The Wild Angels

The Wild Angels

Directed by Roger Corman
Produced by Roger Corman
Written by Charles B. Griffith
Peter Bogdanovich (uncredited)
Starring Peter Fonda
Nancy Sinatra
Bruce Dern
Diane Ladd
Cinematography Richard Moore
Distributed by American International Pictures (1966, original) MGM (2003 and 2007, DVD) Olive Films (under license from MGM) (2015, Blu-Ray Disc)
Release dates
  • July 20, 1966 (1966-07-20)
Running time
 93 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $360,000[1]
Box office $15,541,070[2]

The Wild Angels is a 1966 Roger Corman film, made on location in Southern California. The Wild Angels was made three years before Easy Rider and was the first film to associate actor Peter Fonda with Harley-Davidson motorcycles and 1960s counterculture. It was also the film that inspired the outlaw biker film genre that continued into the early 1970s.

The Wild Angels, released by American International Pictures (AIP), stars Fonda as the fictitious Hells Angels San Pedro, California chapter president "Heavenly Blues" (or "Blues"), Nancy Sinatra as his girlfriend "Mike", Bruce Dern as doomed fellow outlaw "the Loser", and Dern's real-life wife Diane Ladd as the Loser's on-screen wife, "Gaysh".

Small supporting roles are played by Michael J. Pollard and Gayle Hunnicutt and, according to literature promoting the film, members of the Hells Angels from Venice, California. Members of the Coffin Cheaters motorcycle club also appeared.

In 1967 AIP followed this film with Devil's Angels, The Glory Stompers with Dennis Hopper, and The Born Losers.

Plot

In between sprees featuring drugs, fights, sexual assault, loud revving Harley chopper engines and bongo drums, the Angels ride out to Mecca, California in the desert to look for the Loser's stolen motorcycle. They blame a group of Mexicans in a repair shop, and the two groups brawl. The police arrive, chasing the Angels on foot, and the Loser escapes by stealing a police motorcycle. After a chase on mountain roads, one of the officers shoots the Loser in the back, putting him in the hospital.

Blues leads a small group of Angels that sneaks him out of the hospital, and one of them begins to sexually attack a black nurse until Blues pulls him away. The nurse identifies Blues to police though he stopped the attack. Without proper medical care, the Loser goes into shock and dies. His cohorts forge a death certificate and arrange a church funeral in the Loser’s rural hometown. Blues interrupts the service, and the Angels have a "party". The Angels remove the Loser from his Nazi flag-draped casket, sit him up and place a joint in his mouth, knock out the minister, place him in the casket, and two Angels drug and rape the Loser’s grieving widow, Gaysh, while Blues is apparently having sex with another woman.

Later, the Angels proceed to the Sequoia Grove cemetery to bury the Loser. There, the locals throw stones at the Angels and provoke a fight. As police sirens approach and everyone scatters, Mike begs Blues to leave immediately, but he refuses and tells her to leave with another member of the gang. Blues stays behind, and before burying his friend on his own, says with resignation, "There's nowhere to go."

Cast

Production

Writing

AIP became interested in making a film about the Hells Angels after seeing a photo on the cover of Life magazine for a biker funeral. They approached Roger Corman, who hired Charles B. Griffith to write a screenplay. Griffith's first draft was a near-silent movie which contrasted the bikers with the story of a police motorcycle cop. Corman did not like it and had Griffith rewrite it. Corman still was not happy and gave it to Peter Bogdanovich to rewrite.[3] Bogdanovich had met Corman socially and agreed to write an adventure script for in the vein of Lawrence of Arabia or Bridge on the River Kwai "only cheap"; Corman pulled Bogdanovich off that project and paid him $300 to work on Wild Angels. Bogdanovich later estimated he rewrote 80% of the script.[4] He later directed second unit and did various other odd jobs.

Casting

George Chakiris and Peter Fonda were originally cast in the lead roles. However Chakiris could not ride a bike so he was replaced by Fonda.[3]

Reception

Film critic Leonard Maltin called The Wild Angels "OK after about 24 beers." It opened the Venice Film Festival in 1966, to tepid response. In a 2009 interview POST MORTEM: Roger Corman, Corman told Mick Garris that the US State Department tried to prevent the film from being shown in Venice on the grounds that it "did not show America the way it is." But the film was shown anyway. Corman took chances with this subject matter and the Charles B. Griffith–authored screenplay, without being overly graphic, which paid dividends commercially: The Wild Angels was the 16th highest grossing film of 1966, earning $5.5 million in domestic (U.S. and Canada) rentals.[5]

The film had admissions in France of 531,240.[6]

Legacy

While promoting another of his 1960s counterculture movies, The Trip, and autographing a movie still from The Wild Angels depicting Bruce Dern and him sharing one motorcycle, Fonda conceived the film Easy Rider. Easy Rider was also about two men, but with each riding his own motorcycle.

A sample of dialogue from the film, where Peter Fonda (as Blues) explains his attitude to life to the preacher at Loser's funeral (played by Frank Maxwell) was used at the start of Mudhoney's 1989 track In 'n' Out of Grace (from Superfuzz Bigmuff) and later Primal Scream's 1990 single Loaded. It was also featured in the Launch Trailer of the video game Need for Speed (2015). The same monologue was also sampled repeatedly in the Edgar Wright film "The World's End", as well as repeated by Simon Pegg's character in the movie.

DVD

The Wild Angels was released to DVD by MGM Home Video on April 1, 2003 as a Region 1 widescreen DVD, on September 11, 2007 as part of The Roger Corman Collection (movie number seven of a set of eight), and to Blu-Ray by Olive Films (under license from MGM) on February 17, 2015.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Samuel Z Arkoff & Richard Turbo, Flying Through Hollywood By the Seat of My Pants, Birch Lane Press, 1992 p 163
  2. ↑ "The Wild Angels, Box Office Information". The Numbers. Retrieved April 16, 2012.
  3. 1 2 Mark McGee, Faster and Furiouser: The Revised and Fattened Fable of American International Pictures, McFarland, 1996 pp. 243–245
  4. ↑ "Exclusive Interview: Filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich". Blu-ray.Com, March 26, 2012. Accessed 3 June 2013.
  5. ↑ Gebert, Michael. The Encyclopedia of Movie Awards, which includes listings of "Box Office Domestic Rentals" for 1966 taken from Variety, St. Martin's Paperbacks, 1996. ISBN 0-668-05308-9.
  6. ↑ Box office information for Roger Corman films in France at Box Office Story

Further reading

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