Legendary Texas Ranger Frank Hamer never had any luck in Hollywood. When he appeared as a character in the terrible film Bonnie and Clyde (1967), he was portrayed as so timid and foolish—not to mention vengeful—that his widow Gladys Hamer sued Warner and won $20,000 in 1968, which would be worth about $150,000 today. In contrast, the more faithful and real Frank Hamer, incisive and with an iron will to pursue criminals in the name of justice, as in this film, receives no credit and is called Tom Steel. I wouldn’t have seen this film if it weren’t for Hammer, because in addition to catching Bonnie and Clyde (Guy), he dismantled an entire army of the underworld in the modern Wild West, including more than 60 arrested for the lynching of African American George Hughes.

This is another low-budget B-movie that was destined to be released as a double feature with Bronson’s Machine-Gun Kelly. There with Kelly, Gerald Fried’s jazz in the background; here with Bonnie and her cigar, rockabilly in vogue since Elvis’s ‘Big Bang’. Someone wanted guaranteed fun to the sound of banjo-style guitar and said, why not a blonde? Why not a married blonde? That someone was the rogue Guy, who didn’t care that Bonnie was waiting for her criminal husband. Waiting is a euphemism; she was brooding over her anger at her misery, and the appearance of the pipsqueak was just what she needed. She almost emptied the hot oil on Guy for flirting with her shamelessly, and she was fired, only to receive a visit hours later from the insistent man with the machine gun.

They rob a bartender, murder a police motorcyclist who is following them, and so on.

She urges Guy to kiss her even though they are being pursued from Waco, Alvarado, and Wichita. The scene of Province bathing in a tub in Neosho, Missouri, is worth seeing. After a shootout, Guy’s brother Chuck arrives a few days later. Sheriff Harry Carter is killed, and they continue their escape to Casey, Iowa, on 28 June 1933.

In the night-time ambush by the Texas Steel ranger, Guy’s brother Chuck is killed in the shootout, and a while earlier Bonnie had made it clear that she was in charge and would make the decisions. What follows does not improve the film, with the rescue of her husband Jefferson from prison in Brazoria, Texas. And the incident with the child who takes the car keys and puts the three of them in check until she, after meeting the architect, seems to have changed something, or at least softened. The shootout for the armoured truck with the attempt to set it on fire and Guy getting rid of her husband. It was of little use: the Texas Ranger was already waiting for him ahead with several deputies.