Every Martin Scorsese Movie Ranked Worst To Best

27. Boxcar Bertha (1972)

Scorsese's second movie is a Roger Corman production about a troubled orphan (Barbara Hershey) who's lured into a life of crime during the Great Depression, and it's every bit as trashy, violent and bluntly executed as its write-up makes it sound.

Directed on a shoestring budget and aiming only for cheap thrills, Boxcar Bertha makes for a cynical and cold-blooded affair, a drama that Scorsese tries to inject with more depth of feeling than Corman's appetites will allow.

You can sense Scorsese trying to make something else of the melodrama, like an artist caged and held back from his potential, but there's only so much he can do. Boxcar Bertha isn't terrible, but it is the work of a director begging for better material, ready to break free and find his own voice. From here, mountains would be made.