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Showing posts from November, 2020

The Wild Angels (1966)

  When The Wild Angels came out in 1966 it was a huge box office hit and inspired a whole new subgenre of outlaw biker movies.   It was also a source of inspiration for Easy Rider (which also starred Peter Fonda). It was fairly controversial when it came out, but in hindsight it comes off as rather silly.   While watching the movie, I couldn’t help but to think of the Beach Party series (also produced by American International Pictures) in the mid 60s.   The main antagonists in the Beach Party movies (with the exception of Muscle Beach Party) were a biker’s gang, The Rat Pack, led by the dopey Eric Von Zipper.  Zipper often came up with ridiculous schemes to “get those no good surfers” off of his beach, which always ended in total failure.   In The Wild Angels, the outlaw biker gang, The Angels, are led by Heavenly Blues (Peter Fonda), who, despite his “too cool for school demeanor” manages to be an even more incompetent leader than Eric Von Zipper.   Sure, Zipper’s schemes always fai