The Savage Seven

I've wanted to see Savage Seven for a few years now. Finally found a bootleg DVD. It was worth the wait. This was a bonafide classic.

Laszlo Kovacs was the DP, so that immediately set this apart from the typical crap we see in this genre. This was an AIP film from 1968 so you know it was gonna be right on target.

I gotta say this was the closest thing to a legitimate movie we might have ever seen at Biker Movie Night. Barring the likes of Easy Rider and the Wild One, this is next in line. But it wasn't "too" good. There was plenty of ridiculous racism, sexism, and dodgy acting to keep it grounded. The interesting thing was that this was racist towards Native Americans. An often overlooked minority in the Biker Film genre.

Dick Clark was the Producer and maybe that's why we never saw more than just a little underboob. Best nipple shot we got was from a guy. So...

Lack of nudity aside, this ruled. Typical plot. Biker gang invades small town. Gets in fights with locals. Rape, murder, and looting ensue. Only this time it's a Native American shack town and the bikers really aren't all that bad. Quite a handsome looking lot. We've seen this story a thousand times before but the Savage Seven does an exceptional iteration and puts its own spin on it.

Highly recommended if you can find a copy. Only thing....no idea why it's called the Savage Seven. There seemed to be a lot more than seven bikers...

J.C.

We kicked off this season of Motorcycle Movie Night with a bizarre one called "J.C." They don't really mince words on the poster; "J.C. and his disciples were a gang of broads, bikes and blacks." I'm not quite sure how his gang can be bikes, but still, you get the point.

J.C. was interesting because it had one hell of a plot. We don't run across many plots (period) in the biker flick genre, but J.C. held its own. Someone actually had to THINK about the story arc for more than ten to twelve minutes upon its inception. That's very rare in this genre.

The protagonist was the son of a preacher. An allegedly crazy preacher who saw visions. J.C. left town after his father's death and years later returns with his motorcycle disciples. The bible belt townsfolk don't take to kindly to long-hairs and african-americans. They have less PC terms they like to throw around when describing J.C. and his little gang of misfits.

Most classic biker flicks would just end right there as far as plot goes. Show up to small town, get in trouble, roll credits. But this was different. There were quite a few sub-plots and concepts running through the movie. Now, this didn't make it any GOOD per se, but it did make it more sophisticated than what we're used to.

The budget was clearly next to nothing. We were all shocked when we saw a crane scene. That must have been their whole budget right there. It sure as hell didn't go towards hiring a good cameraman or boom operator because we saw the boom poking down in half of the shots. Literally.

Anyway, I've written way too much about this film already. I definitely can't recommend it to anyone outside of biker nerds because it was terrible. But I think overall we enjoyed it for its eccentricity and unique spin on the genre.

On Any Sunday: The Next Chapter

The original On Any Sunday is a motorcycle classic. It has Steve McQueen in it. It brought motorcycling to the public's eye and really tried to show it as a clean hobby / sport, and not something to be identified with outlaw M/C/s. It rules.

Well, a zillion years later the Director's son films a second chapter. It's the same formula as the first, but just with Mickey Rourke and Valentino Rossi instead of Steve McQueen. It's got super slo-mo and it was shot in 4k. All that jazz. Very slick and pro looking.

It's a good watch and covers many aspects of the 'sport' of motorcycling but rarely touches on motorcycling culture...the way the vast majority of bikers experience bikes...i.e. on the street.

Anyway, if you ride a bike this movie is for you. It's got dare-devil shit to MotoGP shit covered. Jumping football fields with your bike or high-siding at 200 mph and walking away from both unscathed. It's all there.

Dig it.

Young Cycle Girls

This was a good flick to end this season of Motorcycle Movie Night. It was from 77 and therefore we got a little bit more than we typically got with a late 60's flick. The girls actually got naked in this one (very briefly) and they threw around obscenities that wouldn't have passed in the 60's. Society was loosening up, and so were the Young Cycle Girls...

The flick was about three girls from Colorado who get on their Honda 350's and spend Easter break heading for the west coast. They want to see the ocean in LA. Sounds fun. What could go wrong? Except for they make some dumb decisions along the way, get mistaken for Hell's Angels, get molested by the fuzz, raped by a drug dealer, have their bike stolen, and practically rape a virginal pinball wizard. It ends up being a less than ideal trip. But they make it. And all the while they have the theme song for the movie playing in their heads. It's cornball. But it was a really entertaining 80 minutes.

So here's the thing; the DVD case (yeah, I own this) says this movie has the most shocking ending since Easy Rider. That's quite a statement. But I tell ya what, none of us were expecting the film to end how it did. Holy shit, it was shocking alright. Right up there with the end of the Pink Angels.

I didn't have high expectations for Young Cycle Girls but it was a sleeper. PJ thought it was the best motorcycle flick we'd ever seen.

Dig it.

Rebel Rousers

Bruce Dern owned this movie. His acting in this flick reminded me of Dustin Hoffman in Papillon. Just something about the way he delivered the lines...it was reminiscent of Hoffman's character. But anyway, yeah, Dern ruled.

Rebel Rousers is the penultimate movie I'm showing in this season of Motorcycle Movie Night. It came out right after Easy Rider and included the rising star, Jack Nicholson. He doesn't have much of a part in the flick worth writing home about, but he does wear some very memorable stripy pants. And his chopper is outta sight, man. Incredible trumpet pipes up to the sky and a great sissy bar. In fact pretty much all the bikes in this movie are fucking rad. It's a truly killer line-up. You get some good detailed shots of the bikes, too. Mostly Triumph choppers if I recall.

This movie has got to be the most unintentionally racist biker flick we've ever seen. The bikers are in an undisclosed town but it's clearly full of Mexicans...or rather, it's full of white actors with bad spray tans pretending to be Mexican. Their dialogue is unreal, man; it's the whitest, most generic Mexican patter you've ever heard. There's a little kid named Niño, but they pronounce it Nino like he's fucking Italian. I think "loco" might be the only Spanish word they utter. Everything else is just white-boy impressions of how generic Mexicans talk. It was priceless and definitely made the movie hysterical.

The flick has a story, or two stories actually, and they're woven together very loosely. The actual plot is really just wedged into the movie to try and give it some sort of cross-over legitimacy. But it fails miserably due to crap acting and white boys in spray tans.

Anyway, at the end of the day this has all the earmarks of a classic 60's biker flick. It ticks all the right boxes and we found it highly entertaining. Just check out the trailer above. Dig it!

Sinner's Blood

Wow.

This was fuckin nuts, man. The opening frames were of boobs. And a knife. And really poor lighting. Then it cut to something else completely unrelated and the movie started. The production was atrocious. The acting was heinous. But the movie was awesome!

I don't think we've ever hooted and hollered so much in all our years of watching biker movies together. We were crying with laughter. And sometimes with confusion.

I thought I had read that this was originally shot as a biker porno and a couple of the main characters were porn stars in real life. Then I read somewhere else that it wasn't shot as a porno but scenes from a porno film were intercut into Sinner's Blood and it was rereleased as a biker porn a couple years later. The biker porn in question is called Hard Riders. So either way, it came out a porno at some point, whether it was originally intended that way or not is maybe up for debate...

The acting and "plot" certainly makes me think this could very well have been a porno. As it currently stands it's a pretty hard R for 1969, in my opinion. Tame by today's standards, but over the top compared to all the other biker flicks we've seen from that era.

They cover all the lurid bases: incestual straight sex, incestual lesbian sex, gay sex, and straight sex. Oh yeah, and there's a retarded peeping tom. Total mouth-breather. But the best/worst part was when one chick is seducing her female cousin by talking to her about how pretty her dead mother must have been. Said mother just died two months prior. The cousin starts talking aloud about her mother's beauty while the other chick starts disrobing her and fondling her. Then they get it on. Of course!

This movie makes zero sense. The ending is totally bizarre. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with anything. It's quite amazing that this ever got financed and made. But I'm glad it did because it was easily one of the most entertaining films we're yet to see.

The transfer sucks. Looks like it came right off of a 5th gen VHS bootleg.

Oh, you want to know about the bikes? They're little Honda 350's. One fat dude rides a Triumph. They're the crappiest biker gang of all. But they know how to party. At least when they have a love-in in the woods their girls get naked.

Looked like the world's first fake boobs, too. This one chick's knockers were so far apart you could park a double decker bus between them.

This was definitely a stand-out. Mostly for how insanely bad it was.

Savages from Hell

Hands down one of the funniest biker flicks we've ever seen. The acting was THE WORST and that's saying something. Holy shit.

Incredible fake accents, overt racism, the worst Prez ever, and lamest intro to a biker flick the world has ever seen. This one takes place in Florida which is only the second classic US biker flick we've seen that isn't set in Arizona or Cali. At times the movie seems like a telenovela interrupted by a shitty biker gang and a lunatic broad. The acting is amazingly bad, though. It's awesome. Shockingly I don't think any of the "stars" of Savages from Hell went on to do anything else that was remotely noteworthy.

The editing is hilarious. Not because it's just downright bad, but because there are so many botched attempts at trying to be good/artistic. There's no shock that this never got a good restoration. You can rent it on Amazon Prime for $2 in all its 3:4 aspect ratio glory. Terribly degraded film stock at no additional cost. ;) The rip that I've linked above is the whole movie on YouTube, but the Amazon one is actually better. The exposure and contrast is improved.

Who cares about the plot. There's a botched rape scene. There's an demented jilted ex. There's a violent and idiotic Prez. And there are some really rad bikes, but you don't get to see them in detail enough. It's a shame because the bikes look outta sight.

If you're looking for a hilariously poor bikesploitation flick look no further. You've hit pay dirt.

Naked Angels

Don't do a google image search for "Naked Angels" when you're at work. It doesn't pull up the biker flick.

We watched this last night. It's another classic Corman biker flick. This is 1969, mommas, bar fights, great choppers, gang war, disturbing the peace, love-ins, violence and boobs. It clearly ticks all the right boxes. Naked Angels has a legit soundtrack. I was really vibing on it.

It's pretty gritty. And terribly shallow. The whole plot could be explained in about 3 sentences: Biker gets beat up. Biker seeks revenge. Wait, make that two sentences. The stage is set in the first 30 seconds of the movie and then the remaining 83 minutes and 30 seconds is pretty much a gang of bikers riding through the desert so they can beat up another gang. Sometimes in fast motion. And often times stopping to beat up and molest their mommas along the way.

There's some decent acting from the main mustachioed Pres (considering the type of movie). But typically everyone else is pretty crappy. It's par for the course.

This one definitely was a bit of a downer. There's a lot of internal strife going on. But I think it was actually one of the strongest classic biker flicks we've seen. I think it deserves a spot in the top ten.

I purchased the dvd and it's a pretty freakin good transfer. You can watch a shitty transfer on YouTube above.

Recommended if sleazy biker flicks are your thing.

Black Angels

Black Angels; the latest installment in Motorcycle Movie Night.

This one dates back to 1970 and was the last of the "black" biker flicks...only...it wasn't much of a black biker flick. The Black Angels for instance aren't a biker gang (that would be the Choppers), the Black Angels is the name for the local fuzz. Speaking of which, the movie is SO LOW-RENT they couldn't even afford fake police uniforms for said 5-0. They're just wearing black shirts and pants with one sleeve insignia sewn on. No cherries on the "cop car" either. It's just...a car...that two guys ride around in who make a passing resemblance to police officers. It's terrible.

This movie was bizarre. I've seen so many biker flicks, but this one was definitely one of the most out there. Horrendous music choices. Weird (read: shitty as hell) camerawork and editing that made no sense whatsoever. Jarringly poor shots. Random characters that appear and have zero impact on the plot. Crap script. A cougar and a raccoon (don't ask). It was just particularly disjointed to the extent that it seemed like a biker movie parody it was so bad.

But the bikers were phenomenal. Seriously fucking righteous choppers. Totally made up for how crap the movie was. At the end of the day it WAS a biker flick through and through. And honestly may have had the best bikes we've ever seen. But yeah, it covered just about every biker cliche you could want. But getting back to the weirdness of the movie; there was an odd scene where they try and bestow some moral values on the viewer. There's some overt anti-racist messages in the flick. That's cool, but very heavy-handed and out of place for a movie of this ilk. Just kinda came outta nowhere because biker flicks aren't known for their moral strength. They pretty much thrive on depravity.

Black Angels had some really weird fast motion scenes, too. You're not fooling anyone bro. It's like an old kung-fu flick where they sped up the action...but with motorcycles. It looks retarded. Plus you mix that with really quick editing and it's a recipe for "what the fuck is going on".

I'm hating on this movie but we laughed. It entertained us. And I'm actually really looking forward to reading about it in my biker movie reference books. Maybe they can shed some light on how and why it's so bizarre.

I'd watch it again.

Angels Die Hard

First movie and subsequently the first Biker Movie of 2015. Angels Die Hard. 1970. Pretty righteous flick.

We watched it over at Sweets' house for Biker Movie Night. Clean Cut was excited because it has his favorite mustachioed muscleman, William Smith. I swear CC gets more excited about Bill's triceps than he does the naked mommas dancing around the fire. Whatever floats his boat.

Angels Die Hard was a classic. I mean that in the true sense. It's a biker movie through and through. It has all the requisites, except for at some point I believe the Magician yelled at the TV that the gang should have raped this one chick. So, that tells you what certain people in the crew have came to expect from our traditional bikesploitation flicks. You gotta live up to the stereotype 100%.

So, bikers roll into town on AMAZING FUCKING CHOPPERS, they get into trouble with the smalltown rednecks and the bumbling local officers, there's a love-in in the woods around a campfire, there's uppers and downers, plenty of beer, old ladies, mommas, some fake boobs (in 1970?), a bar fight, crazy trikes, no swazis but some kaiser helmets and SS badges,...yeah, they pretty much nail it.

This particular biker flick actually does have a coherent plot from beginning to end. Sure, the acting is shit and the plot isn't anything to write home about, but the fact that it's somewhat coherent and even exists at all is a rarity in the genre.

I would put this in the top 10 classic Biker Flick list. Definitely.

Soundtrack missed the mark a bit, though. They tired. Close but no cigar.

The choppers are outta sight.