One of the myriad joys of watching every crappy cult film you can track down is the discovery of some of the weird movie sub-genres that have emerged and died over the years.

In order to properly review this movie, it's probably necessary for me to offer up a little history lesson here.  Back in the 50s and 60s, during the glory days of Drive-ins and grind houses; there was a company called American International Pictures.  AIP set the bar for B-movie production, mainly because their main in-house producer and director was Roger Corman, probably the greatest low-budget filmmaker of all time.  Corman started working for AIP in the 50s directing horror movies with titles like Attack of the Crab Monsters, Night of the Blood Beast, and She-Gods of Shark Reef (perhaps the greatest title I've ever heard) and really hit his stride in the 1960s with a series of Edgar Allen Poe adaptations that are textbook examples of how a little money can be made to go a long way.  Poe titles are all in the Public Domain, so they got a famous title for free to build their movies around.  They all starred Vincent Price and other washed up Hollywood horror stars like Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre who could be gotten cheap, and since nearly all Poe's stories are set in the early 19th century, they could use the same sets and costumes over and over.  Brilliant!

Aside from cheap horror and science fiction, American International also turned out movies to cash in on whatever was hip with the kids in those days.  Consequently, during the 50s they churned out films about juvenile delinquents and drag racing in the mold of Rebel Without a Cause, and in the early 60s when the Beach Boys and surf music were big, they released a whole series of Beach Party movies.  They proved wildly popular despite the fact that they all sucked.  Although they do prominently feature hot chicks in bathing suits, and some of them contain appearances by classic 60s acts like Stevie Wonder and Dick Dale and his Del-tones.

The last Beach Party movie came out in 1966, surfing and surf music had long since peaked as a national fad, so AIP was in need of a new sensation to cash in on.  Thankfully, the Hell's Angels were coming to national prominence around this time.  What better subject for B-movies than a gang of drunken, psychotic thugs on giant motorcycles?

Which brings us to The Wild Angels.  This is the film that inaugurated the stream of terrible but profitable biker-exploitation flicks that would allow Dennis Hopper to sell his hippie art film to Columbia as a money making proposition a few years down the road.  And The Wild Angels is terrible.

The film opens with Heavenly Blues (Peter Fonda) cruising down the highway to the strains of his own theme song, as performed by Davie Allan and the Arrows, a band that actually made a successful career out of recording fuzz-guitar instrumentals for biker movie soundtracks.  I was going to try to make a joke about Davie Allan and the Arrows, but instead I'll just mention that their sound has been described as a "mixture of Link Wray, Dick Dale, and Henry Mancini."  Which is misleading, because Link Wray, Dick Dale, and Henry Mancini are all cool.  Davie Allan not so much.  Blues rides to the oilrig where his friend The Loser (Bruce Dern) works, and manages to get Loser fired, when another worker, played by Corman mainstay Dick Miller, takes issue with Blues' Iron Cross and they have to threaten him with a wrench.

Blues has come to inform Loser that he's located Loser's stolen bike, which was apparently stolen by some Mexicans from a town in the desert called Mecca.  So Blues, Loser and their gang make a run out to Mecca to retrieve the bike.  It turns out not to be there, so they console themselves by beating up some Mexicans, until the cops show up to chase them off.  Attempting to escape, Loser steals a cop's bike and gets capped by the man as a result.  Prompted by the whining of Loser's girlfriend Gaysh (Diane Ladd), Blues and the gang bust the wounded Loser out of the hospital, where he lasts about five minutes under the tender care of his biker brethren.  So the Angels make a run to The Loser's hometown to pay their proper respects by trashing a church and gang raping his girlfriend.

To be fair, The Wild Angels was probably as extreme as a movie could be back in 1966.  The movie's big set piece is The Loser's biker funeral, which includes pot smoking, Nazi paraphernalia, a gang rape (off-screen), a preacher beating and a church trashing.  Still, it's a far cry from the beer-soaked, seconal-induced rampage of chain whippings and gangbangs that characterized the actual Hell's Angels.  At one point, Heavenly Blues even stops one of his gang from doing drugs, because the Hell's Angels are all about sobriety.  The huge biker funeral mostly consists of bongo drumming and bad sixties dancing.  Now, I don't claim to be an expert on bikers, but after reading Hunter S. Thompson's book on the Angels and seeing Gimme Shelter, I imagine anyone who brought bongos to a party thrown by the Hell's Angels would probably get stomped into a bloody mess.

Aside from the thin plot and the fact that it was impossible to put anything but the most tepid version of the Angels onscreen, the major problem here is casting.  Actual Hell's Angels were used as extras, which only serve to illustrate how little Peter Fonda looks like an actual biker.  See, real Hell's Angels, or any bikers tend to be scary people.  Once, when I was driving down the gulf coast of Florida with some friends of mine, we saw this oyster bar in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of Harleys out front.  Now, my friend Charlie and I were in favor of stopping in for a few oysters and a couple of beers, but my friend Dylan had a hiss fit.  According to Dylan, we couldn't go in there, because bikers are "big, greasy redneck fuckers who'll shove their fists up your ass and spin you around on them cause they think you'll like it."

Peter Fonda doesn't quite convey that kind of menace.  Most of his performance involves shrugging and saying "I don't care" or "How should I know?" because he's all alienated by American society.  He's a nihilist, man!  The character doesn't come out of his monosyllabic shrugging phase until the big scene in the church, when he delivers his speech about how all the Angels want is "to be free to do what they wanna do.  To ride their bikes without getting hassled by the man."  Because being prevented from committing rape and assault is such oppression, man.

Bruce Dern looks a little more appropriate to the part, and his usual twitchy weirdo performance is probably the best in the film.  Diane Ladd does nothing but say "But Blues, what about the Loser?" And I'm convinced from her performance that Nancy Sinatra is a robot.

Also it was the sixties, so of course Vietnam is mentioned, if only in a radio broadcast playing in the background.  It's not exactly subtle, but a movie made today would be far more heavy-handed about it.

The Wild Angels is only worth viewing as a historical curiosity, as it would probably barely merit a PG-13 by today's standards.  Recommended only for people with fanatical biker obsessions or a perverse desire to see how long 90 minutes can seem.