Saturday 30 May 2009

THE WILD ANGELS (1966)

It is hard to believe that both Roger Corman's THE WILD ANGELS and THE TRIP were banned in England and back in 1967 I had to join Derek Hill's cinema club to see them. As a Corman devotee at the time who thought the great man could do no wrong I kind of liked them. Seen today they are both not only not very good but a bit embarassing. Like many films that were considered "hip" at the time they have not aged well. This even applies to EASY RIDER and that film is a couple of notches above THE WILD ANGELS. The plot is virtually non-existent. A gang of motorcycle freaks set out to bury one of their kind who was killed during a pursuit by the cops. They break up the church and their leader realises that their way of life is pointless. And that's about it. If you are a Corman fan there are a few things that just about make it watchable....Dick Miller as an oilman, watching Bruce Dern steal the films as a a strangely flexible corpse, Frank Maxwell as the preacher and if you look closely at the climax of the film you might spot a very young Peter Bogdanovich as one of the townsfolk (the only one with dialogue) and another performance by my favourite, Barboura Morris (Corman's regular innocent bystander) - remember her lovely bit with Fonda in the launderette in THE TRIP? It ain't a patch on Laslo Benedek's THE WILD ONE with Brando and Lee Marvin strutting their stuff through similar territory twelve years earlier. Rating **

No comments: