets and gunned down with laid back reliability. Emmet meets bootlegger, gunrunner Jennings (played by Victor Buono), a big man in a white suit. Jennings asks him to bootleg Scotch Whiskey (actually guns, though Emmet doesn’t know) across the border into the US. When Keogh refuses, the ‘businessman’ has his passport and ticket stolen, arm twisting Emmet into agreeing to the task.
Father Van Horne (Robert Mitchum) is a Roman Catholic priest (or so he’d have you believe). A trigger happy man of cloth, he carries a gun in his Bible and a switchblade in a Crucifix. A fellow outlaw comments (on noticing that Horne is holding the Bible upside down) : “If that IS a Bible," he says, "read it. If that ain't a Bible, drop it." Emmet learns that the good priest was originally with the Boston dioceses, sent to Central America to raise funds. Keogh is unaware that Van Horne has been defrocked. Van Horne rescues Emmet from brigands who are angry when the latter saves a mute Native American girl, Chela (played by Paula Pritchett) from being gang raped by them.




Consequently, the three men: Van Horne, Emmet Keogh and Jennings are arrested, charged with siding up with the counter revolutionaries and taken captive - to face death by a firing squad. The man responsible for their fate is Colonel Santilla (played by John Colicos), a revolutionary with a deep feeling of hatred for the Catholic Church. The Colonel strikes a deal with them - he will free them and offer safe passage to the US – on the condition that they have to assassinate a despot from nearby – Tomas De La Plata (Frank Langella). The strongman has a personal vendetta against the Colonel, whose men put to death his father, raped his mother, and plagued his sister to commit suicide. And so, the Unholy Trinity, the father (played by Father Van Horne), the son (played by Emmett) and the Holy Ghost (played by Jennings) are to assassinate the despotic maniac.
Van Horne dons his priestly garb once more and throws open the doors of the House of God in De La Plata's village; Emmett and Jennings pretend to be business men interested in the town's mining industry – thus, the Unholy Trinity lays a trap for La Plata. Violence, extreme sometimes, tends to mar the viewing (the merciless gunning of a little boy); also, there is far too much detailing which confuses the viewer .. Notable performances are delivered by Mitchum and Hayworth. This was the latter’s last completed movie. She was constantly plagued with forgetfulness, many members of the crew thought she was downing one drink too many; they later found out that she was suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, which was the cause of her forgetting her lines.

Boxcar Bertha - Directed by Martin Scorsese (1972) - an early movie about a young girl into robbery

The late 60's and early 70's was the time when Martin Scrocese was making his initial movies, the time when he started to develop a reputation. It was a lesson for the young director, imparted by producer Roger Corman, who had helped other directors such as Coppola and James Cameron to also start their careers. Corman used to be able to guide directors to make movies that cost very little movies, and the same was true of this movie, Boxcar Bertha, which was made with a very low amount of 600,000 (a very low amount of money for a movie), and was a good lesson for Martin Scorcese. The movie is apparently based on a book called 'Sister of the Road', a biography of Bertha Thomson, who went onto to do train robbery at a time of the 1930's (written by Dr. Ben L. Reitman). However, the movie and the book were certainly different in terms of the story; with the movie being made to capitalize on the ongoing craze for movies in the 'Bonnie and Clyde' style. The movie, being depicted in the American South of the 1930's, you get a look at the prevalent issues related to the situation regarding racial differences, as well as issues related to gender.



The movie has as the main characters, Bertha Thompson (played by Barbara Hershey) and "Big" Bill Shelly (played by David Carradine). Bertha is a typical character of the depression era, an orphan, who was also a robber, being a typically charming woman, accompanied by 3 other members of her team, a union organizer (Bill), a con man from New York (Barry Primus) and a mechanic fond of the blues (Bernie Casey). Even though the movie is set in the 30's, you get a feel for the early 70's environment in the movie, with characters tending to adventurous, free spirited and criminal, but not more so than the tie-striped bankers and lawyers. The movie was worth watching because of the effort put in by Martin Scorsese, and these efforts are visible in the movie.