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[July 14, 1969] Odyssey On Two Wheels (Easy Rider)

July 14, 2024 Victoria Silverwolf Leave a comment

by Victoria Silverwolf

I've talked about my inexplicable interest in movies about motorcycle gangs a couple of times before. Naturally, when I heard about a new biker film that's drawing a lot of attention, I had to take a look.

The fact that it won an award at the prestigious Cannes film festival gave me a hint that this wasn't going to be the usual trashy B movie about guys on choppers getting into fights.

Let's meet our two main characters. I hesitate to call them heroes, because the first thing we see them do is buy cocaine in Mexico, then sell it to a rich guy in a limousine. They hide the cash in a plastic tube inside the gas tank of one of the motorcycles.

Peter Fonda, who produced and co-wrote the film, plays Wyatt, often known as Captain America. He usually plays it cool, not saying much, keeping a calm demeanor most of the time.

Dennis Hopper, who directed and co-wrote the movie, plays Billy. He's much more emotional, often giggling and playing the clown, sometimes nervous and jumpy.

Once these two have their grub stake, they head out on a journey from Los Angeles to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Along the way they meet all kinds of people.

The first encounter is with a friendly rancher and his family. So far, everything seems just fine. You can almost forget that these two are drug dealers.

After riding through some really gorgeous scenery in the American West, often accompanied by groovy rock music, they pick up a hitchhiker. He's on his way to a hippie commune in the desert.

The place is full of young adults who have dropped out of society. There are also lots of little kids. To add to the chaos, there's also a troupe of mimes and other performers.

We see folks sow seeds of grain in what looks like bare ground. Billy predicts that the commune is doomed to fail, while Wyatt is more optimistic. After skinny dipping with a couple of young women, they move on.

In some little town they join a parade in progress, just for fun. That gets them in trouble with the cops. Thrown in jail for parading without a license, they meet the film's most memorable character.

Jack Nicholson plays the town lawyer, who's in the drunk tank. You may remember him as the masochistic dental patient in The Little Shop Of Horrors. He was hilarious in that low budget comedy, and he's as much of a hoot in this role. I predict he'll continue to steal every film in which he appears as a fine comic actor.

After Nicholson gets the two bikers out of jail, he joins them on their trip to the Big Easy. It seems he's heard about a fancy bordello in New Orleans and would like to visit the place. Along the way they try to get a bite to eat at a little diner in some other small town.

The young women present admire them. They dare each other to ask them for a ride on their bikes.

The men in the diner aren't so friendly. They openly insult the trio. Wisely, the three quickly head out the door, refusing to take the women along. Despite their caution, things don't work out well. Let's just say that Nicholson won't make it to New Orleans.

Wyatt and Billy wind up at the brothel, where they engage the services of two prostitutes. As far as I can tell, they don't actually have sex with them. Instead, they go outside to join the Mardi Gras celebration, then head out to the famous above ground cemetery of the Big Easy.

Among the tombs, the four share a dose of LSD Wyatt picked up from the hitchhiker. This leads to our mandatory acid trip sequence, making use of all kinds of special effects in an attempt to portray the psychedelic experience.

Those of you who are like me, and rush out to see movies about today's longhaired, drug-using nonconformists (hipsploitation?), may be reminded of The Trip from a couple of years ago. That one also starred Fonda and Hopper, and has a screenplay credited to Nicholson. Like Easy Rider, The Trip uses visual distortion to convey the experience of dropping acid. (Taking LSD, for you squares.)

The film ends in a melodramatic fashion. Suffice to say that trouble arrives in the form of two guys in a pickup truck.

I said that Fonda and Hopper wrote the film, along with Terry Southern (best known for his work on Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb) but I doubt there was much of a script at all. Much of the action and dialogue seems improvised. The mood varies, seemingly at random, from peaceful to comic to tragic.

There's not a lot of plot. Much of the running time consists of the characters riding on their motorcycles with loud music on the soundtrack. (In particular, the rousing number Born to Be Wild is destined to be played at full volume by lots of people on fast bikes or in fast cars.)

The cinematography, whether it be of desert wilderness, small towns, or the Big Easy, is excellent. Some may consider Easy Rider to be shapeless, but I found it to be an intriguing portrait of the counterculture in opposition to the mainstream of society. (See the recent article by my esteemed colleague Kris Vyas-Myall for a more profound discussion of the theme.)

Head out on the highway.

Five stars.

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[May 14, 1968] Bad Girls On Bikes (The Hellcats, The Mini-Skirt Mob, and She-Devils On Wheels)

May 14, 2023 Victoria Silverwolf 2 Comments

by Victoria Silverwolf

Three For The Road

I've previously confessed my inexplicable enjoyment of beach movies. A similar vice to which I am addicted is my passion for films about motorcycle gangs.

This particular kind of cheap drive-in feature has exploded ever since the success of The Wild Angels last year.

There are already a bunch of these movies out there, all featuring guys on big bikes riding around, drinking beer, making out with chicks, getting into fights, and generally raising Cain.

But what if they weren't guys?

Three films I saw recently raised my hopes that I'd see the distaff side of things for a change. Not all of them met my expectations. Let's take a look.

The Hellcats

The poster for this low budget cycle flick certainly emphasizes the women in the cast. The trailer does the same thing, putting the names of five of the female characters right up there on the screen for all to see. But is that really what we get?

The movie starts with the funeral of one of the gang. The plot is both simple and difficult to follow, but let me do my best to explain it.

The dead member of the Hellcats was working with the cops. It seems that the cyclists are helping some gangsters push drugs, and he was informing on the crooks. The gangsters killed him, I guess. This isn't the most coherent movie in the world.

Anyway, they also kill one of the cops. The dead man's brother and girlfriend are our protagonists. They manage to join the Hellcats. Eventually, after a lot of random stuff happens, the Hellcats blame the gangsters for the death of one of their members and a big fight breaks out.

So where are all the tough biker chicks we're expecting? Well, they're around, but they don't do very much. Even the one-eyed blonde shown on the poster is a minor character. (You can see what she really looks like in the scene shown above. Not as scary as the poster.)

Not a good movie. Read a book instead.

Maybe not this one.

Quality of film: Two stars.
Bad Girl content: One star.

The Mini-Skirt Mob

The trailer for this somewhat more professionally made film makes it clear who the villainess is, and even features a knockdown, drag-out fight between the Bad Girl and the Good Girl. More false promises?

During the opening credits, I thought I had walked into the wrong theater and was watching a Western. Horses in a motorcycle movie? Well, it turns out the hero is a champion rodeo rider, although that has nothing to do with the story.

The cowboy has just married our Good Girl, played by Sherry Jackson. Hey, she was on Star Trek!

This makes our Bad Girl, played by Diane McBain, very mad. It seems she had a relationship with the cowboy some time ago, and doesn't want to let him go. Together with a few male sidekicks, she and the other members of a female gang called the Mini-Skirts give the newlyweds a hard time.

(Truth in advertising. The gang members really do wear miniskirts, as impractical as that may be on motorcycles. I'd hardly call them a mob, however, as there are only four of them. One of them, the leader's little sister, turns out to be not so bad after all.)

It all leads up to an out-and-out war, with rifles and Molotov cocktails as the weapons. People get killed. There's one death scene that's pretty darn gruesome.

The movie manages to create some suspense, and there are a lot of visually impressive scenes of the desert, courtesy of the state of Arizona.

Quality of film: Three stars.
Bad Girl content: Three stars.

She-Devils on Wheels

The trailer for this Florida-filmed epic reveals two things. It's got a bunch of Bad Girls, and it's really, really cheap.

The opening credits feature a painting of a screaming woman on a cycle. I hope you like it, because it shows up a lot. Between scenes, the same thing appears, spinning around like a record.

The Man-Eaters motorcycle club (their symbol is more cute than scary) have races to determine who has first pick from a bunch of men who are, apparently, just waiting around to be chosen as intimate companions for the night. When one member chooses the same guy too often, the others accuse her of being in love, which is against the rules. She has to drag the fellow behind her bike, leaving him a bloody mess, to prove her loyalty to the gang.

(There's a lot of fake blood in this thing. Director Herschell Gordon Lewis also gave the world extremely gory films such as Blood Feast, Two Thousand Maniacs!,Color Me Blood Red, and A Taste of Blood.)

The two most interesting Man-Eaters are Queenie, the leader, and Whitey. The latter is — how should I put it? — zaftig? Rubenesque? Anyway, she's not your typical Hollywood starlet trying to look tough.

There's also Honeypot, a new member. She gets the plot going.

After the Man-Eaters have a fight with a male gang, defeating the boys easily, the guys get their revenge by kidnapping Honeypot and returning her a bloody mess. (Do you sense a pattern here?) The Man-Eaters set a trap for the leader of the men, leading to our big shock scene (which you may have spotted in the trailer.)

Make no mistake. This is a terrible movie. The acting is atrocious. (I understand that women who could ride motorcycles were hired, rather than women who could act.) But it delivers the goods. These are very Bad Girls indeed.

Quality of film: One star.
Bad Girl content: Five stars.

Overall, not very good movies. Sometimes you just have to go back to the classics.

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[June 8, 1967] Rebels With And Without Causes (Riot on Sunset Strip and The Wild Angels)

June 8, 2022 Victoria Silverwolf 2 Comments

by Victoria Silverwolf

From Flappers to Hippies

Movies about young people rebelling against society's expectations have been around since the silent days. One influential example is Flaming Youth (1923), starring Colleen Moore.

No less an authority on the Jazz Age than F. Scott Fitzgerald, in later years, noted the film's importance as a reflection on the revolutionary behavior of young people during the Roaring Twenties. I was the spark that lit up Flaming Youth, he wrote, Colleen Moore was the torch.

So risqué was the movie that it was officially judged immoral in Canada, making it illegal to show Flaming Youth anywhere in the nation. Unfortunately, only a fragment of the film survives.

Several films about sheiks and flappers followed the success of Flaming Youth. Things seem to have settled down a bit for a couple of decades, what with the Great Depression and World War Two as distractions from youthful rebellion.

The theme came back with a vengeance in the 1950's. There were far too many movies about juvenile delinquents, hotrodders, beatniks, and so forth to mention. Most of these were cheap drive-in fare. A notable exception was Rebel Without a Cause (1955) with the late James Dean, a serious drama about emotionally disturbed high school students.

(I would be remiss if I failed to note that even science fiction and horror movies got in on the troubled teen craze, with things like I Was a Teenage Werewolf and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein [both 1957] all the way down to Teenagers from Outer Space [1959].)

With the recent appearance of the hippies, a new kind of film is on the horizon. As a preview of what are sure to be many similar coming attractions, let's take a look at what might be the first of a flood of movies with long hair on boys, short skirts on girls, psychedelic drugs, and groovy rock music.

Fiction and Reality

Riot on Sunset Strip is very loosely based on a real incident.

The so-called Sunset Strip is part of Sunset Boulevard, about one and one-half miles long, that passes through the community of West Hollywood, California. In recent years, it's been a hangout for hippies and other young folks, partly due to a number of rock 'n' roll nightspots with youth permits, which allow them to admit people under twenty-one years of age. The most famous of these clubs is probably the Whisky a Go Go, but a place called Pandora's Box played a more important role in what happened next.

In response to underage drinking, drug use, and traffic congestion, the city administration imposed a 10 PM curfew and laws against loitering. On November 12 of last year, as many as one thousand people showed up outside Pandora's Box to protest the restrictions and clashed with police.

Young actor Peter Fonda, son of Henry, is arrested during the protest. He'll show up later in this article, too.

Unrest continued for the rest of the year, causing the politicians to take away youth permits from a dozen of the Strip's clubs, and forcing Pandora's Box to shut its doors completely. The incident inspired the haunting song For What It's Worth by the rock band Buffalo Springfield.

The movie industry was quick to exploit the protests, with Riot on Sunset Strip showing up in theaters just a few months later.

Mimsy Farmer stars as a teenager new to the area, living with her hard-drinking, pink-haired mother. Dad has been away for some years, it seems, but don't worry; he'll show up in a bit.

Mimsy hangs out with the cool kids at a nightclub on the Sunset Strip. The film makers have the nerve to call the place Pandora's Box, but it's strictly a fictional version of the real one.

Four hippies who seduce Mimsy into their psychedelic world.

On the Strip itself, we see protestors carrying signs that say things like Rights Not Fights, Live and Let Live, Lovers Not Fighters, and Be Nice. As you can see, it's hard to tell exactly what they're demonstrating against.

The wild quartet shown above takes Mimsy to a so-called freak out in an empty mansion, where they spike her soft drink with LSD. This leads to what I believe they call an acid trip, shown as a slow-motion modern dance routine with red lighting.

Mimsy freaks out.

Up to this point, Riot on Sunset Strip has been a enjoyably silly film, with some great music from bands like the Chocolate Watchband and the Standells. After Mimsy's LSD trip, however, it takes a much darker turn. Taking advantage of her drugged condition, a group of boys rape her.

The cops show up to arrest the trespassers, and guess what? Mimsy's estranged father (former leading man Aldo Ray) is a local police lieutenant. Enraged by what happened to his daughter, he eventually beats up three of the rapists.

Aldo tries to comfort Mimsy after her ordeal.

Aldo's attack on the creeps winds up in the news, which leads to the so-called riot, which consists entirely of folks carrying protest signs. During the demonstration, Aldo stops a cop from hitting a hippie with his nightstick. This prevents a real riot from breaking out, and reconciles Aldo with Mimsy. The end.

As you can see, this doesn't have much at all to do with the real demonstrations on the Sunset Strip. It also doesn't seem to be a very accurate portrait of the hippie subculture. For the most part, it's a soap opera that tries to be hip. Watch it for Mimsy's freak out, and for the groovy music.

The Chocolate Watchband.

Hell On Wheels

A very different kind of youthful rebel showed up on movie screens not too long ago. I'm talking about the members of outlaw motorcycle gangs. A little background is needed to appreciate this phenomenon.

In July of 1947, about four thousand motorcyclists converged on the small town of Hollister, California. That nearly doubled the population of the community, and things got out of hand. Reports have been exaggerated to some extent, but it can't be denied that there was a lot of drinking and a lot of noise. About fifty people were arrested on charges of public intoxication, reckless driving, and disturbing the peace.

A famous photograph of the incident, probably staged, shocked the nation when it appeared in Life magazine.

Writer Frank Rooney's 1951 short story The Cyclists' Raid was inspired by what happened at Hollister. In turn, it became the basis for a memorable role for Marlon Brando as the outlaw biker Johnny.

The 1953 movie The Wild One offered this bit of famous dialogue, neatly summing up the nihilistic philosophy of its antihero.

Mildred: Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?
Johnny: Whadda you got?

It took Hollywood more than a decade to jump on this particular bandwagon with another film of the same type. Maybe that has something to do with the current younger generation challenging the beliefs of their elders in general. In any case, let's take a look at a new movie about rebels on two wheels.

The Wild Angels stars Peter Fonda (I told you he'd be back) as Heavenly Blues, the leader of the fictional Angels motorcycle gang. (Yes, they're obviously based on the infamous Hell's Angels. As the poster proudly informs us, members of that organization show up as minor characters.)

Heavenly Blues, in a pensive moment.

Much of the film consists of the gang drinking, smoking marijuana, fighting, busting things up, and making out with their barely clothed girlfriends. There is a plot, of sorts.

It seems that a rival gang stole the motorcycle of Heavenly Blue's aptly named buddy Loser. While on a quest to get the wheels back, Loser winds up stealing a cop's bike. The police chase him and shoot him. With the help of his girlfriend (Nancy Sinatra), Heavenly Blues grabs Loser out of the hospital, but he dies anyway.

Bruce Dern as the dying Loser and Diane Ladd as his girlfriend. The two are married in real life.

The gang holds a funeral for their departed member, propping him up with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. A bewildered minister, trying to add a note of dignity to the proceedings, has a conversation with Heavenly Blues.

Heavenly Blues: We don't want nobody telling us what to do. We don't want nobody pushing us around.
Preacher: I apologize. But, tell me, just what is it that you want to do?
Heavenly Blues: We wanna be free! We wanna be free to do what we wanna do. We wanna be free to ride! We wanna be free to ride our machines without being hassled by The Man. And we wanna get loaded. And we wanna have a good time. And that's what we're gonna do. We are gonna have a good time. We are gonna have a party.

The debate in the church. Note the bikers' fondness for Nazi regalia.

True to his word, Heavenly Blues turns the funeral into a wild party, smashing the place to pieces before the gang takes Loser's body to the cemetery. The film ends there, in properly hopeless form. The last two lines we hear from Heavenly Blues are Nothing to do and Nowhere to go.

Coming Soon

I'm sure these won't be the last hippie and biker movies to show up at the drive-in. In fact, we've already had Devil's Angels (with Mimsy Farmer again) in theaters a couple of months ago, as a follow-up to The Wild Angels.