Beloved Australian film has tremendous integrity... Sandy Harbutt clearly has great admiration and affinity for bikers and this comes across in the film's best bits... the funeral sequence, the stuns of bikes falling off cliffs, the scenes of bikes on the highway, the camaraderie of the gang, the ethos.
Harbutt is very effective as the head biker; Hugh Keays Byrne and Vincent Gil are superb as fellow bikers, Roger Ward and Bindi Williams are a lot of fun. Rebecca Gilling was one of the best looking women on the planet at the time - especially in denim. Helen Morse is amazing too, as Shorter's uptown gal (who still goes off and seemingly roots Patrick Ward).
The plot about Ken Shorter joining the gang to help find out who's trying to kill them feels more haphazard. It's serviceable... I just wish it had been done with a little more polish. The baddies are basically forgotten until the end. And it is contrived that Hugh Keays Bryne witnesses an assassination, a whole bunch of people die as a result, and it's not until the end he goes "oh that's right I witnessed the assassination".
I remember guys from my school re-enacting the funeral scene. That's how much it penetrated.
The support cast is full of delight - Drew Forsyth as a nerdy businessman, Gary McDonald as a mechanic, Bill Hunter as a publican.
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