The Wild Angels

Always quick to catch the cultural zeitgeist, B-movie king Roger Corman anticipated Easy Rider with this 1966 drama starring Peter Fonda as Heavenly Blues, leader of a California chapter of Hells Angels, with Nancy Sinatra as his girlfriend, Mike. Blues and his gang are a collection of disaffected dropouts and scruffy road rats who live to ride in packs and parade their colors (black leather, mostly, adorned with swastikas and Iron Crosses) as a show of defiance to the establishment. These wild angels are truly rebels without a cause, but Corman takes their outlaw culture into nervy, nihilistic territory when they devolve into primitive savagery following the death of beloved member Loser (Bruce Dern in a swaggering performance of breezy disobedience). What makes them truly dangerous is not malevolence, but rather apathy and amorality: they just don't care who gets hurt in their search for the next thrill, and the funeral for Loser descends into decadence and anarchy as Blues presides over the desecration of a church and the systematic trampling of every boundary of decency that Corman could push past the censors. A portrait of emptiness and hostility that branded Fonda as a counterculture icon, The Wild Angels is a more interesting work than its drive-in origins would suggest, a film that ultimately kickstarted a whole genre of 1960s motorcycle-rebel movies. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)