I love how George Romero blew his success of Dawn of the Dead on this. Bikers as knights. No one dies. So many subplots. No drama. Nothing at stake. No one dies. I kept expecting the Guinnevere triangle, or the Nazi bikers to come back or a big bunch of cops to attack... something. But no.
The actors give their all.
A big hit for Al Adamson with its raping bikers, going sleazier than even AIP would go. There is a very interesting cast and some decent music. And the plot is effective low budget stuff - basically people in a diner cross with some bikers led by Russ Tamblyn and the bikers start killing people.
Tamblyn was in his hippy stage now and looks spaced but he's got an impressive, unsettling presence. It's a convincing performance as he goes mad.
Regina Carroll is fun as his moll and there's a lively support cast even though Ken Taylor is so square as the hero (he and a girl are the protagonists I guess). Desert location works.
One of the ten films Showtime made in 1994 based on old AIP films. This was John Milius' entry - a take on biker films with middle aged vigilantism thrown in. His wife at the time, Elena Oberon plays the sexpot wife of convservative Gerald McRaney and they have a blossoming sex plot daughter in Carla Gugino. Jake Busey leads the Indians/bikers who attack the gals and take away Gugino, Searchers style. McRaney goes looking for them. (Maybe this is Milius' version of Rolling Thunder.)
I thought mom would be killed and I'm sure that was considered but maybe that was too heavy - so she just kinds of hang around. McRaney only cuts loose one scene but it's a good one - some hand to hand combat where he takes out three bikers. I'd never seen that in a Milius film and it's very well done. I enjoyed the beatniks who ran the hotel they stayed at.
It lacks some flamboyance of earlier Milius works - I expected the biker characters to be bolder (a female biker would've helped) - but it was entertaining, albeit dodgy with its man reclaiming woman thing.
The Wild Angels made so much money AIP financed this unofficial follow up - I think Roger Corman had a financial interest, Charles Griffith returns as writer, Burt Topper produced, Dan Haller directed, Leo Gordon is in the support cast. It's remembered today I guess mostly for John Cassevetes playing the head biker of a gang that goes into a small town.
Not a lot of plot. Mimsy Farmer is a local beauty contest winner who is attracted to the gang - not Cassavetes (I assumed there would be a love triangle with those two and Beverly Adams who is Cassavetes' gal) but no... she pashes some other guy. The townsfolk try to allege Farmer was raped, which isn't true - the bikers do a mock trial which ends with Farmer being genuinely raped. It's a shocking ending, as is the fact Cassavetes can't stop anything - he discovers the Hole in the Wall, from Butch Cassidy fame, doesn't exist, and drives off disillusioned as the cops arrive to presumably take down the other bikers. Leo Gordon is a decent sheriff who gives the bikers a chance and regrets it.
I wonder how much Griffith this was. It feels written to a brief. Occasionally is comes alive with shots of the biker gang on the highway but generally feels flat, a bit old and conservative. But then I don't really like the genre.
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.
A marvellous movie. There's not much fresh I can eye. It saw the feature debut of a magnificent director who swept people up in his operatic vision.
It's wonderfully cast - the high pitched operatic work of Hugh Keays Byrne and Vincent Gil, the likeability of Mel Gibson and Joanne Samuel, the blonde friend Geoff Parry, the muscly camp of Roger Ward, the ockerism of Steve Bisley, the cop who gets a "saucepan in the throat", Tim Burns' psycho Johnny the Boy
As in Mad Max 2 the action sequences are superb and less famously it's also marvelously suspenseful. There's a lot of fake outs eg Goose getting up the next day, falling over, then getting killed... ditto with the attack on Jesse.
There's a lot of humour and heart too. Would it have worked with James Healey in the lead and not Gibson? Yes but not as well because Gibson bought vulnerability.
I'm struck how low the death toll is in this. The night rider dies in the original chase and his girl but not pursuing cops. Goose still lives. So does Max's wife. (It's grim for both but not death.) The couple that are attacked at the beginning still live - he seems to have been raped and she was but they are still alive. And the initial bikies just come off the bridge. The kid is killed. And the later bikies.
Great movie.
Roger Smith and Alan Carr revived the career of Smith's wife Ann-Margret with some shows in Las Vegas and TV specials. They then decided to go back into films, but were "choosy" turning down The Maltese Bippy and Song of Norway to do... RPM and this. (Then, to be fair, came Carnal Knowledge.)
Smith wrote the story and screenplay so one presumes he wanted to put his wife forward but actually this is more a star vehicle for whoever plays CC - and that's Joe Namath, the football star. This film might thus be of interest to people who remember him as a football personality - doesn't mean as much to Australians.
It's not a great role for Ann Margret - I guess she gets to wear different outfits but she's very much The Girl. In her opening scene she is almost raped by some biker friends of Namath (including the ever reliable Sid Haig) then Namath rescues her and she flirts with him as if nothing happened. Then later on she gets kidnapped (by bikers led by the even more reliable William Smith) and has to be rescued. Oh there's a romantic interlude.
Nothing wrong with putting Ann Margaret in a biker movie - it's a commercial genre and Ann Margret could ride a bike. Why not make something with her as a biker? Get her racing, doing stuff. Make her active. Have her do more dancing, more singing... show off your wife, Roger Smith!
This film was so boring.
Milius, John. Film Comment; New York Vol. 18, Iss. 3, (May/Jun 1982): 24-26,80.
Let us first examine this idea of Guilty Pleasures. When I was young, the world was so new with promise that it was impossible to find that feeling of self-conscious embarrassment in secrecy that could bring guilt to any pleasure. It is only in early adulthood that we come to measure our passions and, in time, forget them. So it was always in the first light that I was influenced by the movies I liked, as if seeing an ocean for the first time, or being taken to an airport to watch the planes land. There is no judgment good or bad, just noise and movement, intensity and rhythm. This is not to say that I have no guilt. But life hands out few enough pleasures.
Biker movies. This whole genre has been overlooked probably for good reason. One thing that can be said about all of these films, from The Wild One to The Losers, is that they have a rich tradition of social irresponsibility. I mean, these films should make you feel guilty. Of course, they have little to do with real bikers. Real bikers are like real Mongols -nomadic, simple hunters whose only crime is that they are the descendants of Genghis Khan. But the bikers in the movies and the ones on the road share one thing in common which has made them appealing, fascinating, and dreaded. They are free. Next time you drive up to a couple of bikers cruising slowly on their hogs, take a good look. They don’t live like you. They are outside your life, your law. They don’t share your morality, ethics, your humanity, or your conscience. They are free of all that shit.
Let’s talk about the movie that started it all, The Wild One. (1953, directed by Lazlo Benedek). This has to be one of the most important Marion Brando movies ever made. Forget your James Dean-Fifties-introverted-troubled-youth crap. Forget Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront. We’re dealing with guys that rode into town like Tamerlane-no ambitions, no apologies, and little restraint. Where else can you find such a pure sense of anarchy? Who else in modern culture really lived like Vikings? And what for? “What are you rebelling against, Johnny?” occasioned the best line in the movie: “Whaddya got?” That’s it, pure and simple. It’s never been said better in any movie. This is social irresponsibility.
As biker movies progressed, the life style itself changed and became more menacing. We soon learned that bikers were much worse than the mobile white trash we suspected. They were indeed packs of mutant, ursine predators, spawned by some hideous breach of social ecology, and they soon joined the ranks of irredeemable screen sociopaths, the way Indians used to be portrayed and Nazis still are. Soon, the plots simply had to show a horde of swastikafestooned, hairy, drug-crazed, sub-Neanderthals (led by William Smith) descending upon some worthwhile target area that gave ample opportunity for rape and pillage. The rest of the story usually had some reference to community guilt, parents who didn’t understand their daughters, etc., and a strong loner-hero, sometimes a biker himself (who could also be played by William Smith). The loners who stopped the barbarian hordes were, curiously, often Green Berets directly home from disillusioning experiences in Southeast Asia.
These men could only be pushed so far. (This stereotype also helped build the public myth that there were twentyfive divisions of loner-killer Green Berets, and no cooks or clerk-typists.) The loner prevails; a lot of virginity and private property are lost. And the Horde retreats back into the dark recesses of man’s pagan past, waiting. Great visual stuff. Low-slung choppers gleaming in early sunlight massing together gracefully as they come around that bend in the road. Fiends with their hair blowing back, wrapped in armor-like chains, being held by brazen felines who know no limits to promiscuous carnality. There simply are no other movies quite like these. They have titles like Chrome and Hot Leather, Angels from Hell, Born Losers, etc.
A superb piece from the end of the genre’s halcyon days was simply and appropriately called The Losers (1970) Directed by Jack Starrett (vastly underrated), this has the final twist on all biker movie plots: The bikers themselves are sent to Vietnam. That’s right. Bearded, leathern, latter-day Mongols astride gleaming hogs equipped with rockets and automatic weapons take on a rival club: the Viet Cong. They lose. Superb action, interesting political insight.
Another oddity is, of course, Easy Rider (1969, Dennis Hopper). In this, Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper aren’t bikers at all, just ordinary citizens who close out their retail narcotics business in order to take a peaceful vacation ride across country. Their mistake is that they look like bikers to the prudish land apes that have seen the rest of these movies and are mistaken as the advance scouts of the Golden Horde. The community rights are upheld and they pay for the sins of William Smith.
Nobody makes these movies anymore. They’ve gone the way of Italian muscle pictures and blaxploitation movies. They will leave no mark even in the annals of trivia collectors. No French critics will ever enshine them in Cahiers du Cinéma. But next time you see that bro and his old lady heading off with the wind in their hair, the light dazzling from the lacquer and polished chrome, and the big V-Twin like a quickened heartbeat and thunder, give them a thumbs-up for poor Dennis Hopper.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974, Tobe Hooper). Yeah, I know it has a cult following. But I really like this movie. It’s really good. Best of breed in my estimation. Made for nothing, extraordinarily inventive, it just reeks of style and other things. It has horror with the best of them. Nicely achieved in that nothing in the film is supernatural. Every object is common; lots of the film takes place in broad daylight.
Things happen you just don’t expect, like the girl with the sexy backless halter-top being hung up on a meat hook. You just don’t expect that. The guy in the wheelchair being chainsawed and the great scene in the barbecue store also take you by surprise. It’s not that the scenes are unexpected, it’s just that they go so far. But what I like best is the irresistible visual humor, so sick you don’t believe it’s really happening. Leatherface-gigantic, masked, aproned-wielding the great sputtering snarling title weapon, is chasing the one surviving girl. She is nubile, buxom, and agile as a sports car as she darts in and out of the trees in headlong terror. He follows, but like a truck out of control, spinning out on the corners, shattering branches, kicking up dust, always trying to keep the saw pointed in the right direction.
Also, the great ending shot where Leatherface holds his chainsaw up to the rising sun in some ritual dance to the harvest god. I could go on and on, but see it for yourself. It deserves its rep.
Return to Paradise (1953, Mark Robson). After my other two guilty pleasures I feel I should swing the pendulum the other way. This is undoubtedly one of my favorite movies. It is faithfully adapted from a James Michener story of the same title and shot entirely on location in Fiji or Tonga or somewhere using non-actors for most of the cast-giving it a rudimentary authenticity that is to me thoroughly enchanting.
I don’t know when I first saw this film, but it was probably at a particularly idealistic and emotional stretch of adolescence, during which I was a fanatical surfer. Being a suffer in those days was like belonging to a hallowed brotherhood-a noble tribe of timeless drifters and beach bums that shared a solemn adventurism and a longing for primitive tropical places that lay in the path of the great swells. These places often had rich-sounding names, and were sparsely populated by strong simple men and lithe, brown-skinned women. White men there were regarded as higher beings and often went bad with the weight of that responsibility. All of this was majestically set forth in the works of Melville, Conrad, Stevenson, and Gauguin. I would sit in the winter classroom, spin the globe, and read the names of the islands: Atuona, Rarotonga, Manihiki, even Guadalcanal. Rich stuff, and it was all still there, all of it possible.
When I saw Gary Cooper wading ashore through the waves in the first minutes of Return to Paradise, he became an immediate role model. He is put ashore, to be exact, for reasons we’re never told, except that he has an intense dislike for authority. On the beach he is met by a crowd of exotic, innocent islanders, who are being ruthlessly suppressed under the regime of a misguided Christian missionary and his gang of truncheon-wielding wardens. All manner of oppression is levied on these children: They have to wear clothes, work steady hours, not breed freely, and attend church daily and sing hymns. Mr. Morgan (Cooper) only wants to be left alone, but he is a glaring example of individual will to the others, and must be made to bow and kiss the ring. Not Gary Cooper, no way. You’re dealing with Yankee independence, the reason America was founded and settled. Besides, he has a shotgun. His hut is eventually torn down and he asks the community, “Who will help put it back up?” In a scene that’s etched in my memory forever, a simple dark-eyed girl steps forward where all the others cower. This is romance. This is love. Nothing else will really do. Where are these women, these men? How many of you have wives, husbands, or lovers who will step forward when the odds are thrown down, when the community, the police, Fortune, and God are on the other side? With nothing in it, who will stand by your side?
With the aid of the shotgun, Mr. Morgan becomes the unwitting instrument of revolt. The people are freed, the wardens banished, and even the old missionary left in peace with his church because he was only misguided. An idealized society, no government, lots of food, sex, surf, and the intoxicating sound of the drums and the dances. Of course, it is here that Conrad always warns us that white men go bad-at the point of moral choice. They either lose control like Mr. Kurtz, or drift on because they have no anchor and can’t really be, just left alone. Mr. Morgan is the latter. He never marries the girl. She dies bearing him a daughter; he realizes he’s lost the only thing he ever had, and leaves, embittered.
It’s here that the story seems to take on an added dimension. Cooper wanders the winds, becoming a hardened, friendless man. World War II starts and something brings him back. He returns to the island to find himself a legend of the past, a part of their history and folklore. He also finds his daughter and, eventually, himself.
In this final sentimental confrontation, he discovers what all adventurers and drifters really seek, that which most people had all along-a home. It’s a simple powerful emotion, one that the cynicism in all of us constantly tries to reject. But it gnaws at the back of my heart and has colored all of my work. I’ve written parts and shades of this story into everything I’ve ever really cared about, from Jeremiah Johnson to Conan. I guess I do it unconsciously. Maybe it’s just because I, too, really want to be like Gary Cooper at the end of the movie: standing on the dock, listening to the music with my arm around my daughter, and letting the boat sail away without me.
AuthorAffiliation
Copyright Film Society of Lincoln Center May/Jun 1982
Famous for being a biker movie directed by a woman, Barbara Peeters, and you can tell a woman’s touch: it has an empowered female heroine, boys are objectified as much as girls, the women aren’t victims, a witch character isn’t treated disdainfully, due deference is paid to the trauma of rape and murder, lots of talk about the bad karma of seeking revenge (the plot is a girl avenging her brother’s murder), a sensitive art student (Dan Haggerty) as a lover. There’s a kind of twist where it’s said the sister and brother had incest, but too much of this is boring shots of driving and flashbacks where nothing much happens.
For anyone who doesn’t think Roger Corman could direct should check out this effort, which shows him at the confident height of his powers – interesting, experimental visuals, fast pace, differing techniques. It’s a shame the story he is filming is so uninvolving. Although this film was incredibly popular and sparked an entire sub-genre of films, the biker film, it is not a lot of fun to watch.