

Symbolism-religious, deathly, homoerotic, and often fascistic-flashes in front of the viewer as mounting montages begin to make clear that the boys are ready for a death ride rather than a joy ride. The film begins showing a group of young bikers polishing their motorcycles and preening themselves in anticipation for a wild night out on the town. Anger admitted to an interviewer that Scorpio Rising was a campy take on The Wild One, and a clip from the Brando biker epic is briefly glimpsed in one scene. Scorpio Rising (1964) Scorpio Rising pioneered the ironic use of songs in movies.Ĭult filmmaker Kenneth Anger, who is perhaps most famous for writing the sleazy film-industry tell-all Hollywood Babylon, directed this visually stunning half-hour film that has no dialogue and is instead propped up entirely by a soundtrack of rock ’n’ roll hits from the era.

The marriage has a stabilizing influence on Barbara for a while, but she soon gets bored and finds herself lured into the world of bikers and dope again-only this time she gets addicted to shooting dope. Vowing to clean up her act, she cuts off all ties to the biker gang and marries her childhood sweetheart, Johnny Adams (Robert Norman), who genuinely loves her but has no idea about her history with bikers and drugs. To fit in with her new friends, Cassandra also starts smoking marijuana and finds that she likes it too much for her own good. In this vice-packed and hormone-crazed 1950s teen exploitation movie, Barbara Marks stars as Cassandra Leigh, the lonely daughter of a promiscuous and self-absorbed single mother, who finds identity and camaraderie when she befriends a local group of delinquent bikers. Teenage Devil Dolls (1955) A young woman is lured into a biker gang with drugs and excitement. Real bikers were used as extras in the filming, and the movie’s most iconic line-Johnny replies, “Whaddaya got?” when someone asks him what he’s rebelling against-was an actual line that a biker used when the director asked the same question. Events spin even further out of control when a rival biker gang, The Beetles, cruise into town looking for trouble. As the bikers bring anarchy to Wrightsville, Johnny finds himself falling for Kathy Bleeker, a wholesome and innocent local waitress who also happens to be the sheriff’s daughter. In Stanley Kramer’s film, Marlon Brando stars as Johnny Strabler, defiant leader of a biker gang called The Black Rebels, who stream into the tiny desert town of Wrightsville, CA after wreaking havoc at a local racing event. Widely considered the first outlaw biker film, The Wild One is based loosely on 1947’s so-called Hollister Riot, in which an American Motorcyclist Association rally spilled into lawlessness in the small town of Hollister, CA, resulting in sensationalistic national press coverage. Old Biker Movies (1950s – 60s) The Wild One (1953) Marlon Brando as Johnny Strabler in the rival biker gang film The Wild One. All of them deal with some aspect of biker culture.

Many are based on real-life incidents, and many feature real bikers in the cast. Here are the most best biker films of all time. While most of these films may seem outdated, they serve as cultural studies, especially of the way that youth culture and criminal culture can intertwine. Thompson were attempting to explain the cultural significance of bikers, the biker film genre kicked off back in 1953 with Stanley Kramer’s The Wild One.īiker movies, like biker culture itself, peaked in the 1960s and 1970s but then started to wane. While some of the most prominent “new journalists” of the mid-1960s such as Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. A still from Easy Rider, one of the most classic and famous biker gang movies from the late 1960s. There’s nothing between you and that long open road, and the thrill of danger made the biker lifestyle appeal to a certain form of renegade personality. There was something about motorcycles that tied into uniquely American ideas of freedom-they were much cheaper than cars, much simpler to fix, it was much easier to navigate through traffic, and, perhaps most importantly, it was much more dangerous.
ZOMBIE BIKER MOVIE FREE
Many of the early biker clubs were comprised of World War II veterans with free time and PTSD to burn.
