Director/producer Roger Corman died last spring, and over the summer TCM got around to doing a multi-evening tribute to Corman. In addition to the horror movies, there was stuff presumably marketed at the teen demographic, which included the new-to-me The Wild Angels.
The movie begins with an establishing scene of a kid riding a tricycle on the sidewalkand nearly getting run over by a motorcycle, ridden by a guy called Heavenly Blues (Peter Fonda). Blues is on his way to visit his best friend and fellow motorcyclist Joe "Loser" Kerns (Bruce Dern), who is currently working on the oil rigs that are somewhere outside of the Los Angeles area. Loser's foreman is none too pleased about Loser having a guest up on the platform, so fires Loser with cause, and we learn that it isn't the first time something like this has happened.
Of course, it doesn't help that these motorcyclists also like to wear Iron Crosses. They're part of a Hell's Angels-like motorcycle gang that has taken on Nazi symbolism not so much because they seem to have any belief in Nazi ideology so much as it being a sort of rebellion about 1960s square society; in another context these people would be hippies living on a commune. Indeed, as we see, the bikers spend some time at a camp out in the middle of nowhere on their way to a place called Mecca, which also dovetails with why Blues, Loser, and the rest of their gang are going there. Loser's bike is there, and they're going to pick up it, although they have to deal with some Mexican-Americans and, this being the 60s, get in a fight with the Mexicans. The brings the police in contact with the two groups.
Most of the biker gang are able to stay ahead of the police, but Loser isn't, sending one of the motorcycle cops sliding down a ravine. Ultimately, while trying to escape, Loser gets shot, and injured seriously enough that he's taken to a hospital in the Los Angeles area. Loser's girlfriend Gaysh (Diane Ladd, Bruce Dern's real-life wife at the time), shows up at the hospital, where Loser is under observation but only by one policeman. Gaysh tries any number of ruses to draw the cop away, and this is of course a trick for Blues and the rest of the gang to "rescue" Loser. But the gang, being half wannabe neo-Nazis and half hippies, don't even seem to get the importance of the IV bad that's tapped in to one of Loser's veins. They can't properly attend to Loser's medical needs in hiding, so Loser dies.
The last third of the movie deals with the gang's desire to have a proper funeral for Loser, while also needing to stay one step ahead of the police. They're probably not going to be able to do both of those things, and as we see the funeral winds up not going to tradition, which also leads to the police finding out where the biker gang is.
As I watched The Wild Angels, I couldn't help but think of Jack Webb's TV shows from around this same era, especially Dragnet. The look at the biker gangs, despite the fact that the opening credits claimed to use real Hell's Angels, feels like the sort of utterly naïve look that someone who knows nothing about biker gangs would draw up, much like the caricatures Webb did. The only difference is that The Wild Angels isn't a springboard for preachiness on social issues of the day, especially what would have been Webb's strong anti-drug views. Heck, even the cinematography felt like a widescreen version of those cheap 1960s TV shows.
The Wild Angels is an interesting time capsule, but it's not a particuarly grate -- and most likely not a particularly accurate -- movie.
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