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When film historians wax romantically about the New Hollywood glory days of the late '60s and early '70s, they conveniently forget garbage such as this. This biker soap opera was filmed two years before Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper changed American cinema with
Easy Rider (it wasn't released until 1970, however), and one look at
Rebel Rousers makes you appreciate how far the two hippie filmmakers briefly took the genre. Other than a wildly over-the-top Jack Nicholson (hilariously outfitted in flowing scarf, wool cap, confederate flag-embroidered leather jacket, and striped pants) and Harry Dean Stanton as a flamboyant loadie, there's not much here to entertain. The sappy plot about a square couple (Cameron Mitchell and a pregnant Diane Ladd) who gets kidnapped by a biker gang is plodding and lifeless, the dialogue is improvised but still overwrought, and the drag-racing sequences look lifeless. Director Martin B. Cohen has no idea whether to glorify or demonize the biker gang and, worse, insults their carefree lifestyles by stuffing them in a conventional, formulaic story line. The DVD transfer doesn't help matters; from its humble beginnings, this movie still looks and sounds like drive-in fodder.
--Dave McCoy
