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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.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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