Conference bookie::movies

This  first reply should be for Easy Rider, but since I haven't seen it yet,
I'll just have to tell you about this other biker flick I saw.

It's called "Psychomania", and it's about an undead biker gang.  Utterly
bizarre; whatever the screenwriter was on when he wrote this, I want some.
Acting and dialogue are true ZZZ-grade, but the idea and overall execution
kept me entertained.

I'll put the plot synopsis behind a form feed, but it really makes for a 
captivating tale:



I think I may have missed the first few minutes due to the station time shifting
the movie about 15 minutes, but the first scene I saw was one where the gang
was burying one of their comrades who had died somehow.  Now there wasn't
a coffin, they had just put the guy in riding position on his bike, and lowered 
bike and guy into a hole.  As the gang stood around and prepared to throw
the dirt back in, some unknown older guy walks up and puts a necklace of
some sort in with the dead bike dude.  Since I FF'ed over most of the dialogue,
I never found out who this guy really was, I'll call him Dad for lack of a 
better explanation (he might have been the Devil).

Next thing we know, "innocent couple" have car trouble, and the "Innocent
male" sets off across the dead biker graveyard in search of help. 
Wouldn't you know it, the dead biker dude has arisen from the dead, and has
developed overwhelming bloodlust.  It takes him about 30 seconds to run over
the "innocent male". (BTW, this is set in the daytime, and the cinemetographer
makes sure that we don't miss any bit of contact between bike and IM).

So Mr. Undead Biker 1 goes back to the rest of the gang and tells them
how much fun it is to be undead and kill living things.  He also mentions
that once you're undead, you can't die again, so you can run into things 
without having to worry about bodily harm.  A couple of the gang think this is
totally rad, and go kill themselves by running their bikes through the side of
a delivery truck.

Now Undeads 2 and 3 take to terrorizing highway motorists.  There are several
shots of them running cars off the road, then they settle on this truck
driver.  Undead 2 pulls a hunting knife with six-inch blade and slashes the 
truck's tire (remember, this is all being done at highway speed), truck 
promptly careens from the highway and explodes.

Local law enforcement throws the rest of the gang in gaol, they spend about 
five minutes there before Undead 2 and 3 rescue them by driving their 
bikes into the station and taking out the officers.  Rest of the gang is 
duly impressed and decide that undead really is the way to go.  The next 
part of the film shows various gang members defenestrating, jumping from an 
overpass onto the freeway, jumping from an airplane and not using the parachute,
and, my favorite, getting wrapped in a bulky and heavy looking chain then
wading into a pond and drowning no more than three feet from shore.

All the bodies get delivered to the morgue at the same time, which sets the 
scene for all the morgue personnel to meet their doom.  Meanwhile, the last
biker girl chickens out on her barbituatue overdose, and merely ends up
in the hospital.  Somehow after that, she ends up back with the rest of the
undead (I FF'ed through this slow part).

The gang decide to terrorize a small grocery store.  They drive their
bikes into the store and make sure to run into every large product display
available.  After about two minutes of flying toilet paper, the gang
takes a breather, and a baby starts to cry.  The mother and baby carriage
are spotted in the frozen food aisle, and are quickly mowed down.  The
undeads think this is more fun than a barrel of monkeys, except
for the chicken girl, who is horrified.  Undead 1 sees her expression and
is suspicious.  He suggests they go to Mom and Dad's house (people who
may be the devil).

Turns out that the house is surrounded by a large brick wall.  Undead 1
suggests driving through the wall, and promptly reduces a bike-sized portion
to chalk-dust.  Chicken girl, being still of this Earth, swerves around
the wall.  Undead figures out she's still alive, she says she doesn't 
want to die.  

I started to FF over the dialogue at this point, but from what I could tell,
Mom and Dad start some demonic ritual, and the biker gang all go back to
the biker graveyard.  Undead 1 tries to persuade chicken girl to shoot 
herself before Mom and Dad finish the ritual.  Chicken girl refuses, the
Mom turns into a frog, and the biker gang turn into large blobs of 
stone.  Chicken girl lives happily ever after.

I'm telling you, I couldn't have done a better job if I had TRIED to 
write a weird movie.

Two thumbs out of five, but only after they've been crushed by a hammer.

Lisa

	Not a biker flick per se, but "Terminator 2" with Arnie in
	a bikers clothes on a motorcycle was pretty damn funny
	(probably the closest I'll ever get to watching a real
	biker film :-).

    Re .1: Yeah, "Psychomania" _was_ pretty wild, wasn't it? Like the story
    was generated from some fantasy role-playing "random plot device"
    list... 
    
    From MST3K we get "Sidehackers," which is a really, really, really bad
    movie featuring motorcyclists who've invented this dandy new sport,
    where they mount these outrigger things to their cycles and race around
    with two people on board, one driving and the other hanging off the
    outrigger thing to provide extra balance on turns (like the folks one
    sees on sailboats hanging on to ropes for dear life as they lean back
    over the water to try and keep the boat from tipping over). We get to
    watch entirely too much footage of this sport before the plot wanders
    into a typical bad-guys-kill-good-guy's-girlfriend-vengeance-is-mine
    story. The acting's horrible, the writing's horrible, the filming is
    horrible - you get the idea. (It was a very funny MST movie.)
    
    -b

    
    	I have "Psychomania" on video ... that and "Alice Sweet Alice"
    	[with Brooke Shields] is sold as a "double feature" in depart-
    	ment stores.
    
    	And both are very strange.
    
    							GTI
    

    Going-against-the-tide sort-of-a-biker flick: "Mask," in which the
    biker gang was *not* dedicated to pillage and slaughter, but were
    basically your weather-beaten folks in leather and tattooes, out to
    have a good time. [Quiz: How many other movies can you name that
    featured motorcycle gangs in other than a villainous role?]
    
    -b

    those Clint movies...any which way but loose ones....that biker gang
    was anything but villainous ! :')

    George Romero's "Knightriders" and "Dawn of the Dead" both put novel
    spins on the biker film.
    
    Lisa, you didn't mention that "Psychomania"'s Dad was played by George
    "I leave you all to your cesspool of a planet" Sanders! That definitely
    gets my MUST-SEE MUST-SEE MUST-SEE light blinking.
    
    Ray

    RE: .5  by DSSDEV::RUST 
    
    >Quiz: How many other movies can you name that featured motorcycle gangs
    >in other than a villainous role?
    
    "Scorpio Rising".
    

    RE: .5  by DSSDEV::RUST 
    
    >Quiz: How many other movies can you name that featured motorcycle gangs
    >in other than a villainous role?
    
    "The Last Grenade"
    
    Early 1970s.  The Army can't cross into Cambodia to kill VC hiding there 
    so they hire the bikers to do it for them.  Good ending; I didn't see
    much of the rest of it (I was at a drive-in with my girlfriend).
    
      John

"Easy Rider", if two make a gang...

    I think Easy Rider is the *only* biker movie I've ever seen.
    
    Lorna
    

    
    The "worst" biker movie ever made was "She-Devils on Wheels".
    
    If I recall it was made by Hershel Lewis back in the early, early
    sixties. 
    
    A real drive-in movie.
    
    Dave
    

    No, no, no, the worst biker movie was "The Undertaker and his Friends". 
    I saw this on a triple bill at the Medford Twin back in '69? 70? with
    "Nite of the Living Dead".
    
    Truly an Awful� film.  I've never seen nor heard of it since.  The
    Undertaker/biker had a shop next door to a greasy spoon run by more
    bikers.  The "Soup du jour" usually featured the Undertaker's most
    recent client.  
    
    carl
    

    
    Check out 'The Wild One', starring Marlon Brando. Typical 50's wild
    bike gang rolls into Smalltown, USA and tears it up, whilst the local
    goody-two-shoes gal falls for Marlon !
    
    Classic if only for the cliches (and Brando) !
    
    - acp

Not quite on the same theme, but _BORN_TO_RIDE_ is one....a bit tame, and the 
stunts are not that exceptional....the old Harleys are interesting though...

    re .14, back when Brando was actually cute and sexy!  Difficult to
    believe when looking at the Brando of today.  Unlike some actors, such
    as Clint Eastwood and Sean Connery, Brando has *not* aged well!
    
    Lorna
    

    
    Born Losers (circa 1967)
    Notable for introducing Billy Jack (Tom Laughlin)
    
    Wild Angels( circa 1965)
    Based on Hunter S. Thompson's "Hells Angels" and featuring
    Jack Nicholson

    Masters of Menace more of a comedy no violance.
    
    

    
    Not really a biker movie, but "The Stranger " caught my eye on cable
    last night. 
    
    	Bad ass bunch of bikers rule a small town. A stranger comes to town
    to 'take care of the bikers'. Bad acting and shallow plot but a couple
    of interesting twists. The stranger is a woman. She kicks everyon's
    butt.
    
    	The story line followed the Clint Eastwood movie - High Plain's
    Drifter almost to the letter. 
    
    ed 

   "Surf Nazis Must Die" - I haven't seen it myself, but it gets covered a lot
   when people do "bad biker movies" lists.

   There are two Hell's Angels movies from the late '60s, early '70s.  They
   both have real original titles like, "Hell's Angels", and maybe "Hell's
   Angels on Wheels", but they're similar.  One stars a very young Jack
   Nicholson, and the other is mostly no-names.  Pretty funny.

   Then there's the video tape I picked up at the Harley Rendezvous in upstate
   NY a few years ago, but thats a little different...  :-)  (Not smut, just a
   video of the "event".)

   -- Sam

    
    	The 1st thing I thought of when reading that entry was "High
    	Plains Drifter".