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 failed, but at least he didn’t get any of his gang members killed.

The Wild Angels has a fairly simple plot:  Joe ‘Loser’ Kerns motorcycle has been stolen.  The Angels ride out to Mecca, California in hopes of finding it, which leads them to a garage run by a Mexican gang. The two groups brawl but, before it can be settled, the police show up.  Loser is separated from the rest of the Angels and steals a policeman’s motorcycle.  He gets shot for his effort and ends up in the hospital. Heavenly Blues finds out about this and leads a small group of Angels to sneak Loser out of the hospital; with his girlfriend Mike ‘Monkey’ acting as a Trojan Horse.  She pretends to be Loser’s sister and asks if she can see him, the policeman on duty reluctantly agree.   She whips up a few tears and, when the policeman is looking, unlocks the glass door.  The Angels get Loser out of the hospital but Heavenly is identified by a nurse on duty (who one of the gang members attempted to rape).  The Angels arrange for a funeral to be held in Loser’s hometown. They hold a service in a small church and even go the trouble of hiring a preacher to preside over the service. However, Heavenly is not satisfied with the preacher’s eulogy and decides that the Angels will honor Loser’s memory by having the party. The Angels tie up the preacher, tear up the church, and proceed to have an orgy. Finally, after the mayhem has ended, they go to bury Loser’s body in the local cemetery.  One of the townsfolk throws a rock at them, which leads to a brawl.  However, once they hear police sirens heading their way, the Angels bolt, leaving Heavenly alone to bury the Loser.  

The question I initially asked was:  Is The Wild Angels a parody of the A.I.P. Beach Party movies. It essentially plays like a demented version of those. It’s easy to imagine Heavenly Blues being the leader of a surfer gang, with Mike being his best girl (the same year The Wild Angels came out, Nancy Sinatra appeared in the final Beach Party movie, The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini).
At the end of the movie, Heavenly Blues makes a famous speech:

We wanna be free! We wannabe free to do whatever we wanna do! We wanna be free to ride!
We wanna be free to ride our machines without being hassled by the MAN! And we wanna get loaded! And we wanna have a good time! And that is what we’re gonna do! We are gonna have a good time! We gonna have a party!

No doubt this speech resonated with the 1960s counterculture, yet is exactly the same type of speech Frankie Avalon would give in a similar situation. The only difference is that he would want to be “free to surf without being hassled by the Man.” I make this point, because by 1966 the Beach Party movies were considered old hat by the counterculture, yet this so-called “anti-establishment” movie seems content on plagiarizing them.  

Did the 1966 youth take this movie seriously?  I initially thought my theory of The Wild Angels being a Beach Party parody was correct, when I saw that Charles B. Griffith wrote the screenplay.  Griffith wrote a few scripts for Roger Corman; most notably Bucket of Blood and the original The Little Shop of Horrors.  Most of his scripts contain an element of dark humor; that includes his more “serious” scripts like The Undead and The Attack of the Crab Monsters. So, clearly The Wild Angels is a dark comedy.  Not so fast!  While Griffith is the credited writer, the script was largely rewritten by future director, and Orson Welles lackey, Peter Bogdanovich.  Corman found Griffith’s script to be unacceptable, so he brought in Bogdanovich to “fix it.” I have to wonder if Griffith’s script had more humor in it, which is why Corman found it unacceptable. Who knows?  All I know is that the finished script is a mess and completely devoid of any humor.

The movie helped establish Peter Fonda as a counter culture icon (Easy Rider would further cement this status). I must admit, I am completely baffled as to why that is.  Sure, Peter Fonda looks cool riding on his motorcycle, but he is completely devoid of any real personality. I would even argue that Fonda gives the weakest performance in the entire movie. It’s hard to believe a biker gang would follow this guy’s lead.  Fonda faired slightly better in Easy Rider, and that is largely because his character is devoid of any real agency. He just goes where the road takes him.  I also find the character to be somewhat problematic. I don’t think it was Corman’s intention to glorify the behavior of The Angels; they are, after all, white supremacists. Yet, Heavenly Blue’s speech at the end probably did resonate with many young people in the audience (especially since it was directed at a preacher – a symbol of the Establishment if there ever was one).  His treatment towards Mike is especially appalling; he dismisses her concerns and, out of pure spite and right in front of her, screws another woman in the church.  When Mike returns the affection of another biker, Heavenly punches the guy and gives her a dirty look.

Heavenly Blues fits well into Roger Corman’s cabal of existential losers.  He could easily be descended from such characters like: Walter Paisley (Bucket of Blood), Seymour Krelboin (The Little Shop of Horrors), Quintus Ratcliff (The Undead), Roderick Usher (House of Usher), and Prince Prospero (The Masque of the Red Death). These are characters that have a skewed morality; “the ends justify the means” applies to them.  They avoid taking any responsibility for the actions, and that often leads to their downfall.   There are multiple times throughout The Wild Angels where Heavenly could potentially right the ship, but he chooses to double down on his actions. It is fitting that movie ends with him all alone, burying the corpse of his best friend.  Movie critics and film historians like to slap the tag of auteur onto many filmmakers; but if you were to apply that to Roger Corman, most of them would probably laugh.  Yet, with the exception of The Raven, there is a fairly cynical, almost nihilistic world view that pervades most of Corman’s movies.  Not to mention that Corman had his own stock company of writers and actors who worked on many of his movies; in the Wild Angels, Corman regulars Dick Miller and Barboura Morris appear in small roles.

While 1967 is regarded as “The Summer of Love,” there was a significant shift in pop culture in 1966.
The Beach Boys released their album, Pet Sounds, which essentially signified an end to their surfing songs. The Beatles released, Revolver, which offered up more introspective songs (often fueled by drugs) and helped shed The Beatle’s “clean cut image.” They also announced they were done touring, which meant the only way fans could hear them was by purchasing their albums.  It should be noted that Walt Disney, the man who essentially symbolized the old studio system, passed away in late 1966.  Without Walt at the helm, Disney studios would flounder for the next couple of decades before achieving a renaissance in the 1990s. Whether that is a good or bad thing is entirely to up to you.

While The Beach Boys and The Beatles got all the attention in 1966, another significant song that charted the year was “These Boots Are Made For Walking,” sung by Nancy Sinatra.  It is interesting to contrast Nancy Sinatra’s character of Mike with her chart topping hit.  The song is about a woman who has had enough of her man’s shit and threatens to leave if he doesn’t straighten up.  Mike is the complete antithesis of this song – she is loyal to a fault.  Heavenly Blues is exactly the type of man that “Boots” is talking about.  He is completely dismissive towards Mike, often puts her in dangerous situations, and treats her like complete garbage.  When Mike asks Heavenly if he still loves her, he responds with “I don’t know.”  Interestingly enough, Sinatra played a similar role in The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini – where the man she pines for is fairly oblivious to her existence.  The only difference is that Bobby, her object of affection in The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini, is a good natured idiot. Heavenly is a first rate asshole - to the point where, just to spite Mike, he has sex with another woman on a church altar.  When she, hesitantly, responds to another biker’s advances, Heavenly gets jealous and punches the guy in the face; and the shoots Mike the evil eye.  

1966 - The Three Faces of Nancy Sinatra. 

The problem I have with Mike is that she is completely devoid of an agency. She constantly sides with Heavenly no matter how idiotic his schemes are.  While Heavenly and Mike could be seen as a sick parody of Frankie and Annette, the main thing that separates these two female characters is that at least Annette Funicello’s character, DeeDee, was constantly calling Frankie out on his bullshit.  If this were a beach party movie, when Frankie gives his speech about wanting to “be free,” this would be accompanied with a close up of Annette rolling her eyes at his juvenile mindset.  Mike is content with going along on the ride even though there is no real destination.   This is not the fault of Nancy Sinatra, who manages gives Mike an air of vulnerability, but the writers.  The fundamental flaw of many counter culture movies is their inability to write compelling female characters.  Don’t believe me!!!! In Easy Rider, the women solely exist to pleasure the main characters, Wyatt and Billy. They hook up with two women at a hippie commune and later on hook up with two prostitutes in New Orleans.  These women are barely in the movie and don’t have much in terms of personalities (despite being played by capable actresses).  In The Graduate, Mrs. Robinson is an interesting character, but she is the villain of the piece, while her daughter Elaine is kind of a flake. I often hear about how these movies “spoke to a generation.” Did they speak to women, as well? While watching The Wild Angels, I kept hoping Mike would follow the advice offered in “These Boots Are Made For Walking.” Kick the no good bum, Heavenly Blues, to the curb! Move on with your life! 

The also brings me to the movie’s most egregious moment – the rape of Gaysh (Diane Ladd) by the bikers Frankenstein and Dear John.  In fact, it could be argued that Frankenstein’s arc is that he successfully rapes a woman, after two failed attempts earlier on in the movie; he attempts to rape Gaysh at party and then a nurse while the other angels are sneaking Loser out of the hospital, both times he thwarted by Heavenly. However, at the end, while Heavenly is busy screwing the older Momma Monahan, Frankenstein persuades Dear John into helping him rape Gaysh (Loser’s grieving widow).  What I find so repulsive about this scene is how the filmmakers completely shrug it off. It has no relevance to the plot, and Frankenstein and Dear John are never held accountable for their actions. After having been raped, Gaysh walks up to Loser’s corpse and asks him for forgiveness. Why?
Even more troubling is that this trope would often pop up in many movies Corman produced for New World Studios – the only difference being that those rape scenes are far more graphic than the one in The Wild Angels (it happens offscreen).  There was an odd logic in many exploitation movies of the 1970s and 80s that there is no such thing as bad nudity, hence they would often include a rape scene just to meet their quota of female nudity. Like The Wild Angel’s, these movies would rarely explore what effect the rape had on the victim; instead it was merely a plot device to motivate the heroes into action.
It’s also odd how sex in many counterculture movies is rarely depicted as a healthy or pleasurable act -
sex is either depicted as unhealthy (rape) or completely sterile (Benjamin sleeping with the older Mrs.
Robinson simply for the hell of it). Also, the question needs to be asked:  Wouldn’t Heavenly expel Frankenstein from the gang?  He’s not only a threat to members of the Angels, but it is his attempted rape of the nurse that leads to her identifying Heavenly to the police.  He is a total detriment to the Angels, yet Heavenly allows him to remain in the gang.  Hell, even the incompetent Eric Von Zipper would have had the common sense to boot this guy out.

The Wild Angels is interesting more as a curio than it is an actual movie.  It was a movie that marked a shift in the popular culture and anticipated more famous movies like The Graduate, Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, and Billy Jack.  Like those movies (with the exception of the superior Five Easy Pieces), it has aged fairly poorly.  What was once extremely controversial is now kind of laughable. Its screenplay is extremely haphazard in places and the more “titillating” scenes drag on endlessly.  It is essentially a half hour short film stretched out in a full length feature.  It is not the worst of its kind, but it’s not a classic, either. 

 

 

 

 

 

Credits
Cast:  Peter Fonda (Heavenly Blues), Nancy Sinatra (Mike ‘Monkey’), Bruce Dern (Joe ‘Loser’ Kerns), Diane Ladd(Gaysh), Buck Taylor (Dear John), Norman Alden (Medic),  Michael J. Pollard (Pigmy), Lou Procopio (Joint), Joan Shawlee (Momma Monahan), Marc Cavell (Frankenstein), Coby Denton (Bill Puckey), Frank Maxwell  (Preacher), Gayle Hunnicutt (Suzie), Kim Hamilton (Nurse), Frank Gerstle (Hospital Policeman), Dick Miller (Rigger), Barboura Morris (Mother).

Director: Roger Corman
Writers:  Charles B. Griffith, Peter Bogdanovich (uncredited)
Running  Time:  93 min.