Hells Angels on Wheels

When he loses his job, gas station attendant Poet (Academy Award-winner Jack Nicholson) falls in with a rough band of Hells Angels who terrorize Northern California in a hellraising frenzy of parties and gang fights. Choppers, drugs, sex, murder and mayhem ensue as Poet and gang leader Buddy (Adam Roarke) head down a dark road to danger. From acclaimed cult director Richard Rush (The Stunt Man) with cinematography by the legendary László Kovács (Easy Rider, Paper Moon) and music by Stu Phillips (Battlestar Gallactica, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls).

This pair of Joe Solomon-produced biker dramas are two of the better examples of the '60s subgenre. Jack Nicholson stars in Hell's Angels on Wheels as a moody cycle-riding gas station attendant adopted by Adam Roarke's gang when he jumps into a friendly bar fight. It's a fairly blatant rip-off of Roger Corman's The Wild Angels, but director Richard Rush (who next teamed up with Nicholson for the counterculture classic Psych-Out) offers up a lifestyle that's less nihilistic than simply meaningless and winds the unlikely friendship between restless Nicholson and rootless Roarke into an inevitable clash over basic philosophical differences (namely, Jack wants Adam's girl, and Adam wants Jack to kowtow to his leadership). William Smith is an unusual hero in Run Angel Run: he's a sellout on the run from vengeful biker clubs up and down the coast. Director Jack Starrett, a former actor in biker movies himself (Hell's Angels on Wheels, among others), creates a taut little picture highlighted by impressive stunts (Smith jumps onto the flat car of a moving train). Smith's brooding, taciturn performance mellows when he takes a job on a rural sheep farm and connects with a career farmer who used to be a barnstorming biker in the 1950s. "I gotta be free man, I gotta fly," confesses Angel, but at what price? Both pictures were cheaply made for quick playoff, but there's an interesting attempt to explore the tension between the thrill of the road and the hollow activity passing for freedom. The set comes in a cool-looking 8 by 12 tin storage container, but the tapes do not have separate video sleeves. --Sean Axmaker