Outlaw Riders, 1971
When it comes to trash cinema, few can deny that there’s any trash quite as trashy among all the trash that is known as trash cinema as biker films. Yes, biker films! The pentultimate, quintessential trash cinema. This short lived, little respected genre flourished for about ten years starting in 1966 with Roger Corman’s “The Wild Angels” and lasting for about ten or so years until slowly fading out.
As a collector of such films, recently it struck me that it’s long past time that I did some writing on them. With that thought, I recently wrote of The Wild One, a film that preceded the biker film fad. The next logical film would have been The Wild Angels, the one that started the fad, but, alas, I got side tracked and decided to instead of rewatching that classic, to check out a film, I had never seen before but recently purchased, Outlaw Riders. (note the absence of a “The.” No direct object on this film, it seems.)
First, some ground rules. While I hate trigger
warnings and spoilers, for several reasons I’ve decided to include the dreaded
trigger warnings and will let readers know if a film I write about contains
rape, attempted rape, or torture scenes. If nothing else, such warnings help
people choose the right mixture from among their films and their friends who
they invite to choose friends. Sounds wimpy, I know, but I recently had a
friend, a good friend, a female friend, complain in a completely serious
fashion about being unable to unsee some of the scenes I’d exposed her to in
some of the films I enjoy, and she meant it, and I like having her over for films
and such so . . . the result is you, the reader, now get trigger warnings for
rape, attempted rape, and torture scenes. Do with that knowledge what you wish.
Second, while it’s generally a horrible sin among
movie reviewers to give away the ending of a film, well, let’s be honest, we’re
talking about biker films here. A genre where the typical plot is often two
groups of scumbags chase each other around for an hour and half on screen,
stopping periodically to break things, fight each other, and rape people in a
usually pointless fashion, and, then, about the time the audience begins to
wonder when it’s going to just plain end and if they should get up and get some
popcorn or go to the restroom, well, everyone dies for no good reason. And,
once in a while, it may be dramatic and cathartic and so on, but, just as often
if not more so, the result is it leaves you sitting there, thinking “Huh? I
just wasted an hour and a half on this thing and THAT was the best ending they
could think of?” So with that in mind, some reviews will include the line.
“SPOILERS –TYPICAL SUCKY BIKER FILM ENDING.” Which
does not necessarily mean that everyone dies at the end, but it might. So make
of that what you will. Whatever it means, it means I thought the ending was
disappointing. Like they filmed, and filmed, and then realized that they had
put together about an hour and a half of story and the food, drugs, and beer
were gone and just basically slapped together an ending and, well, that was the
end they came up with on the day they decided to finish the story and finish
filming. “TYPICAL SUCKY BIKER FILM ENDING.” Remember that.
Which brings us to “Outlaw Riders” (no “The”)
“Outlaw Riders” starts out surprising well, with a
nice, upbeat song and some really cool cascading still shots over some pretty
good music. (More on the music later.)
But we’re not too far into the song when we realize this film is likely to disappoint. For one thing, the copy of the film used by Peter Rodgers Organization, the company that released this video, is clearly not the best. Aside from the occasional scratch here and there, one quickly notices that credits don’t fit the screen. They spread off the edge, and, yes, I did try adjusting the image very possible way. The ends of the credits just aren’t there.
Somewhere I read that this was not the fault of the company that released the DVD. This was merely the only copy they could get their hands on. Apparently there just aren’t that many copies of Outlaw Riders floating around waiting to be rereleased. Apparently no one thought it was terribly worth saving. Color quality, editing, and general level of camera skill and cinematography just aren’t there, it seems. (Gosh, it’s things like this that really make you appreciate Russ Meyer’s camera skills.)
No extras of any kind. No trailers, no special features, no commentary tracks, no subtitles, no foreign language sound tracks. Hey, those things cost money, you know.
But we’re not too far into the song when we realize this film is likely to disappoint. For one thing, the copy of the film used by Peter Rodgers Organization, the company that released this video, is clearly not the best. Aside from the occasional scratch here and there, one quickly notices that credits don’t fit the screen. They spread off the edge, and, yes, I did try adjusting the image very possible way. The ends of the credits just aren’t there.
Somewhere I read that this was not the fault of the company that released the DVD. This was merely the only copy they could get their hands on. Apparently there just aren’t that many copies of Outlaw Riders floating around waiting to be rereleased. Apparently no one thought it was terribly worth saving. Color quality, editing, and general level of camera skill and cinematography just aren’t there, it seems. (Gosh, it’s things like this that really make you appreciate Russ Meyer’s camera skills.)
 |
| Poor camera skills --even I know that when you are filming a woman dancing on a table, for goodness shakes, show her entire legs and her feet. The whole scene was filmed without ever once showing her feet or ankles |
No extras of any kind. No trailers, no special features, no commentary tracks, no subtitles, no foreign language sound tracks. Hey, those things cost money, you know.
Bike scenes. Really not that impress. The
eponymous “Outlaw Riders” are a gang of about six guys and two women with half
a dozen bikes between them. No fancy riding scenes here. No amazing, awe
inspiring mass bike scenes as in some other films in the genre. (The Australian
film “Stone” comes to mine.) The film starts out with the gang committing a
robbery and then spending the rest of the film travelling around Arizona and
Mexico trying to figure out how best to avoid the authorities and fighting
among themselves. Rape, attempted rape, and getting back at men by hurting
their women is part of the plot, so be careful who you watch this one with,
and, yes, that is true of a lot of biker films now, isn’t it? Which is exactly
why I mention it here, so ‘nuff said on that point.
What else goes on here? Without too much in the way
of spoilers, the best parts probably include:
a)
The scene where the sheriff and his deputies show up.
Okay, this part isn’t that great but you’ve got to see the “sheriff’s car” to understand
just how low budget this film is.
 |
| Lest there be any doubt, note the sign that says "sheriff" taped on the door of the car. That explains why the men inside have guns and try to stop the robbery. I mean, just in case you wondered. |
b)
The scene where the guy brings a hurt biker
to the convent where the nun’s can provide medical care and a biker guy and two
biker chicks discuss the needs who help injured strangers.
“Weird people.” (says
the biker guy.)
“Yeah, but they’re on
our side.” (says biker chick #1)
“They’re on everyone’s
side. Like that’s their thing.” (says biker chick #2)
 |
| Nuns can be groovy, man. |
c)
The scenes where they meet the Mexican
biker gang. One can tell they are Mexicans, by the way, because they speak with
Mexican accents, wear serapes, and have tan skin. The Mexican biker chicks wear
nice looking floral skirts and dance on tables. (in a very poorly shot scene).
They yell Mexican things like “Hijo de una chingada!” and “I smell a gringo!”
The American bikers,
in turn, after assessing the situation with “What’s with these dudes, man?” respond
with clever retorts like “Screw you, you greasy taco vendor!”
 |
| Can there be any doubt in anyone's mind that these are, in fact, Mexicans? |
Hmmm, can I really be
accused of giving away important plot points by hinting that the plot might
involve conflict and friction and ill will between these two groups? Things go
on, events unroll, ultimately one gets A TYPICAL, SUCKY, BIKER FILM ENDING . .
. Yawn.
For me the most
interesting thing about Outlaw Bikers was the sound track. This seemed to be
the only real attempt at quality in the picture. Not only did they use a band
called Simon Stokes and the Nighthawks, one of the top film studio bands of the
time for this otherwise completely lackluster film, but the sound track was
released on MGM records a major label.
http://www.soundtrackcollector.com/title/36607/Outlaw+Riders#labels
https://www.amazon.com/Outlaw-Riders-Nighthawks-McDaniel-Horsemen/dp/B000FAZC8U
https://www.amazon.com/s?i=popular&rh=p_32%3ASimon+Stokes+%26+the+NightHawks&ref=dp_byline_sr_music_1
http://www.soundtrackcollector.com/title/36607/Outlaw+Riders#labels
https://www.amazon.com/Outlaw-Riders-Nighthawks-McDaniel-Horsemen/dp/B000FAZC8U
https://www.amazon.com/s?i=popular&rh=p_32%3ASimon+Stokes+%26+the+NightHawks&ref=dp_byline_sr_music_1
It
turns out the story of biker film soundtracks is very interesting, and I hope
to explore it more. That’s the way things are sometimes. You dig into something,
scratch the surface, and soon you find something completely unexpected, an
avenue for further research. I stumbled across this link to an interesting article on the subject.
https://www.peterstanfield.com/discographies
https://www.peterstanfield.com/discographies
