Biker films were once one of the most popular subgenres in the realm of drive-in movies. People loved these films, good or bad. Bikers, former bikers, and wannabes all loved to watch a group of rough and ready men on motorcycles roaring down the highway. The typical fuzztone guitar accompanying soundtrack always helped set the mood.
Bikers represent a type of freedom rarely known in today's society. Unkempt guys unfettered by society's constrictions, with little regard for manners. Free of the imprisonment of employment and property ownership, they drank and fought their way across vistas of the heartland of the county. Modern desperadoes living a hell-raising dream.
When biker movies come up, many go right to Easy Rider. A movie which is not, to me, a real biker picture. Easy Rider was a groundbreaking classic that defined a generation and helped revolutionize the world of movies, but it's really two guys on bikes, not a group of members of a club.
Many biker flicks used real club members in supporting roles, giving a touch of cinema verite to a critically maligned breed of movie.
There were motorcycle movies as far back as the silents, but the cycle (pun intended) really began when Roger Corman helmed The Wild Angels, with Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern, and Nancy Sinatra. The Wild Angels was a huge hit and imitators quickly followed.
My favorites of the genre are Al Adamson's Satan's Sadists, with Russ Tamblyn, and Herschell Gordon Lewis's has-to-be-seen-to-be-believed She-Devils on Wheels.
Me and my old drive-in buddy just watched a biker double feature. Angel Unchained and Cycle Savages are one of the great MGM Double Feature DVDs.
We watched Angel Unchained first, and it is easily the better of the two movies.
Don Stroud is Angel, a biker who, after a cool brawl at an amusement park, decides to kick the life and leave the club. He meets some hippies and goes to their commune to groove with his new squeeze, Marilee. Marilee is played by Tyne Daly, in a career highlight. Later she would disgrace herself and all humanity in Cagney and Lacey.
Some rednecks don't like the hippies, and they descend upon the commune in dune buggies, tearing up their gardens and such. The peaceniks are no match for the shitkickers, so Angel rounds up his old gang to help. The bikers help all right. They devour food and drink, and find some drug-infused cookies an old Native American made from peyote or psilocybin. The Native American character, by the way, is named "Injun".
There's a rousing finale with tripping bikers going toe-to-toe with marauding rednecks. Best of all, it's all fists and vehicular assault, with nary a gun in sight.
Angel Unchained is good, clean, old fashioned fun.
Cycle Savages is another story. Whereas the bikers are quasi-heroes in Angel Unchained, they are full-on assholes in Cycle Savages. Bruce Dern, a regular in these pictures, plays Keeg, a sadistic leader who takes a strong disliking to a sketch artist who sometimes draws the boys in acts of illegal fun. They plot to stop the artist any way possible. Hands in a vise seems to be a viable solution to the problem.
There is a disturbing sequence where a woman comes to the clubhouse to party with the vermin bikers. For some reason motorcycles are more of an aphrodisiac than guitars. At Keeg's command they pull a gangbang rape on the woman, slip her a megadose of microdot, and turn her loose in the world. It's an ugly, completely unpleasant scene.
It's a wonder that nice-guy DJ and Shaggy voice actor Casey Kasem produced such a downbeat movie. Oh, Keeg gets what he has coming to him, and the assaulted woman is saved, but watching Cycle Savages is a real bummer. Dern, always an excellent actor, brings chilling realism to the movie.
Cycle Savages isn't even really a biker movie. The gang are rarely seen on wheels, and the movie more resembles a roughie feature from Doris Wishman or David Friedman than a true picture about bike clubs.
Biker movies are rarely what you'd call quality cinema, but like other exploitation genres the best of them touch us in primal ways. Most of us long for the kind of freedom a life on two wheels offers. These movies give us a taste of it.
Written by Mark Sieber
Bikers represent a type of freedom rarely known in today's society. Unkempt guys unfettered by society's constrictions, with little regard for manners. Free of the imprisonment of employment and property ownership, they drank and fought their way across vistas of the heartland of the county. Modern desperadoes living a hell-raising dream.
When biker movies come up, many go right to Easy Rider. A movie which is not, to me, a real biker picture. Easy Rider was a groundbreaking classic that defined a generation and helped revolutionize the world of movies, but it's really two guys on bikes, not a group of members of a club.
Many biker flicks used real club members in supporting roles, giving a touch of cinema verite to a critically maligned breed of movie.
There were motorcycle movies as far back as the silents, but the cycle (pun intended) really began when Roger Corman helmed The Wild Angels, with Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern, and Nancy Sinatra. The Wild Angels was a huge hit and imitators quickly followed.
My favorites of the genre are Al Adamson's Satan's Sadists, with Russ Tamblyn, and Herschell Gordon Lewis's has-to-be-seen-to-be-believed She-Devils on Wheels.
Me and my old drive-in buddy just watched a biker double feature. Angel Unchained and Cycle Savages are one of the great MGM Double Feature DVDs.
We watched Angel Unchained first, and it is easily the better of the two movies.
Don Stroud is Angel, a biker who, after a cool brawl at an amusement park, decides to kick the life and leave the club. He meets some hippies and goes to their commune to groove with his new squeeze, Marilee. Marilee is played by Tyne Daly, in a career highlight. Later she would disgrace herself and all humanity in Cagney and Lacey.
Some rednecks don't like the hippies, and they descend upon the commune in dune buggies, tearing up their gardens and such. The peaceniks are no match for the shitkickers, so Angel rounds up his old gang to help. The bikers help all right. They devour food and drink, and find some drug-infused cookies an old Native American made from peyote or psilocybin. The Native American character, by the way, is named "Injun".
There's a rousing finale with tripping bikers going toe-to-toe with marauding rednecks. Best of all, it's all fists and vehicular assault, with nary a gun in sight.
Angel Unchained is good, clean, old fashioned fun.
Cycle Savages is another story. Whereas the bikers are quasi-heroes in Angel Unchained, they are full-on assholes in Cycle Savages. Bruce Dern, a regular in these pictures, plays Keeg, a sadistic leader who takes a strong disliking to a sketch artist who sometimes draws the boys in acts of illegal fun. They plot to stop the artist any way possible. Hands in a vise seems to be a viable solution to the problem.
There is a disturbing sequence where a woman comes to the clubhouse to party with the vermin bikers. For some reason motorcycles are more of an aphrodisiac than guitars. At Keeg's command they pull a gangbang rape on the woman, slip her a megadose of microdot, and turn her loose in the world. It's an ugly, completely unpleasant scene.
It's a wonder that nice-guy DJ and Shaggy voice actor Casey Kasem produced such a downbeat movie. Oh, Keeg gets what he has coming to him, and the assaulted woman is saved, but watching Cycle Savages is a real bummer. Dern, always an excellent actor, brings chilling realism to the movie.
Cycle Savages isn't even really a biker movie. The gang are rarely seen on wheels, and the movie more resembles a roughie feature from Doris Wishman or David Friedman than a true picture about bike clubs.
Biker movies are rarely what you'd call quality cinema, but like other exploitation genres the best of them touch us in primal ways. Most of us long for the kind of freedom a life on two wheels offers. These movies give us a taste of it.
Written by Mark Sieber
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