Tagline: Their credo is violence...Their God is hate...and they call themselves 'The Wild Angels.'
Curiosity: I like Easy Rider a lot. And I wanted to know if Nancy Sinatra could act.
Plot: Heavenly Blues (Peter Fonda, star of Easy Rider… and Ghost Rider… and Thomas and the Magic Railroad!) is the leader of a gang of jerk-butts called the Wild Angels. They’re on a quest to avoid the Man! The Man is always telling them not to ride their motorcycles! Or rape women! What a dick!
Also they’re trying to save their friend The Loser (Bruce Dern) from the cops.
Thoughts: The Wild Angels was my third Roger Corman film (behind the awful Gas-s-s-s and the actually not bad The Pit and The Pendulum with Vincent Price, and probably my least favorite. Gas was at least funny-bad; Wild Angels is borderline offensive. I say borderline because, being a Corman film, I didn’t exactly expect it to open my eyes to new artistic directions.
Rather, I expected a threadbare line of a plot broken up by long, dialogue-free scenes of partying and car chases. These expectations were thoroughly met. If there is a plot, it’s arguably Blues’ relationship with The Loser – their exploits together, his attempt to save him, and, when he fucks that up, the feeling that he needs to give the guy a proper burial. All of these things take up about 15 minutes. The remaining 75 minutes or so are dedicated to filming whatever the fuck. Here’s a scene of bikers drunkenly chasing a rabbit for no reason! Here’s more dancing! Now let’s watch Fonda act like he doesn’t care about nobody (even though he totally does! He’s a badass with a heart o’ gold!). And there are copious amounts of motorcycles on highways, let me tell ya.
The Wild Angels is an excellent slice of ’60s counter-cultural storytelling. By which I mean just about everyone in the film is full of shit. The characters I found myself identifying with most were Gaysh (Diane Ladd), The Loser’s girlfriend and the only gang member who tries to build a better life, and the priest (Frank Maxwell) at The Loser’s funeral. When he pushes Blues to explain the Wild Angels’ anti-social behavior, their argument for absolute freedom quickly falls apart. So instead they beat the dickens out of the preacher and stuff him in The Loser’s coffin.
Reflection: …why is there a Nazi swastika at the funeral? Why is everyone OK with that…?
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