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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Still a powerful indictment of 1960s nihilism, June 29, 2002
Watching THE WILD ANGELS (1966) recently for the first time in over two decades, I was struck by how powerful and relevant it still seems. Unlike some of the more starry-eyed counterculture films of the late 1960s, this one captured quite vividly the nihilism of the era and the dark side of the 1960s. The first film about the Hell's Angels motorcycle club and initiator of a short-lived but popular biker film craze, it presents its Harley-riding characters as cases of arrested development, unable to cope in the adult world, who have managed to form their own social class of outcasts, drunks, losers and misfits. (The real Hell's Angels sued the filmmakers for defamation of character.) The film avoids blatant moralizing, but simply shows the Angels' erratic behavior, contrasting the brutality, misogyny and pot- and alcohol-induced hedonism of the men with the occasional bursts of empathy and self-awareness shown by their female partners. In fact, one of the most compelling aspects of the film today is the work of the four main actresses, Nancy Sinatra, Diane Ladd, Gayle Hunnicutt and Joan Shawlee, neither of whom, on first glance, would seem to belong in such a film. But they all strive to make their characters plausible, believable and human, even in the most demeaning circumstances, and add emotional layers that distinguish the film from its numerous imitators. Also worth singling out is Peter Fonda's portrayal of Blues, the Angels' nominal leader, whose dawning realization of his own tragic blunders provides the true heart of the film. Also striking about the film today is its depiction of a thoroughly desolate Southern California landscape far from Los Angeles. We see the working-class backwater districts of places like San Pedro and Venice Beach; remote desert towns mired in poverty; long, endless highways leading nowhere; and, finally, a town high in the mountains, with woods and snow, where the Angels go to bury one of their number. Some of the wanton behavior in certain scenes seems way over the top today and was clearly added to the film for its sensational and exploitation value, but such scenes are balanced by many more that dramatize, in stark terms, the desperation of people who feel they have no choices and no hopes. It remains one of director Roger Corman's strongest works.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
First Real Outlaw Biker Flick, February 4, 2002
Some folks consider "The Wild One" the first movie about outlaw bikers; it's not. "The Wild One" is about 50s beatniks who happen to tool around on British bikes (except Lee Marvin, the best thing about the movie). If you want the real thing, Hells Angels on Harleys, then "The Wild Angels" is the one. This is the movie that started the genre, so most of the cliches seen in subsequent drive in picture show biker features started here.
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19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The original biker movie, February 11, 2004
By A Customer
This review is from: The Wild Angels (DVD)
I'm not a movie critic, I'm a motorcyclist. I have this film on video and watch it fairly often, along with Beyond The Law, Hells Angels on Wheels and Angels Hard As They Come (the most underrated of biker flicks). Fonda, Dern, Ladd, Buck Taylor and Norman Alden are great. Nancy Sinatra was terrible and totally miscast, if she' repudiating this movie it's due to her terrible acting. I can't see Micheal J. Pollard as a biker (but he was wonderful in Little Fauss and Big Halsy). The star of this movie is Fonda's chopper, to me, it's more beautiful, and subltly understated, than that ultimate movie chopper in Easy Rider, the Captain America Bike. This movie is really about Heavenly Blue's changing values as his friend Loner dies. Girlfriend Sinatra realizes the change that's come over him, "it's like a piece of you went with him". He reveiws his life and sees it empty, without purpose without his closest compadre The Loser, as in the final line "there's no where to go" as he stays to bury his friend while others flee The Man. They go on to continue the life of carousing and hell raising while Blues follows through on a duty to a friend, and to me symbolically buries himself, his up-to-then life, as well as his only friend.
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