Knightriders

I'd wanted to see Romero's KNIGHTRIDERS for a long time for the sake of completeness, but its rarity works against it even for fans of the director. Thankfully Amazon Prime have rectified things by making it available for viewing. Seen today, it's a heavily dated production that feels quite rural and low budget, very much a product of its era, but not without merit. For novelty alone, fans will enjoy seeing lots of horror stars making appearances, including DAWN OF THE DEAD's Ken Foree, Scott H. Reiniger, and Tom Savini. The latter has possibly the biggest acting role of his career and is good in the part too. The narrative plays out as a modern-day character study of bikers and actors reenacting the old tales of King Arthur and his Round Table, and deserves kudos for offering up something original. Ed Harris is very good as the lead but the film is about an hour overlong, and the impressive motorbike jousting scenes only go so far.

In between all of the horror from "Dawn Of The Dead" (1978) and "Creepshow" (1982), George Romero directed the ambitious and unusual "Knightriders" (1981). This greatly overlooked film is quite clearly one of Romero's more personal and mature film efforts to date.

A very youthful Ed Harris plays Billy, a self-styled King Arthur-type, who's the "crowned" leader of the Knightriders. This travelling troupe of performers stage jousts (in full armor) while on motorcycles for the entertainment of all the thrill-seeking spectators at county fairs.

As the story goes - Billy tries to persuade his followers to live under an old-fashioned code of honor, but the constant pressure of balancing ideals against realities, and the financial problems of running The Knightriders as a business, inevitably leads to conflicts and trouble.

Yes. "Knightriders" is a bit silly at times. But, all-in-all, it is pretty good entertainment, even though it is a tad long with a running time of 145 minutes.

I think that Romero did a fine job with the "Knightrider's" story, which reflects the choice that many artists make between "pure" expression of their vision (whatever that might be) and a compromise to achieve commercial success.

Start with the idea of jousting like the knights did, but atop motorcycles instead. Turn that into a traveling show complete with rubber hammers and a Ren-Faire flair. Make this all the brainchild of a lunatic in love with making his fantasies reality, to the point of a hierarchy with him placed atop as king and a full code of conduct he demands his legion follow. The film starts with these pieces in place and proceeds to display them in turn. Of course, the drama is the day that everyone decides this is not such a cool thing anymore (note: not the same day for everyone!). And all directed by Mr. Dead himself George Romero. It is called KNIGHTRIDERS and there are no talking cars or Hasselhoffs within light years of this film. There is a natural feel to this movie, despite the qualms you might have with the premises. To me, this all seemed rather plausible and they chronicle people falling through the cracks of society and into this odd traveling counterculture. There is a great deal of moto-action, maybe too much. But even though you know these are stuntmen, they eat dirt hard, and you still think people got hurt knowing full well these are coordinated stunts. The jousts are meant to be realistic and they really go after one another and take real injuries in the world of the movie, unlike the traditional Ren-Faire show. Another realistic touch is that in order to drum up more attention, the show opens up to local bikers to try themselves hitting melons with jousts and axes. This of course is heaping bad idea upon bad idea – in terms of managing the show, adding more moto-action. I'm not sure if Romero has actors repeat scenes numerous times together or just has an eye for talent, but despite the cheesy lines and plots involved in this movie, the delivery presents itself as if the people truly believed. Not over the top drama, just natural delivery of the dialogue. There is very funny business in the movie, like the gay love plot, but there is definite good stuff too. I actually liked the depiction of the naïve girl who runs away from home to join the troup and her uncanny 'follow the leader' mentality I found again realistic. Ed Harris stars as the King and he has some really cool explosive scenes where he yells at everyone. One was totally awesome in particular and had me believe Harris was into the role more than anything at that moment in time and he really helped sell this movie to me. Toss in the best Stephen King cameo you will ever see and the package is a good one. The flaws are: 1) a little heavy on the motorcycles over and over 2) very long movie 3) very corny. The upsides are: 1) solid performances 2) natural feeling 3) chivalry & the knight theme 4) pretty good stunts That was my review to try and sell this film. I hope you check it out or have already. I liked it a whole ton, it captured my attention very well. It was in the cult section of my local movie store, not sure why. For the record, dudes do not ride around town pretending to be knights as I feared it might be, there's no monsters, it is a movie about bikers putting on shows and their sick circle of friends falling apart.

From what I gather, "Knightriders" didn't do very well at the box office when it was released. Upon watching it, it's easy to come up with plausible explanations for this. While the poster seemed to promise wall-to-wall action, there isn't that much of it, and what action there is often becomes monotonous. The movie tries to do so much that many of the plot threads feel unfinished at the end. And of course, the unbelievably long running time - 145 MINUTES!!!

Yet at the same time, I can't really call this a BAD movie - I would lean more to calling it "misguided". That's because as problem-filled the movie is, there are some good things about it. The actors give their characters a lot of heart - Brother Blue is especially good. (And I thought Savini actually wasn't bad in his role as well.) While the action scenes become monotonous, there are some impressive stunt sequences. The medieval-style music score fits like a glove. And there are some moments that are just *perfect*, the best being the opening sequence.

If you do watch it, I recommend that you split up your viewing into several sessions, so that you don't become too bored by how the movie keeps, well, spinning its wheels. There's a great movie hiding in there - perhaps with a lot of work (and a little magic), it might one day be successfully remade.

OK, besides Ed Harris and Tom Savini, who else is in this amazing biker film from the early 80s? Well, it doesn't really matter because sometimes things just come together in a way that transcends what the likely original intent was, to patch together a biker movie about jousting knights who engage in feudal combat from motorcycles instead of horses. Yep. The costumes are a bit cheesy, the acting is a bit raw and amateurish and the story..., ah, the story: The story is the Arthurian tragedy of innocence, self sacrifice, honor and unfaithfulness. The tale works around the triad of the King, the very young Ed Harris, the villain, the wonderful Tom Savini and the knight protector, Lancelot, Gary Lahti. Each of these figures represents an archetype which very likely unbeknown to the film makers and they come through wonderfully in the way in which this tale is patched together. Billy,as the King Arthur prototype is idealistic, uncompromising loyal to his own mythology and like the legendary Arthur, ego-less. His loyal knight retainer, Alan, is Lancelot in his nobility and loyalty to his sovereign while coveting his wife all the time. Savini is purely delightful as the Modred counterpart, even taking Morgan le Fay's name as a pun. Morgan covets the crown and tries to usurp it by going off only to discover his new realm is a forest of paper tigers. The final scene and resolution of the tragedy works wonderfully, giving a the only glimpse of the famous story-teller and raconteur, Brother Blue as the wizard, Merlin.

As an anthropologist and mythologist, I saw this tale back in the early 80s and was impressed how the underlying mythology of an essentially low budget film held together in such a wonderful way in spite of a few flaws. I consider it a cult classic.