Double feature time again: two hyphenated-title chick-led features from '68

She-Devils on Wheels
1968
D: Herschell Gordon Lewis

The exploits of the all-girl gang the Man Eaters, and their feud with some local hot rodders

Though best remembered for his horror titles, Herschell Gordon Lewis met few exploitation genres he didn't like, and it was just a matter of time before he let loose his own biker film, done as only he could. While, for example, the movie below (released the same year) and the previous year's "The Hell Cats" were female-driven biker films, none were quite so chick-dominated as this one, and of course none had the HG Lewis weirdness of this one.
Led by Queen and including, among others, the on-the-fence-about-being-an-outlaw Karen, attractive but mega-butch Terry, rather large Whitey, and incredibly cute prospect Honey Pot, the Man Eaters are the scourge of whatever small town they're supposed to be in and men everywhere. They party, fight, and do whatever they want, and even have what's essentially a harem of men to serve them. This ain't your kid sister and her freinds out on scooters.
Though Karen is rather conflicted about the life, particularly after Queen scolds her for selecting the same guy to service her--as if a man is a person a gal can get attached to and not someone to be used-- things generally go along fine, with everyone knowing their roles and staying out of the gang's way.
Problems arise, however, when Joe Boy and his hot rod buddies attempt to take over the old airstrip where the Man Eaters have their races and generally hang out. The girls handily kick their asses, and a couple even piss on them (offscreen). Humiliated and out for revenge, the guys abduct and brutalize Honey Pot--and then Queen gets really mad.
Like any Lewis movie, this one hints at and implies far more than it actually shows. The bevy of guys who service them notwithstanding, the girls are clearly lesbians. For all the "sex," not a single female nipple is ever seen, and despite fights, a guy dragged from the back of a motorcycle, and even a beheading, it's really not very violent. Even the dialogue is rather tame, with dirty limericks that aren't very dirty and lots of people referring to body parts as "the you know what." Yet like any Lewis movie, with all that it still fails to disappoint, even if you don't know to expect that going in.
In fact, I'm glad I'm writing all this down (or typing it out--whatever). I pop this one in every few years, and am always surprised at how much I enjoy it. It just seems to be better than I remember it being. Not much really happens yet it flies by entertainingly.
As for the biker movie trappings: Pretty interesting selection of bikes, with Harleys going to the tougher girls (nice detail). Honey Pot has a moped that Whitey refers to as a "sewing machine." The colors look great, except the dopey bowtie. Good soundtrack of cheesy, sleazy rawk and absurdly overly dramatic orchestral stuff. The theme song is trash genius, and the Cramps' cover is one of the few times they didn't do justice to a classic (it's just not as ghostly).
My only complaint would be that, like most HG Lewis movies, the sound is pretty bad. A solid 4.

The Mini-Skirt Mob
1968
D: Maury Dexter

Hell hath no fury...

There have been (and will be) a few films covered that are really only barely biker flicks; this is not a biker movie. But that's what it was marketed as, so here we are.
Rodeo star Jeff (Ross Hagen) has just gotten married. His rodeo buddies, notably his ex- Shane (Diane McBain), Lon (Jeremy Slate), and their flunkies LG (Ronnie Rondell) and Spook (Harry Dean Stanton), who happen to also ride motorcycles (probably a late addition), decide that they don't much care for Connie (Sherry Jackson), Jeff's new bride. Jeff's attempts to play peacemaker fail.
The problem is Shane, who is clearly still obsessed with Jeff; this is essentially a stalker movie. She whips up the guys and, with her kid sister Edie (Patty McCormack) tagging along, begins the stalkin'. Unfortunately, this leads to Jeff unknowingly running LG's bike off the road, killing him. With the men riled up further with pleas for revenge for LG, they persue, leading to the expected showdown.
The plot here is pretty decent, especially the buildup to the climax. Mostly solid cast, with the great Jeremy Slate, Harry Dean Stanton in a Harry Dean Stanton type role, loveable doofus Hagen, and Patty frickin' McCormack. Female lead McBain, however, does not pull this off. Granted, the lines are pretty bad, with lots of "creepy" (dull) monologues. Still, anything can be pulled off.
The attempts to make this into a biker movie are just painful. They stuck them on motorcycles and put cute Mini-Skirt Mob cuts on a couple of the girls. When the larger group peels of, two guys who get a couple of lines look, repectively, like a casual menswear store manager and a very low level mob associate. And not one Harley. So much for meeting the nicest people on a Honda.
If I watch this again, I'll fast forward through every scene Spook isn't in. 2

The Born Losers

The Born Losers
1968 (imdb says 1967, the DVD says '69; seems to have hit theaters in 1968)
D: T.C. Frank (Tom Laughlin, who also co-wrote with wife and EP Delores Taylor as "James Lloyd")

Claim to fame: The first Billy Jack film; one of AIP's all-time top grossers

A motorcycle club rapes four girls, and only a local outcast will stand up to them

Truth be told, I am not the world's biggest Billy Jack fan. Despite the fact that I own the boxed set, I have never seen all of "Billy Jack Goes to Washington," or, to the best of my recollection, any of "The Trial of Billy Jack." While "Billy Jack" is undeniably a drive-in classic (that I still enjoy), it also always left me a bit uneasy. Movies like it --as well as TV shows like Kung Fu-- helped cement my impression that most peaceniks aren't pacifists, but cowards looking for someone to fight their battles for them. For all of the left wing messages, the movies always ended up with an unintentionally hawkish payoff: Turn the other cheek all you want, but the bad guys are only thwarted by a Tony Lama to the ass... And just to be honest, it didn't help, by the way, that the female lead from "Billy Jack" on was Laughlin's unattractive, bad acress wife Delores Taylor... At any rate, before these three sequels (plus one or two that never came out), there was "The Born Losers."
Unable to get the film made that they wanted (released as "Billy Jack" in 1971), Laughlin and Taylor came up with a prequel film, with Billy Jack as a Shane type hero/anti-hero (and this has even more of a western feel than most biker movies, enhanced by Mike Curb's soundtrack) confronting a motorcycle club. Biker movies were really raking in the coin, and the plot was loosely based on a late '64 Hell's Angels rape and witness intimidation case that was still fresh in people's minds (with elements of the Kitty Genovese case thrown in as well), so this seemed a much better way to get the Billy Jack character over.
The Born to Lose MC rides into a small town, mainly to pick up its president's brother. While in town, they generally terrorize the citizens. Only Billy Jack, a loner, ex-Green Beret Indian (who's always recognized as such, despite looking 100% white) stands up to them, and for his trouble he's arrested and slapped with a crippling fine, a harsher punishment than the bikers received.
With no one to stop them, the club ends up raping three girls in their late teens and, separately, a spoiled college girl. Further, they appear destined to get away with it, as the victims are all afraid to testify.
The (mostly leftist) social commentary in this one is non-stop, though not all of it is as heavy handed as Vicky's painful graduate student speeches.
The role of bad parenting in helping turn kids into both criminals and potential victims is laid on pretty thick. Club leader Danny's father is a hard-ass bastard (and in a subtle scence shown later, it's implied that Danny is an uninvolved dad himself), Vicky's is rich and powerful but has no time for her, and the other victims' parents are overprotective, uninvolved, or too busy trying to make ends meet to be the parents the kids need. Adults in general, in fact, let the kids down, as they give in to the cowardly urge to look the other way.
The film is no less tough on the police, with a strong "they can't protect you" message. This is done pretty effectively, by not showing the cops as inept or unwilling; if anything, the deputy in particular would be seen by some as being overly harsh.
Besides all this, they're tossing other stuff at you as well --on racism, the enviornment, the inability of a poor man to get a fair shake, the selfishness of the rich, and on and on, finally padding the movie out to nearly two hours... With all this going on, it would seem to be exactly the kind of film I can't stand, but quite the contrary.
What saves this otherwise overly earnest script is its co-writer, Tom Laughlin. His understated performances rescued the Billy Jack character from ridiculousness, but it's as a director that he really shines. There are some great shots and all that (one of which led to the film's brilliant poster), but the performances he gets from his cast are what impresses.
Jack Starrett is always great, and I sometimes neglect how good Elizabeth James (essentially a stand-in for Delores Taylor) is because I hate her character so much. Jane Russell is often praised for this performance, but for me it feels a little too 1951. But aside from Starrett (one of the best movie cops ever, from these biker films to "First Blood" to "Death Chase"), it's the bikers who steal the show.
Jeremy Slate, who was never better, leads the way here as Danny. The character has surprising depth, which he draws out easily and convincingly. The confrontation with his father is closed out with a brilliant ad lib, and Slate's scenes with Starrett are just outstanding. William Wellman, Jr (son of the respected director) is great as the beatnik-ish Child, Paul Prokop is genuinely creepy as Speechless, and Edwin Cook is funny and very natural as Crabs. But Laughlin also gets solid performances from the rest of the bikers, who weren't actors but members of a small MC called the Devil's Escorts. One of them, Robert Tessier (here as Cueball, despite the fact that he had hair at the time), of course, went on to have a career as a great character actor.
Apart from some corny fake swastika and "13" tattoos, the bikers look great. I love the club's colors, and details like Danny's hands, with small cuts, knuckle band-aids, and a juvie hall type tattoo of his initials. The wardrobe is great, down to Slate's cool newsboy cap and his impressive ability to pull off wearing those outrageous sunglasses.
Which isn't to call the film flawless. Vicky can really get on your nerves at times, and while I enjoyed the hell out of Jodell's strip tease, it's not exactly realistic behavior for a girl who was just gang raped. It's hard to suppress a groan when the bikers trap Vicky by spinning the arrow on a road sign, and the post climax epilogue is pretty bad.
Overall, an even better mix of exploitation and earnesty (yes, I know it isn't a word) than "Angels Hard as They Come," and an MC prez as good as (while very different from) Heavenly Blues of "The Wild Angels" or Anchor in "Satan's Sadists." 4.5 for this bona fide classic.

Hell's Angels '69

Hell's Angels '69
D: Lee Madden

Claim to fame: Written by its two stars, who'd both been in two of the genre's best films; nearly all bikers are played by members of the Hell's Angels' mother chapter

Two spoiled rich boys who pull crimes for kicks pose as bikers to use the Angels as a decoy for a casino heist

Chuck (Tom Stern from "Angels from Hell") and his brother Wes (Jeremy Slate from "The Born Losers") are suave and partying but jaded and bored products of inherited wealth who, unbeknownst to their freinds, commit major crimes on the side. Posing as members of a Boston club called the Salem Witches who are visiting California, Chuck and Wes befreind Sonny Barger and the Angels, and even convince them to make a run to Vegas and let them tag along. Their plan, of course, is to focus the cops' attention on the Angels while they rob a casino. What they don't figure on, however, is that they'll be stuck with Terry the Tramp's ex-old lady Betsy (Conny Van Dyke) tagging along --and, worse for them, the unforgiving Angels figuring out that they'd been made saps.
The Stern/Slate story is a novel one for the genre, and it progresses quite well. The storyline with Betsy has a tacked-on feel to it, but not so much so that it drags down the action. So it's hard to pin down where it went wrong.
Sonny Barger (who does a very good job here; portaying oneself in film isn't always as easy as it sounds) had previously had frustrating (and sometimes infamous) dealings with authors and filmmakers, but here presumably got his club fairly paid for a change and, one would guess, also had quite a bit of say in the film itself. The image of the club as bad motherfuckers who just want to be left alone and extend the same courtesy --unless you cross them, in which case they're coming at you with everything-- comes across just as he'd like it to. Though I wonder if he's also responsible for the film's rather dull title.
Oddly, I think it's the realism that is its undoing. Though Terry the Tramp is particularly fun here and Barger always has that great creepy/cool quality, the Angels, being actual Angels, are not as fun to watch as the cartoonish Satan's Sadists, for example. In the end it's a great story, professionally told, but nothing special.
And what's with the music? What little there is is impossibly dull. Sonny couldn't have asked the Dead for a couple tunes or something?
I should stress again that this is a good story, and aside from stuntman Bob Harris nearly every biker here is a real one. So it qualifies as essential viewing, despite its grade of 3.