THOMASINE & BUSHROD (1974)

THOMASINE & BUSHROD (1974) – The Frontierado Holiday is Friday, August 4th this year, so here is another seasonal post – a review of the black western Thomasine & Bushrod. This tale of a pair of outlaw lovers is a nice change of pace since it is set in the fading Wild West of 1911-1915. Automobiles are beginning to show up here and there, making Thomasine & Bushrod a fascinating fusion of “Robin Hood Outlaw” tales bridging both the old west and the later Pretty Boy Floyd era.

The film opens up in 1911 Texas by treating us viewers to a few scenes of the female bounty hunter Thomasine – played by THE Vonetta McGee – by turns using her tracking skills, marksmanship and feminine allure in order to bring in a few of her targets for the rewards on their heads.

While collecting the money from her most recent success, Thomasine sees a fresh Wanted poster for her old boyfriend J.P. Bushrod, a gunslinging bank robber and rustler portrayed by Max Julien from the previous year’s blaxploitation hit The Mack.

Bushrod has been lying low as a horse trainer for ranchers and we are introduced to him stopping an act of animal cruelty by one of the other ranch hands, then slugging him. Knowing the ripples from this violent incident will result in his cover being blown and the law coming down on him again, J.P. returns to life on the run. 

In a rundown saloon in a place called the Last Town, Bushrod is forced to draw his gun during a poker game when the other players object to losing their money to a black man. They want to string him up with the two hanging black men on display at the town’s entrance.

Our hero emerges triumphant, however, and finds Thomasine waiting upstairs in his hotel bedroom. She has tracked him down and wants to renew their romance.

After they spend the night together, J.P. says Thomasine is too flamboyant in her actions for the surreptitious approach needed for fugitive life. He leaves her, having gotten a lead on a murderous Wild West bank robber called Adolph the Butcher – the man who killed his sister years earlier.

Bushrod wins the subsequent gunfight with Adolph and his gang, and the gun-wielding Thomasine, who trailed J.P., arrives in time to save her beau from being jailed for the shootout. This sets up the rest of the movie, as our title pair spend the next four years robbing banks and sharing the proceeds with poor people of all colors while dodging the authorities on horseback at first, then in a series of stolen period automobiles.

The most dogged lawman pursuing the title duo is United States Marshal Bogardie, played by George Murdock with his usual sleaze. Most viewers may remember him as the loathsome Internal Affairs man on Barney Miller.

Due to the low budget, much of our heroes’ criminal career is shown in still black & white photos, montages and a blend of sequential still photos to simulate movement. Director Gordon Parks Jr. of Superfly and Three the Hard Way fame makes a virtue of necessity, using those visual effects in a very artistic way.

The charismatic outlaws become folk heroes throughout Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico and Arizona. A lot of criticism gets leveled at Thomasine & Bushrod for supposedly “ripping off” scenes from Bonnie & Clyde, Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid and other films.

In my opinion it’s unavoidable to have parallel scenes in such storylines. Whether in real life or in fiction, the heists and overall saga of such fugitive outlaws reflect similar patterns and incidents, right down to the way that the poor people with whom the bandits share their stolen funds will be willing to shelter them and mislead the lawmen hunting them.

Those similarities apply whether it’s accounts of Butch & Sundance, Bonnie & Clyde, Billy the Kid, John Dillinger and on and on. In John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath, readers get treated to Pa Joad’s remark about Pretty Boy Floyd – “When Floyd was loose an’ goin’ wild, law said we got to give him up—an’ nobody give him up. Sometimes a fella got to sift the law.”

While I admit that many scenes from Thomasine & Bushrod have to be charitably viewed as, uh … “homages” to earlier movies, I think it’s unfair to use terms like ripoff.

Another frequent criticism of this offbeat western is that it is set too late to count as part of that genre. I will point out that The Wild Bunch, which NOBODY would claim is not a western, is set in 1913, so right in the middle of the 1911-1915 period in which Thomasine & Bushrod takes place.

To me the era and the mingling of cars, phones and other conveniences with old west settings nicely conveys the comparison with Wild West outlaws and their 20th Century counterparts. The film therefore succeeds in making a viewer reflect on how those themes repeat through the ages, no matter if it’s Robin Hood, Dick Turpin, or whatever bandit figures you want to use.

Some critics claim Thomasine & Bushrod is racist by featuring so many bigoted white characters, but those critics aren’t paying attention. The title outlaws share their loot with poor, downtrodden blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans AND white people. It’s more of a populist message, with negative AND positive white characters.

The dismal living conditions of the people who shelter Thomasine and J.P. are depressing no matter their skin color. In fact, the wide net that Bushrod insists on casting when it comes to “giving to the poor” is crucial to the story.

The initially flamboyant Thomasine is starting to grow annoyed over how much money her man shares with others and expresses resentment that he does it just to pad their legend. She feels they’ve done enough for others and should start keeping more of their booty in order to settle down under new names and start raising horses, like J.P. has dreamed of doing all his life.

At any rate, the themes and conflicts detailed in the preceding few paragraphs are sprinkled amid robberies and chase scenes galore, so the movie is certainly not a dry dissertation about socioeconomic issues.

Now we come to the criticisms that I sadly do agree with. Despite some occasional accurate period costumes (right) showing up, the movie’s limited budget makes the comparatively modern-day jeans and shirts worn in several scenes impossible to ignore. It’s distracting at times, but not as distracting as what comes next.

The title lovebirds are joined by an old friend of Bushrod’s named Jomo, played by the one and only Glynn Turman. Oddly, Jomo is depicted as a gunslinging Jamaican outlaw, complete with accent and anachronistic slang. You might as well throw in Dolemite at that point. Jomo would be perfect for The Harder They Come, but is not right for a western.

SPOILERS AHEAD! 

Jomo is loud, abrasive and incapable of subtlety or covert activity. Just when Thomasine gets pregnant and Bushrod at long last agrees to leave their fugitive existence behind, Jomo’s “HEY, LOOK AT ME!” approach to lawbreaking makes our heroes easy targets for the relentless Marshal Bogardie.

Jomo dies at Bogardie’s hands, but he drags J.P. and Thomasine down with him. In the closing action set piece, with the outlaws outnumbered and surrounded, Thomasine is shot from behind and falls dead. 

Bushrod charges at Bogardie as the pair exchange gunfire in slow motion, with J.P. ignoring all his bullet wounds in order to get close enough to shoot the marshal to death before expiring himself.

Thomasine & Bushrod may not be a truly great western, mostly for budgetary reasons, but it definitely stands out from the rest. It’s also a chance to enjoy a film from an underrated director and starring an underrated actor and actress.

FOR MY REVIEW OF THE BLACK WESTERN POSSE (1993) CLICK HERE.

FOR MY REVIEW OF THE WOMEN OF COLOR WESTERN GANG OF ROSES (2003) CLICK HERE.

FOR MY REVIEW OF THE 1966 DJANGO MOVIE COMBINED WITH REVIEWS OF TWO OF FRED WILLIAMSON’S 1970s BLAXPLOITATION WESTERNS CLICK HERE.