The WILD ANGELS

After a brief run in August in a theater on 42nd Street, unsupported by critical comment, that notorious Roger Corman film, entitled <i>The Wild Angels</i>, opened here in the neighborhood theaters yesterday.
This is the brutal little picture about a California motorcycle gang and its violent depredations that was shown at the Venice festival as an American entry (by invitation) and causted a few diplomats to mop their brows. It is an embarrassment, all right, a vicious account of the boozing, fighting, pot smoking vandalizing and raping done by a gang of «sickle riders» who are obviously drawn to represent the swastika-wearing Hell's Angels, one of several disreputable gangs on the West Coast. And despite an implausive ending and some rather amateurish acting by Peter Fonda and Nancy Sinatra in the leading roles, it gives a pretty good picture of what these militant motorcycle-cult gangs are. Corman has shot the whole thing in color and in a cinéma vérité style that makes it resemble a documentary. Boy, what a Christmas season show!
Bosley Crowther
«New York Times»
22. December 1966
«I think what may have happened, I may have been swepted up in their stories, and gotten, as I shot the picture, a little involved and a little excited about their way of life, because I know I look at them bit differently now than I did at that time, and I look at them with ... a little bit less of an admiring eye. Because when we were shooting the picture we had the San Bernadino Sheriff's Department, the California State Highway Police, and I think several local cities sent their policemen out to keep us under guard at all times, and I felt this was a little out of hand, and I explained it to one of the guys from San Bernadino Sheriff's Department, he wanted to arrest some of them on some charges they had, I said, hey, look, these guys are just doing a job. As a matter of fact, for some of them, for the first time in their lives, they are getting paid to do a job and do what they want to do. They're riding their bikes, having fun, being out in the desert and getting paid. And at that time my sympathies did start to go a little bit to them for that reason. They were, in many respects, being unjustly hasseled by the law.»
Roger Corman

This film is screened together with <filmlink id=\"2800\">God Respects Us When We Work, But Loves Us When We Dance</filmlink>.
1968, Les Blank / Skip Gerson, 15 min