First Time Watch of the Week: The Allure of The Angels

Remember Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction? Who Doesn't? Stupid question. Reason I bring it up, you know that long scene that kinda outstays its welcome a little when Butch and that foxy French Fabienne are in the hotel room and it's clearly trying to rip off Godard's Breathless? Yeah juvenile homage scene and I'm sure Tarantino would probably admit too that this scene is the work of a young filmmaker overly obsessed with his influences and the reference detracting from the movie. In the scene, Butch gets rattled by the loud TV and asks what his birds watching. Fabienne replies with, 'A motorcycle movie, I'm not sure the name'. Well that motorcycle movie is in fact Jack Starrett's The Losers, this weeks first time watch of the week.

The Losers is an attempt to merge the biker movie with a Vietnam war movie/Filipino actioner. A legitimate one too with exactly the right kind of cast that you would assemble to do just that. Main star William Smith (the white William Smith that is) is a B movie legend who's starred in sleazy action classics such as Action USA and Seven (the Andy Sidaris one not David Fincher). Co-star Vic Diaz is alongside dwarf legend Weng Weng, one of the biggest Filipino action stars made famous through a lot of the Roger Corman produced Women in Prison movies. Finally, its director Jack Starrett you'll recognise from potentially namsploitations most known and popular film Rambo First Blood as one of the cops. Why is it they always cast typically anti authority figures as law men? Seen that trick multiple times with Roger Corman himself and Joe Bob Briggs. Starrett went on to direct some blaxploitation films like Slaughter and Cleopatra. In 1975, he even had another go at the biker films, Race with the Devil remains a notable later entry to me and one i believe deserves more respect cause of the quality of the relentless stunts pre-Mad Max. No doubts in my mind though this is a solid team with the ability to make the biker and 'nam films meet.

There is a fantastical story here based on some truth. In 1965, Sonny Barger who was leading the Hell's Angels sent a letter to president Johnson offering some of his biker boys for the war effort. Something that was eventually turned down, I can only assume based on these guys unpredictability. Always find that mad when you start to thinking who was the biggest threat to the US government in the 60s, the Angels, the hippies or the black panthers? These are violent rapists and yet somehow I imagine the US government would have ranked these the least dangerous of the three based on the fact they don't actually pose a threat to the entire system. So who was a heavier problem the hippies or the black panthers? Panthers would use the threat of violence but not got as many numbers so who knows? As for those Angels it seems they were not one for changing the system. They reject it and want to live outside of it but they do not possess the intelligence or will to do anything about. Pretty much the reason they get and even accept their title as losers. Regardless, there was no chance the US government were trusting them in the war. So instead of sending them over to Vietnam, they just sent a few actors over to the Philippines instead. That is how we ended up with the story in The Losers. A kind of imagining of an event that never happened. Original title was meant to be Nam's Angels, I can't pick which is better.

Right so here's what I was hoping for on this movie, some kind of action packed badass Dirty Dozen type. An Inglorious Bastards violent and rebellious unit. Spent much of it thinking come on speed things up and give me my set pieces. Instead a large part of the run time is dominated by this rocknroll in the jungle hangout movie. Luckily, it can pretty cool here and but there are a few moments that do in fact drag. Respect in some ways though for massively inspiring Apocalypse Now but Coppola definitely improved on that.

How fucking good is that scene In Apocalypse Now where that band come out and start performing Suzie Q and the playboy models all arrive by helicopter? Cinematography and lighting porn that. My favourite cinematographer would be Robert Richardson (sorry Roger Deakins stans) and then maybe Apocalypse Now's Vittorio Storaro and the great Michael Ballhaus can fight it out for the number two slot. Soldiers in that scene get so horny they end up trying to climb onto said helicopter and one of them ends up with his pants down and his mate clinging on. Now that's a rocknroll movie in the jungle. Wipes the floor with this The Losers. Exactly the kind of psychedelic mad shit that goes way too far into excessive you want to be seeing when you hear rocknroll in the jungle. Still, as I said, fair play to The Losers for coming first and was loving the Jim Morrison looking dude.

Appreciated one amusing review on Letterboxd for this which was simply, 'Apocalypse Late' cause all the good stuff didn't really explode in til around the third act. It was hard to deny but when it does arrive, it saves the movie for me so be patient on this one cause the last half hour is a total blast. Crazy enhanced bikes looking like something out of Death Race 2000 and mad jumps in war battle scenes like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape. Yet unlike that belter, this time we get blood spurting across the screen true exploitation style. Yep, to say this third act doesn't go OFF and deliver the goods would be an understatement. The movies badass appeal on this one is ruined a little by two aspects, the pacing and the fact that our outcasts are completing all the action sequences whilst donning their little Nazi flags and no they're not undercover like The Basterds. They're actually not technically speaking Nazis either. The history of both the biker cycle and the Hell's Angels is certainly one of complexity that even many film fans and historians have given up trying to understand.

On the one hand there's a strong argument to say these guys are the last of America's great folk heroes, outlaws like Billy the Kid and represent what's left of the American Dream. Their bikes the modern equivalent of the old horses. Proper phallic symbols stretching out from their groin. I wonder what Freud would have made of them. They go about antagonising with the law, the last set of people with any real balls and sticking it to the man. Unfortunately on the other hand they're also arguably a bunch of rapists and edge lords going about in swastikas.

Now, I've seen a fair amount of movies from the biker cycle and I still haven't figured these fuckers out. A near impossible task because reality and fiction don't always match up. Many of the films in the biker cycle definitely amped up the Nazi symbolism and gang rapes as part of cheap thrills to get bums on seats. Having said that, it would be a lie to deny such events didn't take place. Some of the symbolism I can understand. Use of the Iron Cross is actually pretty smart. This is a not quite as offensive as the swastika and was used before Hitler came in to things as a reward for bravery in battle. So the idea behind the bikers using it was kind of like a fuck you to the old man. We're talking about a generation of kids growing up post World War Two who wanted to differentiate themselves from the previous generation. What better way than to almost collude with the enemy? Indirectly, it also does improve relations with Germany and allow the different nations to move on from Nazism. As for the swastikas that's purely edgy and offensive. I don't care if these guys aren't Nazis and it's mainly just to shock the squares. Just like get a grip isn't it? Apparently, some of the bikers do feel the same way and have tried to remove the swastikas from the scene.

Guess that's the problem with any movement. Due to the size and numbers you can't really end up sharing one collective idea. There's always splits and fractions. Everyone has different reasons for being in the group. Can you really say you like many people with the same set of political beliefs as you and your own little communities you're part of? If there's one thing I've learnt, it's that they all get atleast a little corrupted at some point and usually its on the account of individual egos. I can imagine there would be some members of the Angel's who would go wild at the thought of some attention and fame. Money too, you can't forget these weren't well off people. Who's to say there weren't a few who would do anything a journalist tells them for a few extra bucks? Why would they correct their reputation on the screen when it gives them celebrity status and notoriety? Can the actions of a few corrupt the intentions of the entire group? You'd have to address what the intentions of the movement are but unfortunately, I'm not sure there really is a coherent one. These are not the brightest of people.

There is an allure to this gang of people in that they're a bunch of guys who have each other's backs, they stick together and they don't take no shit from the police. They wouldn't dare call themselves communists but there is some of that in the way they do share everything and don't get lost in material wealth. If someone doesn't have much money it is custom to buy that person drinks and food. Although, the more I've thought about I'm not even sure that they're that cool. At first you think, yeah sure a bunch of guys riding on bikes together trying to live outside the system, love that. Then you think well why don't they do anything about the system? Riding off on a highway doing their own thing, pretending it’s the old days. That sounds like cowardice to me. They're losers, I'm afraid.

I've seen so many clueless biker movies in my time that don't really add up and the image of them seems so contradictory. Honestly, it wasn't until I read Hunter S Thompson's debut book Hell's Angels that I began to get any real understanding of them and who they really are. He spent a year with them and really separates the truth from the bullshit in the movies and the ridiculous newspaper headlines from the 1960s. It was upon reading that book, I realised I'd gone about them all wrong. He explains that there's no point trying to understand these people from a moral perspective. Instead, you can only try to understand what created them. An amazing point because if you approach it from a moral angle you're literally coming head to head with the complex history of America.

In his book, he talks about how they were formed, which was based on post-war disillusionment. A group of people returning from the chaotic nature of the battlefield, not wanting to return to structured home life with wives and kids so turning to the road. Alongside them the disturbed kids of veterans trying to seek out others like themselves and form a community of likeminded individuals. Therefore, they resort to recapturing the original dreams of going out west and prospering. And we all know that's built on terrorisation and massacring of the Native Americans. Hence why really trying to moralise these people brings you head on with the complex history of America.

When it comes to the kind of what came first the chicken or the egg like argument, you could argue the first initial image of the bikers actually came from the movies. Go right back to Marlon Brando's The Wild One from 1953 and that could be argued as the birth of it all. Many people saw that and they wanted to be just like it. A great picture too, not politically challenging, just Brando and his boys turning up in a town on bikes and causing mischief. It's a fun movie, which basically just takes the format of an old western.

One of the next notable additions in the biker genre was Kenneth Anger's 1963 experimental short film Scorpio Rising. Both Gaspar Noe and Nicolas Winding Refn notably share a joint love of this film. Anger never intended this to be a serious portrait of biker culture but rather just a sleazy S and M movie fetishising leather and featuring lots of homosexuals. This presentation ended up rattling many bikers who believed they didn't go that way. Bizarrely, whenever cameras were put on these people they would start kissing the nearest member of the same sex as another attempt to shock the squares. Confuses me why they would get so rattled by Anger's movie when they would engage in those behaviours for the camera. I'm not for one second suggesting these guys are closeted homosexuals but spending so much time together, fighting for each other and sitting on large penises between their legs does have a few gay connotations.

The next three big biker movies would be The Wild Angels, Easy Rider and Quadrophenia. First off Quadrophenia is a British movie about a bunch of doo wop fans from Brighton. Totally different kind of movie and culture so not sure you can really link it in here, despite being so good. Easy Rider is another great movie, which actually shares very little of the philosophy of US bikers and has less trashy influences like the French New Wave. Hopper's movie is mainly an allegory for the death of the American dream and the hippie movement. As we've already pointed out here though, the hippies and the Angels aren't necessarily the same. In fact the Angels notoriously broke up an anti-war demonstration once. I'm guessing the Ken Kesey truce in which he invited them all over to take LSD at his place didn't really have much effect. God damn hippies trying to solve things with their peace and acid.

Whilst far from a masterpiece, The Wild Angels is probably the best movie ever made about what the Hell's Angels and various biker gangs stood for. The link with the westerns is further cemented here through Peter Fonda. His dad Henry used to star in a lot of westerns. Two different generations and genres but both equally controversial films attempting to tap in to a portrait of America.

Corman's The Wild Angels paints them as desiring freedom. They're not looking for trouble but will dish it out if they are challenged. Above all though, they just want to party. A clever point to make as that could win most people over. Even if you haven't seen the film, many of you will know a quote from it, which was sampled in the Primal Scream song Loaded. 'We want to be free. To do what we want to do. And we wanna be free to get loaded. And we wanna have good time. And that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna have a good time. We're gonna have a party!'.

Primal Screams use of the sample is very smart and finds new meaning in the free party scene. One which was all about escaping the restrictions of law enforcement. A movement which sure pissed off the UK government because people found a way to enjoy themselves for free and they weren't seeing a dime of the action so naturally they went in hard on this focusing on the drugs and dangers of attending such festivals.

After The Wild Angels, these movies generally take two paths. Either needlessly attempting to copy Angels and failing drastically in finding the true meaning of the movement and often lazily focusing on the rapes, violence and Nazi imagery. At best these films are just clones of The Wild Angels and offer little improvement. Crazy considering Angels really isn't that deep either. They fail to address the history and as I mentioned the only real successful document at doing that is Hunter S. Thompson's book. Most of them are boring, shallow creations, which only come alive when the bikes hit the highway and some '60s psychy garage rock banger starts playing. Hunter branded these guys 'losers' and damned them all to be exterminated and meet the bomb like the end of Apocalypse Now. However, even he had to admit seeing them to take the road on the bikes was unexplainably cool and appealing.

Examples of those lazy clones would be Angels Die Hard, Hells on Angels on Wheels and Angels from Hell. I mean you can kind of tell they're rip offs from the titles can't you. There's plenty of them out there and they basically repeat the same message with less effect.

On the other side, you have the ones that went another direction. These began trying to implement other genres to keep people hooked, expand on the cool aesthetic and stray away from the more tackling the complicated political aspects. These are genuinely entertaining and there isn't nearly enough of them. All for seeing these combined with whatever some nutcase thinks of. Herschell Gordon Lewis's She-Devils on Wheels and Peeter's Bury me an Angel bring in a feminist spin on a macho world. The latter being very Freudian and explores this arena, in a way none of the others have.

Psychomania and Werewolves on Wheels incorporate zombies and furry beasts of the night. I wouldn't normally advocate this but if you do happen to watch Werewolves on Wheels, make sure it's the version on YouTube where the songs have been replaced by Electric Wizard songs. Typically, I would be against such bastardisation by a randomer but it's so good. Trust me, Werewolves on Wheels is a great movie. I regularly get it on when I want to hear some tunes from the Wizard and get some images with it whilst sinking a few beers. I recommend it. Nothing but good times. Finally, you get the actioners focused on stunts like Mad Max, Race with the Devil and this weeks movie The Losers.

More recent efforts have mainly gone for parody and homage such as Hell Ride and Mandy. It's hard to pick, which was the more cowardly route. Going more cartoonish or sticking to attempting to depict what the movement was about. I change my stance on this regularly. Mostly, I just think well if you're not going to do anything interesting with the movie and expand on the ideas why using realism, then why not just go for cartoony entertainment merging with other genres? Does leave you wondering a few things though. Why's no-one gone back and tried to make a perfect movie that captures the history of the Angels and what makes them so fascinating in spite of their ugly past?

You might say fuck 'em, they're violent rapists. And I would most definitely agree. Don't like these people any more than most. In fact I pretty much hate them but there's a strong argument to say the biker genre is the most important American genre since the western. See that's where my interest lies. They're as problematic as John Wayne's characters in the movies but from an artistic point of view they best represent America. Most genres can be copied but the western and the biker film are distinctly American. How can we ignore this? Even the critics seem to have totally disregarded these movies. It was the French who first pointed out the importance of the western, before then they were read as trashy b movies. Where are those guys to do the same here? Maybe a new biker film needs to be made that reaches the full capabilities? I think it's about time someone made a new one trying to do what The Wild Angels did but deeper and with a fresh pair of eyes. Also if such a person wanted to incorporate a few horror elements or action stunts from the later hybrid films, I wouldn't stop them!

Bonus Points:

-Bringing Rock'n'roll to the jungle prior to Apocalypse Now

-The action packed and bloody finale involving multiple bike jumps and personalised bikes

Overall Score: 3.5/5