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Boys and their wheels, a tyke on his tricycle ventures beyond the picket fence and bumps into the leather-clad malcontent astride his chopper. Spanish colonial arches, "Mecca" on a dilapidated sign, oil pumps in grungy traveling shots, the New West of Southern California. Roaming gangs with a void to fill, swastikas and iron crosses are part of the paraphernalia. "We used to kill guys that wore that kind of garbage!" The sandy horizon is low in the frame under darkening skies, the thunder is the roar of engines as bikers swarm toward the camera on the asphalt. The Loser (Bruce Dern) is wounded and captured so Heavenly Blues (Peter Fonda) leads a raid on the hospital, the bleeding fugitive states his last wish: "I'd just... like to get high." Benedek's The Wild One and Anger's Scorpio Rising are the precedents, Roger Corman has his own anarchy to chase in an annihilating zeitgeist capsule. Jousts and revelries in the desert, a dropout haven set to fuzzy guitars. (Crying babies, yowling cats and wailing sirens contribute to the purposefully discordant tessitura, along with a snatch of Vietnam news on the radio.) "Never pays to hassle the man who has the power." Nancy Sinatra's nervousness harmonizes with Fonda's placidity, Diane Ladd as the bruiser's widow evokes Buñuel's Viridiana at the funeral gang rape. The minister has to make his way through a jungle of chrome handlebars to get to the eulogy, where the chief gives voice to nihilism's "good time" and the connection to Corman's earlier Gothic visions grows clear. "Not children of God, but Hell's Angels!" The orgy in the church gives way to the rumble in the graveyard, Easy Rider takes it from there. With Michael J. Pollard, Buck Taylor, Norman Alden, Joan Shawlee, Frank Maxwell, Gayle Hunnicutt, and Dick Miller.
--- Fernando F. Croce |