Did Roger Corman ever work with Jack Webb?

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.

Snakes on an RV

One of the movies that recently started showing up in the FXM rotation is Race With the Devil. It's going to be on again tomorrow at 1:30 PM and again Tuesday morning at 11:45 AM. So, having recorded it from a previous FXM showing, I watched it to do a post on here.

Peter Fonda plays motorcycle racer Roger, friends with Frank (Warren Oates), who seems to be his race crew, although that's not really important since that's not what the movie is about. Frank has bought a state-of-the-art (at least for the mid-1970s) RV, and is planning to go on vacation from their home in Texas to Colorado to get in some skiing and other fun. Frank is going with his wife Alice (Loretta Swit), and Roger and his wife Kelly (Lara Parker) are welcome to come along.

So the two couples set off, and I'd think that having to spend that much time together in a cramped RV would make the two couples start to hate each other by the end of the trip, but again, that's not what the movie is about. After a day's worth of driving, Frank finds an isolated country road and, with no indication of whether or not this is private property or whether camping is allowed, decides that this would be a good place to stop and spend the night. After all, it doesn't make that much difference where they stop, since they're self-contained and can make dinner and bed down anywhere.

The ladies walk the dog and the guys do some motorbike riding; eventually, the two guys and up on a bluff on one side of a river, looking across to the other side where there only seems to be one dead tree that hasn't fallen over yet. But as they look, they see some people start a bonfire and start up some sort of singing. The guys have a pair of binoculars so that they can get a better view, but that might be a mistake. What they see is actually an apparent human sacrifice from a Satanic religious sect! Oh dear. But worse is that the wives, worried about where their husbands are, call out. Of course the Satanists are going to hear them, putting everybody in jeopardy!

So we have the makings of an interesting little movie, with the couples trying to escape in the RV with the Satanists chasing on foot, with the added problem for the couples that they drove over a shallow creek on their way to the campsite and get stuck on the way out, escaping just in time. They could just drive home (or to Colorado, I suppose) overnight, not taking any further part in the murder investigation, but the Satanists smashed a back window; also, having witnessed a crime, the couples feel obligated to tell the police.

The bad news for them is that it means they have to remain in the area. And somehow, these Satanists have a lot of support in the region. So much support, in fact, that it seems as though they can round up thousands of people to go chasing after our two couples, together with the infrastructure needed to do the chasing. Simply beating them up, killing them, and dumping the bodies in shallow graves is what I'd think would be the most likely thing for the Satanists to try to do, but instead, these Satanists act as though they want to terrorize the couples before finally killing them.

With that, the couples are faced with a series of increasingly implausible, and increasingly hilarious scenarios foist upon them by the Satanists who chase them all over west Texas. I think my favorite was when one of the wives opened up a cabinet and found... a rattlesnake! I was rather hoping Warren Oates might say "Get these motherfucking snakes off the motherfucking RV!", but nobody had considered that juicy bit of dialog in the 1970s.

Race With the Devil was conceived as horror, but to me as horror it doesn't quite work. As unintentional comedy however, it's incredibly funny and entertaining. Sit down with a bunch of friends, grab a big bowl of popcorn, and have fun yelling at the scree at the silliness of it all. Race With the Devil has received a DVD release, as part of a two-movie set with another Fonda movie I blogged about not too long ago, Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry.