Reeling Backward: Thomasine and Bushrod (1974)

Matthew Socey says the Blaxploitation classic starring Max Julien deserves to be better remembered for its tale of a couple who were part Bonnie & Clyde and part Robin Hood.

Max Julien died on January 1 at the age of 88. Cult cinema fans will know him as the writer and star of the Blaxplotation classic “The Mack.” He also created the character of Cleopatra Jones. His other passion project “Thomasine and Bushrod” was a romantic action western with Julien's then-partner Vonetta McKee.

In the timeline of African-Americn westerns of the 1970s, Thomasine and Bushrod (1974) came after “Buck and the Preacher” (starring and directed by the recently departed Sidney Poitier) and the Fred Williamson films “The Legend of N-Charlie” (1972) and its sequel “The Soul of N-Charlie” (1973). T&S spends more time with the couple than the average urban action film of its time.

We first meet Thomasine (Vonetta McKee) as a laundress who is getting verbal and soon physical advances by an angry white ranch hand. She lures him inside a barn and asks for money for her potential services. A groin kick later, she whips out a gun and we realize she's actually a bounty hunter.

After meeting with the local marshal to collect her bounty money, she notices a poster for the outlaw Bushrod (Julien). In pure western fashion, she tears the poster off the wall. Her next target. Or is he?

We meet Bushrod rescuing a horse from being beaten by a different angry white ranch hand. Instead of whipping a horse, Bushrod hold the horse gently and says "easy, baby" more than a Barry White ballad. Once the horse was calm, Bushrod says "That's how you break a horse."

Thomasine and Bushrod have a combination meet-cute and western face-off. They see each other with an open door, open guns and a flirty "It's been a while." They are not hunter and target, but a couple.

Thomasine and Bushrod are a combination of Bonnie and Clyde and Robin Hood (with a pistol-packing Maid Marion) who rob from the corrupt white men and give to their fellow people of color and poor whites. The amount of money given away becomes a bone of contention between the couple later in the film. They argue hard, they love hard, they work hard and play hard.

The film's end goes down a traditional western path. For its time, imitating Sam Peckinpah's slow-motion violence sequences were the norm. Before Sam, the ending of Bonnie and Clyde's onscreen brutality shook the cinema world. By the time, this film came out, it was wearing thin. The biggest flaw of this film.

This duo dynamic and chemistry between McKee (who Julien wanted to play Cleopatra Jones before the studio picked Tamara Dobson instead) and Julien stand out more than the gunplay. The film helps having Lucien Ballard, a veteran director of photography who worked on (in the same year) “The Wild Bunch” and “True Grit.”

Also lending his skilled hand and eye as a director was Gordon Parks, Jr. His father (the great photographer Gordon Parks) directed the original “Shaft” while junior's resume had “Super Fly,” “Three the Hard Way,” “Aaron Loves Angela” and this film. Parks, Jr. died via an airplane crash in 1979 at age 44.

One of cinema's what-could-have-beens, but the four films he directed are still solid and two have achieved cult status. Here's hoping the other two get more recognition.

Matthew Socey is host of Film Soceyology for WFYI 90.1 FM.