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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Biker Films: Outlaw Riders, 1971

Outlaw Riders, 1971

“Outlaw Riders –They Take Whatever They Want –Whenever They Want.” And a bit on biker films and trash cinema in general.

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.)

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

  

 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

Other Reviews of this film out there

https://www.dvddrive-in.com/reviews/n-s/outlawriders71.htm

http://every70smovie.blogspot.com/2015/10/outlaw-riders-1971.html

http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/559562/Outlaw-Riders/full-synopsis.html

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Biker Films --The Wild One ( 1953)

Biker Films --The Wild One (1953) 

and the Real Life Hollister Riot

                In 1966, Roger Corman, often known as king of the B-movies, released “Wild Angels,” a low budget, exploitation film starring Peter Fonda and Nancy Sinatra that offered a sensationalized image of life among the Hells Angels outlaw motorcycle gang. For the next ten years, more or less, “Biker Films” were a staple of the drive-in or urban “grindhouse” theaters where audiences would gather seeking cheap thrills and a break from the tension of ordinary life.

                But some would argue that “Wild Angels” was not the first outlaw biker film, but instead the 1953 film, The Wild One started the genre. Loosely based and highly fictionalized, the film is based on an event called “The Hollister Riot,” an incident where a large group of motorcycle enthusiasts, many recently returned World War Two combat veterans, gathered in the town of Hollister, California and the group became out of control. For those interested in learning more about the actual history of the event, I’ve included some links below.

“The Wild One” is a 1953 film starring Marlon Brando. Should it be considered as the first real biker film? Some say yes, others say no. They argue that the genre began in the 1960s and this is merely an outlier, a curiosity that is not really part of the genre.

                As for me, I don’t really consider it part of the genre, but I do think any good discussion of biker films must, nevertheless, discuss this film or be painfully incomplete. And therefore, WITH SOME SPOILERS, I offer my thoughts on The Wild One and why I think it does not really belong as part of the genre.

                First, The Wild One was intended as a drama, not an action film. The main character, Johnny Strabler, portrayed by the talented actor Marlon Brando is arguable portrayed as an unhappy outsider. While in many ways, handsome and radiating a certain “bad boy charisma,” as the film goes on, he begins to appear increasingly broken. What he clearly wants is a real relationship with Kathie Bleeker, the town police officer’s daughter who works at the restaurant, a character portrayed by the very beautiful but not nearly as well known actress Mary Murphy. At several points in the film, he clearly wishes to say things to her, express emotions, but he just doesn’t seem to know how. As this goes on during the film, as he tries to connect with Bleeker, the gang of rowdies that follow him, became less of an asset and more of an embarrassment and hindrance that increase the gulf between him and Kathie Bleeker, the woman he wishes to connect with. Meanwhile, he rejects the offer of a relationship from “Britches,” (played by Yvonne Doughty) an old flame from the old biker gang, clearly showing that this is not the kind of woman he wants despite it clearly being the kind of woman he could easily have, and as the dialogue indicates, did have a relationship with in the past. What he wants, a relationship with Kathie Bleeker, is something that becomes increasingly obvious that he just does not know how to pursue and obtain despite some initial interest from Kathie Bleeker when the handsome, outlaw leader first enters town and enters her restaurant and her life. Near the end, he finds himself mobbed and captured by angry townspeople who hold him in a chair and begin punching him. His response to being punched, “My old man hit me harder than that.” He is a character who doesn’t know how to get what he wants, not just rejected by the woman he wants but not even sure how he should go about establishing a link with her.

                By contrast, if one watches the later film, “Wild Angels,” Peter Fonda’s character, a character named “Heavenly Blues,” itself a stark contrast to the name “Johnny Strabler” (who, if given the choice, would prefer to be known as “Johnny Strabler” when you could be called “Heavenly Blues”?) knows exactly what he wants. He wants to be free, to ride, to get loaded, as the famous quote goes, and throughout the film, he does that. And who does he want to be with, romantically speaking? Why Nancy Sinatra’s character, “Mike.” Does he get to spend time with her? Definitely, and when the relationship starts to get complicated, well, he just tells her, “You talk too much,” and kisses her and she’s quite happy with that behavior. Perhaps a bit confused as to what he really wants at the end of the film, but, basically a happy guy who appears to be living the weird life he has chosen for himself.

                Meanwhile, back in The Wild One, we see the members of the BRMC (or “Black Rebel Motorcycle Club” ) entering town, causing trouble, being out of control, but in the end being chased out of town by a mob of angry townspeople and the police who show up from nowhere to restore law and order. Not exactly the most threatening image of outlaws ever portrayed. The gang is almost peripheral to the story and, as stated above, by the time the true drama develops, what is going to happen between the male and female lead in the story, the gang is a hindrance, not an asset in the protagonist getting what he wants in life and in the story.

                Ultimately The Wild One is a very good film, well worth watching. However, it did not start the later “biker film” fad that came about ten years later and, in my opinion, should not be seen as part of that genre.

 Additional Reading on the 1947 Hollister Riot

Capulli, Sarah. 2002. Hollister California: Birthplace of the American Biker.

Senior Project, California State University Monterey Bay.

https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1237&context=caps_thes

McBee, Randy. “Here’s Hoping the ‘Hound’ and His Friends had a Good Time”: The Hollister Gypsy Tour of 1947 and the rise of the “Outlaw” Motorcyclist. International Journal of Motorcycle Studies. Volume 11, Issue 1: Spring 2015

https://motorcyclestudies.org/volume-11-issue-1-spring-2015/heres-hoping-the-hound-and-his-friends-had-a-good-time-the-hollister-gypsy-tour-of-1947-and-the-rise-of-the-outlaw-motorcyclist/

Holland, Sarah L. ““Impromptu Fiesta” or “Havoc in Hollister”: A Seventy-Year Retrospective.” International Journal of Motorcycle Studies. Volume 14 | 2018

https://motorcyclestudies.org/volume-14-2018/impromptu-fiesta-or-havoc-in-hollister-a-seventy-year-retrospective-sarah-l-hoiland/

               

Support This Blog

If you've enjoyed this post or benefited from it, please consider supporting this blog. Consider purchasing from the products below, if you buy them through these links, I get a kickback and although it doesn't happen much, if it did, well, I'd probably spend more time on this blog, or, if you are short of cash, provide publicity by sharing this and other posts. Maybe they'll buy something, Or consider emotional support by leaving a comment or subscribing. Tell your friends. Thanks.

Finally, my books . . . 

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