It’s totally out there featuring wild three wheeler bikes, inept Keystone Cops with a cop car that has a huge siren on it, sped up fight scenes, a wild cartoonish black gang in a pink car, multiple musical and dance sequences including a blackface minstrel scene, the Klan riding around on bikes, a KFC Colonel Sanders lookalike as the villain, large joint, kung fu, walls falling off of houses, a guy dressed in a bunny costume with an oversized carrot, clowns and gorillas in jail, a ghetto alert map and nigger alarm in the police station, an undercover officer in drag and blackface who gets shot for being black, a Mr.
I’m truly not sure if this movie should be considered racist or not. This picture is an unusual mix of silent era and Keystone Cops slapstick, Benny Hill, Looney Tunes, the 1966 Batman television show, the Naked Gun and Airplane type humor, and disco outfits and music. The story involves a group female disco looking bikers, with the main one searching for her missing mother. This is definitely the strangest blaxploitation film ever made and possibly the weirdest movie that I have ever seen, which is really saying something. It also featured almost 400 real bikers used as extras in the highway funeral procession scene. This movie also features four of the actors who would go on to appear in the more widely known Mad Max, which were Vincent Gil, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Roger Ward, and Reg Evans. One particularly insane stunt has one of the bikers killed by flying off of the edge of a cliff and falling 80 feet to his death into the sea. The film is known for its use of Kawasaki Z900’s as the bikes, fantastic location shots, a large funeral procession, and some very crazy bike stunts. The killings end up being political and the detective must choose between his job and his biker loyalty. This is a low budget Australian biker movie about a detective that goes undercover in a biker gang in order to find who has been killing off members of the gang. There are also minor appearances from the members of the band Chicago, who were being managed by the director of the motion picture.
It also features one of the great performances from Blake as the main character, who is best known for In Cold Blood, Baretta, and his wife’s murder trial in which he was acquitted. Hall had previously worked on some major pictures including Cool Hand Luke, In Cold Blood, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.Īccording to the DVD commentary, the director took a salary of one dollar in order to be able to afford the salary of Hall in the budget. It features some beautiful exterior cinematography from Conrad Hall, who wanted the scenery to be reminiscent of John Ford’s western films. This is an excellent forgotten crime drama with a great story that is played and filmed like a modern western. He gets his opportunity when a suicide is determined to be a murder and there is $5,000 missing from the man’s home. The name has to do with the Harley Davidson Electra Glide motorcycle’s that are issued to the Arizona traffic officers and the story deals with one short officer John Wintergreen (Robert Blake), who wants to get transferred to the homicide division. This is by far the best overall movie on this list, with the biker story being from the perspective of the police force and motorcycle unit. “Did you know that me and Alan Ladd were exactly the same height?”. If you like biker movies, or drive-in movies, then you should check this one out. The soundtrack was actually released on CD in 2003 by Trunk records.
There is also an amusing burial scene of the gang leader, where a hippie is singing a song called “Riding Free,” while the dead gang leader is sitting on top of his bike in the grave. The soundtrack by John Cameron is pretty excellent, especially the opening title sequence with the gang riding around a Stonehenge type place. The bikers have a cool look, with the helmet and white visor that makes it look like a skull and crossbones. There are a decent amount of scenes involving the bikes, including one where they go around a shopping center and parking lot. The things that are memorable are the motorcycle scenes, the biker’s look, and the music. The plot, script, and acting are nothing to write home about. The film is a rather hilarious combination of motorcycles, witchcraft, and a splash of 1970’s hippieness. A motorcycle gang called the living dead all commit suicide, so that they can return back as one of the living dead. “Seven Suicides – and they roared back as The Living Dead”. Psychomania AKA The Death Wheelers (1973)
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