The Cycle Savages (1969)

With its sleazy violence, psych-rock soundtrack and wooden acting, The Cycle Savages (1969) ticks all the boxes of the outlaw biker gang film. Trashy even by the standards of this trashy genre, it wheels along without a hope of being a leader of the bikesploitation pack – unlike The Wild One (1953), with its iconic performance from Marlon Brando, or The Wild Angels (1966), featuring Peter Fonda’s famous nihilistic ‘we wanna get loaded’ speech. The Cycle Savages instead brings up the rear alongside roadhogs such as The Born Losers (1967), She-Devils on Wheels (1968) and Satan’s Sadists (1969).


Yet it is also a film about the power of art. Clean-cut, law-abiding Romko (Chris Robinson) is an artist who witnesses a sadistic biker gang called Hell’s Chosen Few terrorizing customers at a local diner. He makes speedy sketches of the criminals at work. The drawings are formally stiff, heavy on workman-like shading, but made remarkably quickly given the circumstances. Rumour of his sketches reaches Keeg (Bruce Dern), the gang’s psychotic leader. A local bartender warns Keeg about Romko. ‘He’s been drawing pictures alright. Plenty of ’em. You give him any trouble, he’s got pictures of you and your whole gang he can take to the cops.’ Hell’s Chosen Few are involved in running a prostitution ring and Keeg’s paranoia grows: ‘What’s gonna happen when The Man gets hold of these, huh?’ he asks his greaser hoods. ‘If they get hold of these pictures they’re gonna start connecting things up, right? The automobiles, the trips to the border, even the girls! Now you think we want pictures like this, huh, hanging all over town?’ He hatches his cruel revenge: ‘We gotta find a way to get these man’s hands, and wreck ’em. ’Cos without his hands, he ain’t gonna make any more drawings.’

Remarkable throughout is the bizarre and unquestioning belief on the part of everyone involved – from bikers to cops – in the veracity of the drawings. Never is it suggested that the artist may have made up the scenes he depicts. Romko’s art is treated as hard evidence, his pencil and paper as good as any photographic proof. The Cycle Savages is, in its own schlocky way, about art speaking truth to power, a fantasy of art having a clearly defined and practical social role.

Romko is fearless, and stands by what he makes, as all artists should. When the gang tries to intimidate him outside his apartment, and Keeg pulls out a flick-knife, the artist, unafraid, sneers at him: ‘My friend, the art critic.’ -Dan Fox -  frieze



THE CYCLE SAVAGES
BILL BRAME  (1969)
MOURICE SMITH PRODUCTIONS
82 MIN / USA

Hells Angels on Wheels (1967)

Hells Angels on Wheels is a 1967 American biker film directed by Richard Rush, and starring Adam Roarke, Jack Nicholson, and Sabrina Scharf. The film tells the story of a gas-station attendant with a bad attitude who finds life more exciting after he is allowed to hang out with a chapter of the Hells Angels outlaw motorcycle club.

The Angels first take note of "Poet" (Jack Nicholson) after one of them inadvertently damages his motorcycle and breaks its headlight. Poet, with far more guts than brains, challenges the Angel that hit his motorcycle. This is an act that would traditionally result in every Angel present participating in a group beating of the attacker. "When a non-Angel hits an Angel, all Angels retaliate." But the leader of the Angels, Buddy (Adam Roarke), intervenes and tells Poet that the Angels will replace the headlight. In the meantime, he's welcome to ride with them while they take care of business—which turns out to be going to a bar and beating up the members of another club who previously beat an Angel. Poet is told to wait outside, but ends up helping the Angels. Later that night, the Angels return the favor by hunting down and beating four sailors who beat Poet four-against-one after he parted company with the group. Poet accidentally bumps into one of the sailors and speaks rudely to him before he realizes that the sailor has three other sailors with him. The four sailors then refuse to accept his apology—but the Angels only know that four sailors beat up Poet, and he doesn't tell them how the earlier fight started. One of the sailors pulls a knife on the Angels and is then killed accidentally in the fight that follows.

Poet is allowed to ride with the Angels and is eventually elevated to "prospect" status. He is attracted to Buddy's some-time girlfriend (Sabrina Scharf) who toys with him while remaining hopelessly committed to Buddy. Much of the story that follows consists of scenes of the Angels partying or being provoked to violence by "squares." Although the Angels are shown as being loud and generally irreverent, they are never shown starting trouble except when taking revenge on members of other motorcycle clubs.

Eventually, Buddy's girlfriend succeeds in provoking a confrontation between Buddy and Poet with only one surviving. - From Wikipedia

HELLS ANGELS ON WHEELS
RICHARD RUSH  ( 1967)
FANFARE FILM PRODUCTIONS
95 MIN / USA

The Wild Angels (1966)

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 onscreen 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.

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. - From Wikipedia


THE WILD ANGELS
ROGER CORMAN (1966)
AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL PICTURES
95 MIN
USA

Return to the Planet of the Apes : Flames of Doom (1975)

Return to the Planet of the Apes is a short-lived animated series, by DePatie-Freleng Enterprises in association with 20th Century Fox Television, based upon Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle. Boulle's novel had previously been adapted in a series of movies, beginning with the 1968 Planet of the Apes starring Charlton Heston. Unlike the film, its sequels, and the 1974 live-action television series, which involved a primitive ape civilization, Return to the Planet of the Apes depicted a technologically advanced society, complete with automobiles, film, and television; as such it more closely resembled both Boulle's original novel and early concepts for the first Apes movie which were changed due to budgetary limitations in the late 1960s. Produced following the last of the big-screen features and a short-lived live action TV series, this series was among the last Planet of the Apes projects for several years following a number of comic books from Marvel Comics  (August 1974 - February 1977) and a series of audio adventures from Power Records in 1974. Aside from a number of comic book series published by Malibu Comics in the early 1990s, the next project based upon Boulle's concepts would be Tim Burton's reimagining in 2001.


As with the film and the live-action series, Return to the Planet of the Apes involved a handful of astronauts from Earth who were hurtled into the future and found themselves stuck in a world populated by advanced apes and primitive humans. Over the course of the thirteen episodes the astronauts attempted to keep one step ahead of the apes while at the same time trying to make some sense of what had happened. Additionally, they did their best to safeguard the human population from the apes.
Each episode was self-contained to an extent. The story threads did weave in and out, with characters and plots from earlier episodes popping up in later ones. In order for the series to make any sense, the episodes need to be viewed in order.

The animated series does chronologically fit with the rest of the Apes universe. It borrows characters and elements from the movies, the TV series, and the original novels. General Urko is borrowed from the TV series. Along with Zaius, Zira, and Cornelius, Brent (renamed here as Ron Brent) and Nova are from the movie series. Krador and the Underdwellers in the animated series are loosely based on the mutants in Beneath the Planet of the Apes. As with the live action television series, the animated series was concluded before the resolution of the storyline, and we do not learn if the astronauts are able to return to their own time period. But the animated series does otherwise offer a conclusion. Doctor Zaius, in recognising the threat of a military overthrow from General Urko, assures that he is relieved of command. Further, Cornelius and Zira, in recognising that Simian Society was established long after human society had deteriorated, believed that the time was right for humans to be offered equal rights to that of apes, and intend to present their proposition to the Senate. Characters in the animated series frequently mentioned prominent Apes noticeably named after human historical figures by appropriately inserting the word "ape" into their name. A notable example included "William Apespeare", an Ape analog of William Shakespeare. Another scene showed a couple of Ape soldiers chatting about a new movie called The Apefather, an apparent analog of The Godfather.


 EPISODE # 1 : FLAMES OF DOOM
Astronaut Bill Hudson transmits to Earth from the NASA spacecraft Venturer. On board are crew members Jeff Allen and Judy Franklin. The ship's date is August 6, 1976. Bill explains that they are living proof of Dr. Stanton's "time thrust" theory. Due to the advanced speed of the Venturer, their Earth clock indicates that they have traveled over a century into the future. The craft begins to reel wildly as the Earth clock starts clicking up. The crew blacks out while the ship enters a planet's atmosphere and crashes into a desolate desert region. Meanwhile, General Urko, leader of the gorilla army, is debating before the Supreme Council of Ape City. He demands permission to begin an all-out assault on the humanoids. Cornelius, an animal psychologist, pleads for the council to allow the humanoids to live as subjects of scientific research. The Council decrees that the humans should not be exterminated since they have no language, but they will continue to be hunted, enslaved, domesticated and studied. According to the Book of Simian Prophecy, however, the humanoids must be destroyed if it is ever discovered that they can speak. Bill, Jeff and Judy have escaped their disabled, sinking ship and rafted to shore. Bill's watch reveals the date still to be August 6, but in the year 3979 A.D. With no better plan, they begin trekking across the wasteland. They encounter sudden electrical storms, high-velocity winds, tremors, unexplained flames and ruins. Judy pleads with Bill and Jeff to go on without her, but they refuse. Another mysterious wall of flames consumes their survival packs. After many days, they find green, living plants; water must be nearby. Suddenly, a quake swallows Judy. Frantic, the men move to higher ground in the hopes of spotting her and find a puzzling and frightening sight: ape faces carved into the mountainside. They find a group of primitivel humans. They try to speak to them, but the primitives run away. Finally, Bill and Jeff collapse from exhaustion. The tribe takes the two men to their cave dwellings and nurse them back to strength. One of the tribe's women, Nova, is wearing US astronaut I.D. dog tags around her neck belonging to a Ronald Brent, an astronaut born in the year 2079. Bill and Jeff manage to teach Nova their names. Suddenly, gas bombs are thrown into the caves by gorilla attackers. Nova manages to hide Jeff, but Bill is captured along with most of the tribe and taken to Ape City in cages.

RETURN TO THE PLANET OF THE APES : FLAMES OF DOOM
20TH CENTURY FOX TELEVISION  (1975)
25 MIN
USA

Meteor (1979)

Meteor is a 1979 science fiction Technicolor disaster film in which scientists detect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth and struggle with international, cold war politics in their efforts to prevent disaster. The movie starred Sean Connery and Natalie Wood. It was directed by Ronald Neame and with a screenplay by Edmund H. North and Stanley Mann, "inspired" by a 1967 MIT report Project Icarus. The movie co-starred Karl Malden, Brian Keith, Martin Landau, Trevor Howard, Joseph Campanella, Richard Dysart and Henry Fonda.


After a collision between a comet and an asteroid named Orpheus, a five-mile-wide chunk of Orpheus is set on a collision course with Earth, with devastating results expected on impact. While the United States government and military engage in political maneuvering, other smaller and faster moving fragments rain down on Earth. The United States has a secret orbiting nuclear missile platform satellite named Hercules, which was thought of by Dr. Paul Bradley (Sean Connery) of the U.S. It was intended for defense against a massive space rock, but instead, it was demoted to an orbiting super weapon, its missiles now aimed at Russia. However, its fourteen nuclear missile armament is not enough to stop the meteor. The U.S. government discovers the existence of another weapon satellite constructed by the Soviet Union. The President (Henry Fonda) goes on national television and reveals the existence of Hercules, explaining it as a foresighted project to meet the threat that Orpheus represents. He also offers the Soviets a chance to save face and join in by saying they had the same foresight and have their own satellite weapon. Bradley requests a scientist named Dr. Alexei Dubov (Brian Keith) to help him plan a counter-effort against Orpheus.

Bradley and Harry Sherwood (Karl Malden) from NASA have already arrived at the control center for Hercules, which is located beneath the AT&T Building (now known as 195 Broadway) in Lower Manhattan. Major-General Adlon (Martin Landau) is the commander of the facility. Dubov and his assistant and interpreter Tatiana Donskaya (Natalie Wood) arrive and Bradley works at breaking the ice of distrust held by Hercules commander Adlon. Since Dubov cannot admit the existence of the Soviet device, he agrees to Bradley's proposal that they work on the "theoretical" application of how a "theoretical" Soviet space platform's weapons would be coordinated with the American ones. Meanwhile, further fragments of the meteor affect Earth, and the Soviets finally admit that they have the device and are willing to join in the effort. It appears that the satellite has a lot in common with Hercules, it was built with sixteen nuclear missiles for defense against a massive space rock, but it too was demoted to an orbiting super weapon, its missiles now aimed at the United States. The satellite is christened Peter the Great by the joint US-Soviet team working at Hercules control, and both satellites are turned around to aim into space. Unfortunately, smaller fragments and "splinters" still continue to strike many places on Earth, some causing great damage, including in Hong Kong, where a fragment hits the ocean and causes a Tidal wave that devastates the city. On Sunday morning, Peter the Great's missiles are fired off because of its position along the orbit, Hercules's missiles are fired 40 minutes later.

Just after Hercules's missiles are fired off, New York is struck by a large fragment of the meteor, destroying most of the city. Several workers inside the control center are killed when the facility is partially destroyed and the survivors slowly work their way out of the control center by going through the New York subway system, which has become somewhat of a trap due to the East River breaking into the tunnels. Meanwhile, the two sets of guided missiles link up into three waves of mixed nationality, each wave bigger than the last. The Hercules crew reach a subway station filled with other people and wait while others try to dig out. Back in space, the missiles reach the meteor. Two Russian missiles and one U.S. missile have been lost in the journey. The first wave of missiles strikes the space rock, making an explosion. The second wave follows with a bigger explosion. Finally, the third wave hits the meteor making an explosion that fills the screen. When the dust settles, the space rock is nowhere to be seen. Back at New York, the radio stations broadcast news of the result: Orpheus has been either obliterated or shifted to a harmless trajectory. Just then, the subway station occupants are rescued.

The scene then switches to an airport some time later, with a Soviet flag and an American flag on an open hangar door. From here, Dubov and Tatiana say goodbye to Bradley and others, then they board a plane with the Soviet star and it takes off for Russia - From Wikipedia


METEOR
RONALD NEAME  (1979)
AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL PICTURES
107 MIN
USA