Biker Films -- The Wild Angels

Last week, it was miniature wargaming, a valid historical enthusiasm, this week, it is old movies, another valid historical enthusiasm. Yeah, the blog jumps around a lot but it's always something somehow related to history. (Hint -follow the labels and find what you want -remember the old stuff is just as good, sometimes better, than the new stuff( 

Tonight we discuss Roger Corman's classic film, "The Wild Angels," from 1966. If you have any interest at all in the biker film genre, then you know this is the one which started it all. Roger Corman, known to many as "king of the B-movies," had read an article in Life magazine about the Hell's Angels and decided they warranted a movie. 

And the result was The Wild Angels, which like most of the genre had delightfully over the top, sensationalized trailers --trailers which are often more fun to watch then the films themselves. 

The film starred Peter Fonda, later the star of "Easy Rider," as "Blues" or "Heavenly Blues," the leader of a fictitious California Hell's Angel chapter. Nancy Sinatra, a singer in her own right yet known forever as Frank Sinatra's daughter, plays his girlfriend. 

Supporting roles are played by, among others, Bruce Dern, who went on to do countless biker films, and Diane Ladd, as well as Michael J. Pollard, the actor who made a guest appearance Star Trek (how it is that anyone anywhere who did a guest role on the original Star Trek shall now be immortalized.) 

As one watches the film now, it's interesting to ponder why and how it, and this is a documented fact, The Wild Angels film launched a genre of films that stretched over a decade or more and included at least twenty films although I've heard forty as the number, as well. 

Not only did it launch a film genre, but it also fueld the growth of the real life Hell's Angels motorcycle group (notice how I avoided saying either "club" or "gang"?), an organization that now spans several continents with chapters around the world. You can read about this in the book, "The Wild Ride -How the Outlaw Motorcycle Myth Conquered America," by Tom Reynolds, 2000. TV Books, New York. 
In other words, in 1965, when this film came out, while the Hell's Angels had gained publicity in the form of magazine articles and so on as well as Hunter Thompson's classic book, they were no where near as important as they became later, and did not, for instance, have chapters in Europe, South Africa, South America, and Australia among other places. These all came later, and came, in part, due to the popularity of films like this one and those that followed it.   

So, what was the appeal of this film? The cinematography is well done, the acting not awful, at least by biker film standards, but not great either. It is kind of a corny film full of corny lines. 

What it shows is a group of people on a quest, the quest being to transport the body of a dead Angel and then give it a proper funeral.   

It's got a lot of the common trops and scenes and such that one sees again and again in biker films. Wild dance parties on beaches with bongo drums, sunsets, bikers on lonely roads, rape and attempted rape scenes (yes, there are many of them in this film and even more in later films in this genre. They are, for better or worse, endemic to the genre.) 

And it's got the classic scene where a pastor in a church asks 

the Angels, more or less, if you want to be free, what is that you want to be free to do anyway? 

"We want to be free, free to get loaded and ride our machines." 

Obviously this struck a chord with some people. Simon Pegg references it frequently in his 2013 film, The Word's End. 

There is a sense of the characters being part of a group that lives outside the laws of normal society, something that definitely appeals to many in an escapist film. But even then at the end of the film "Heavenly Blues" just decides this whole thing has gone too far. 

There's a lot of minor controversies surrounding the film. One of them is whether or not actual Hell's Angels participated in the making of the film. Roger Corman often spoke of how they were hired as extras and brought their bikes and girlfriends, charging for their appearance in the film and billing more for the appearances of the motorcycles than the women. He also wrote of how they were unreliable workers and this posed challenges filming ( see "How I made a hundred movies in Hollywood and never lost a dime," by Roger Corman) Sonny Barger, the head of the Hell's Angels, however insists that no Angels appeared in the film. Personally I don't consider either to be reliable witnesses so I guess we'll never know. 

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More Chop Sockey Pictures

 Some more photos from last week's solo test game of my "Chop Sockey! Kung Fu Miniature Wargame Rules." I made some changes to them this week. 

In other projects, I have done some studying on the history or pseudo of ninjas, dug several files of academic papers on a many subjects out of storage for possible projects, and begun some reading on the history of proto-scientific thought in China for a couple projects. I also submitted a couple book reviews on conspiracy thinking to the skeptical inquirer. And I primed a few figures that now need painting. 

Let me also off you think link to a piece of interesting history: 

John Daniel, the story of a Gorilla raised as a British boy

More from the BBC on John Daniel

As always, please consider buying my books. Thanks: Peter Huston's author page at Goodreads

Hand to Hand combat. The red poker chips indicate the figure has suffered a wound. 
This effects their abilities in several ways. 

Chop Sockey Kung Fu Miniature Wargame Rules test game --"We wuz just funnin' the China Man!" -After Action Report

Greetings. Hello there boys and girls. Well over a year or two ago, I began working on writing "Chop Sockey!!," a set of rules for kung fu comic or movie style wargames. The results are promising. A friend and I play tested them once, and then, like so many other things, along came the pandemic and that put an end to shared playtesting.

Alas! 

Having finished writing my book on Trump (yes, this is a plug, Feel free to buy it. Link below) and anxious to begin work on a new project, I pulled out the rules and gave them a test run playing solo. 

Basic scenario concept was to have a group of innocents being mistreated by bad people and some heroes need to come, intervene, and give them a chance to escape. 

Looking for suitable bad guys, I chose my recently painted "steam punky" Dead Rabbits gang. 

Now for the good guys, I realized that while I had suitable civilian figures, I had no rules for civilians, at least not yet.. (They shall be written soon and will be finished by next solo game.  I promise. The stats for civilians will give them very low, combat ability but high saves. This way, they don't really add much to combat but they do stay around long enough to be rescued.) 

For the good guys, I chose suitable Chinese Boxer rebellion or Taiping Uprising figures, creating a group of generic mobs of ten men with spears, swords, and muskets. I faced them off against each other at one corner of a four by four card table. I then put two suitable kung fu heroes at the farthest corner of the table. 

I called the scenario "We wuz just funnin' the Chinaman!" as an homeage to the classic 1970s TV show Kung Fu which chronicles the adventures of Kwai-Chiang Kane, a half breed Shaolin monk who wondered the old American west. An interesting show that shaped American images of kung fu and the martial arts in its early days, a common event in the series was that Kane would wonder into a western town. Soon after the local, inbred white trash with bad teeth would begin hassling him because he was Chinese and did not really fit in in that neighborhood, and go further and further with their hassling. Kane would inevitablly lecture them with Chinese philosophy (or the 1970s AmericanTV version of Chinese philosophy --think fortune cookie philosophy), that would fail, they would then attack him, and he would kick in half a dozen peoples teeth, leaving them on the ground whining "But we wuz just funnin' the Chinaman, and he done kicked our teeth all in!" 

Alas, good stuff. If you've never seen the show, your education is lacking something. 

Anyway, that's sort of what I was going for here. My results were mixed. 

Game Forces

The Dead Rabbits -a particular colorful group of White Trash and Irish Trash, no less

Unit One: Seven Dead Rabbits

            Classified as "Warriors" -each unit consists of a standard bearer with a Dead Rabbit on a pole and five men with clubs or swords and one with a firearm

Unit Two: Seven Dead Rabbits 

            Also classified as "Warriors" and equipped identically to the first unit although one was actually a woman and not a man -not that this makes any difference in these rules. It does, however, add color to the table top. 

Liam Angus McGutstab O'Heaney

            A widely feared drunken berserker. He was classified as a hero but given no chi points (He may conceivably have great chi. No one actually knows as he's simply too drunk and uncouth to know how to use it anyway if he does. I am, by the way, very proud of the figure. He's a conversion from, of all things, a Gaul gladiator, and I'm quite proud of him. See my old posts on the subject.) 

Ook Ook O'Brien

            A gorilla in a top hat. He escaped from the circus and was taken in by the Dead Rabbits. They were eager to have him, because they needed some better educated, more sophisticated, better travelled members and, being as he was widely travelled with the circus, he met the bill and filled the void.  

    Ook Ook is classified in the rules as a gorilla. Yes, there are rules for gorillas and other animals and I was hoping to try them out. Besides, it is a rule of thumb among wargamers, if you have a figure of gorilla in a top hat, put that figure in a game almost any chance you can. 

 The Good Hearted Chinese 

Three units of ten Chinese tong members classified as "fighters" armed with swords, spears and a few muskets. Each had a standard bearer. 

Two Kung Fu heroes at the far end of the table. These were unarmed but each had four points of "chi." 

Victory Conditions

The Chinese must escape off the far corner of the board with two thirds of their forces intact. 

Turn One

To determine which side went first a simple pair of dice were rolled for each side. The Dead Rabbits won. 

The turn sequence involves moving the units on a side, one by one, and then taking each unit through the entire turn sequence. 

Since the Dead Rabbits had four "units" -two seven man gangs, the gorilla, and the drunken berserker hero- this would mean four units would move through their sequence.

The first Dead Rabbit gang charged at the middle of the Chinese units. 

Being Warriors they had automatic activation and since they were charging they got double movement. Thus they moved ahead 8 inches, made contact with a group of Chinese seven or less inches away, and hand to hand fighting broke out.   

The attackers were classified as warriors and got 2 dice per figure or 14 dice total. 

The defenders were classified as fighters and got 1 dice each or 10 dice total. 

The dice were rolled and the Dead Rabbits inflicted 6 hits on the Chines tong members. The Chinese rolled their saving dice and only one of the six saved. Of the five hit, dice were rolled for the hit resul and three were wounded and two were dead. 

In that melee the Chinese caused three hits on the Dead Rabbits, killing two and wounding one. 

The second unit of Dead Rabbits charged the nearest unit of Chinese tong members and inflicted 7 hits. 

The hero and the gorilla were blocked from charging any of the other Chinese due to having the two melees taking place in front of them so they just advanced at normal speed and took up a position in support of the brawling gangs. 

Nevertheless, after the first turn, it was very obvious that the Chinese side was definitely way outclassed. Classifying all the forces on one side as "warriors," a designation intended for elite soldiers and their tribal or feudal equivalents, was a mistake. It had produced a very lop-sided battle. (Of course, I have thoughts on how to modify this in the future.) 

Chinese Phase of the First Turn

The Chinese side had five "units." These were the two heroes far to the rear and the three 10 man units of Tong fighters, two of which had taken heavy casualties already and were greatly weakened. 

Since the victory condition for the Chinese were to get as many figures to safety as possible, the untouched unit of Tong fighters decided to flee at double speed. In hindsight, I'm not sure this was a good idea, but, as they say, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

One of the heroes decided to charge into combat and to use lots of Chi to speed his entry. A normal charge or running move for a hero is 8 inches. For each point of Chi used, a hero can add 4 inches to his move. Using three points, he moved a total of 20 inches (8 + 12) and charged into combat with one of the Dead Rabbit gangs. He decided to go for broke and use his remaining chi point to add to his combat effectivness. 

Alas! Despite some heavy modifiers for that turn -the result of him using his chi- one hero versus seven warriors is a fight where the seven warriors have a strong advantage. A couple warriors left took hits and left the game but this meant that there were still five of them and one hero with no chi points, all alone against them and their nearby friends. 

The other hero saved his chi and moved 8 inches towards the center of the action. 

The remnants of the badly mauled units attempted to flee, but due to their wounds were not able. (If a character has a wound, he must consult a chart and pass a dice roll before perform actions such as fighting or moving. While a character can have multiple wounds, he must pass a dice roll for each and every wound or he cannot perform that action. The characters rolled badly and could not flee.)   

Turn Two -- Dead Rabbits Phase 

The two units of Dead Rabbits pursued or attacked the two units of Chinese tong members and the hero who supported them. They inflicted some more casualities but not enough to change the flow of the battle. 

The gorilla and the hero still found themselves waiting in support, watching, ready, but still not actually doing anything. 

Turn Two --Chinese Phase 

There were three units of tong fighters. 

One was undamaged but had chosen to flee. This was intended to increase the forces chances of meeting the victory conditions. In hindsight this might have been a bad idea, as the Dead Rabbits had already achieved their victory conditions, and it had become obvious that the scenario was probably quite unbalanced. 

The two Chinese heroes found themselves touching bases and formed a unit. This allowed them to activate and move together, as well as pool their dice in combat. 

Alas, when they entered combat, they found themselves outclassed by the large number of Dead Rabbits they were facing. Not only did they inflict little damage on the Dead Rabbits but one fo the heroes took hits and missed his saves and was killed and removed from the game. This left just one hero, one unwounded tong fighter, and several wounded tong fighters faced off against an overwhelming force of enemy warriors supported by a hero and a gorilla in a top hat.

Turn Three -FLEEEEE!!!

Seeing no other real option, the tong fighters fled the table. 

 

ANALYSIS

As a game, not terribly successful, but as a game testing or rule testing session a lot was learned about balancing scenarios. Several rules were tweaked afterwards. Others were added.  

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