The Wild Rebels

A youthful race car driver named Rod Tillman (Steve Alaimo) unconvincingly gives up racing and, after a chance encounter with a biker group, joins the group, composed of three idiot dudes and their shared girlfriend. Trouble is, the bikers like to rob businesses for "kicks", which invites inept cops. The result is a not very believable story with contrived action and some hokey performances.

Steve Alaimo isn't too bad as an actor. But the actors who play the bikers are simply awful. The characters they play have been described as the three stooges, and I tend to agree; they act retarded. Which renders the Tillman character's decision to join them not credible. Further, the film contains multiple plot holes, mostly involving the cops. The entire story seems fake. It's as if the writers spent all of ten minutes putting the script together, and without bothering to edit it.

Dialogue is hopelessly dated and consists of beatnik blather. "Do you dig this?" "What now daddy?" And "bread" translates to "money". Some of the action is laughable, like when one of the bikers, to escape the cops, runs out of a lighthouse toward the cops, hops on a police motorcycle and rides away. The cops don't fire on him as he approaches them; they let him ride away and then they shoot.

Color cinematography is adequate if unremarkable. Day-for-night camera filters are really obvious. Outdoor scenes appear to have been shot in real locations, which adds a sense of realism. Steve Alaimo sings a couple of songs, which has the effect of interrupting the plot flow and suggesting that the script was written with no purpose other than to promote his singing career.

"Wild Rebels" is not as bad as its reputation. But it really doesn't seem to have any point, and the story and acting are generally hokey. It's one of those cheap, meaningless drive-in films wherein the main draw is an excuse to eat buttery popcorn.

Steve Alaimo takes time from his musical career to star as a washed-up stock car racer. He gets recruited by a motorcycle gang whose outfits tastefully combine the worst of ragpickers' work and Nazi memorabilia. After they beat up random guys in a bar because, they get Alaimo to be their getaway driver in their latest fund-raising expedition. What they don't know is he's an undercover cop.

Everyone is thoroughly unlikable, but the technical issues are decently covered; it's a constant mystery to me that there are plenty of fine cameramen -- even if their only previous run as DP was THE WILD WOMEN OF WONGO -- sound technicians and mixers, but writing a story and characters that you can care about remains a mystery. Never mind. There's a well-shot final shootout in the well of a lighthouse, with lots of overhead shots. Doubtless it's all symbolic, man. Woohoo.

"Wild Rebels" was probably a fun second film at a drive in movie triple feature 40 years ago. It hasn't aged very well, but it was never meant to age well; it was obviously intended to be disposable, forgettable fun from its inception. Taken on that level, it's a good example of the biker flick genre.

Several elements help distinguish it from the dozens of similar films being churned out at the same time. The 'hero', 'Rod Tillman' (Steve Alaimo) comes off as somewhat of an unimpressive 'Everyman' - he's not especially brave, tough, talented, or handsome (although he does win a fight with a tough biker gang member halfway into the film, and the girl gang member chooses to help him over her fellow gang member at the end of the film). The soundtrack is quite well done, featuring a nice 'Ventures' style bass/drum riff that keeps things moving and saxophones and brass charts that pep things up quite a bit. And although the script is pretty shallow, all the actors inhabit their cardboard characters convincingly and with a fair amount of energy.

There are plenty of careless technical gaffes: terrible 'day-for-night' scenes that occur in broad daylight, squealing tires in a swamp, fire sirens mistakenly stuck on the soundtrack instead of police sirens, a bank sign made of duct tape on a ceiling tile, a Luger that sounds like a Winchester 30-06, shotgun blasts that cut down people 100 yards away, a detective killing a biker on a 3rd floor landing from the ground with a revolver with a 2 inch barrel.

There are a whole bunch of goofy story elements : Linda (the girl gang member) disables a bank guard with a drug-filled syringe, the final shootout takes place inside a lighthouse (!), police roadblocks don't actually block roads, the police apparently never heard of ducking, and the police detectives apparently never heard of planting bugs or having their undercover guy wearing a wire.

But the plot chugs along, the cameraman knows what he is doing, the pacing in most scenes is pretty good, and there are some nice, zippy one liners and dialog exchanges here and there that keep the energy level up. (My favorite: "Man, you're messing with private stock! (ie, Linda)" So no, don't seek this one out or anything, but if a copy of the MST version should fall in your hands, you should have some good, shallow fun watching it. Vastly superior to "Five the Hard Way" or "The Hellcats" or even 'Girl In Gold Boots' (three other MST covered counter culture movies).

William Grefé is among the very worst directors of the 60s-70s, with such crap as "Death Curse of Tartu", "Sting of Death", "Impulse" and "Stanley" among his many achievements in film making. Most of these were filmed near his home in Florida...around the Everglades, Miami and Jupiter. And, they were done CHEAPLY...very, very cheaply. Al Adamson, Ray Dennis Steckler and Ed Wood all are about as good...or infamous...as Grefé.

Of all the films he made, "The Wild Rebels" is probably the best...which isn't saying much since I giver it a 3. It's not good...but compared to the rest of his films, it' practically an art film!

Rod is a race car driver who is frankly tired of one too many accidents, so he's decided to quit. Shortly after this, he's approached by the leader of a biker gang, as they want to hire Rod to be their getaway driver in a series of robberies. He naturally refuses but is convinced later by the police to return to them and accept their offer.

The problem with so much of the film is that it doesn't seem to know where it's going. This is especially true as Rod supposedly works for the police...though there's no coordination or plan. And, because of that, he nearly gets killed during the course of a bank robbery and getaway. Additionally, the acting and dialog seem pretty amateurish. But on the plus side, it's really not boring and occasionally it even manages to be more or less competent. Not a glowing endorsement, but for the director, this is high praise indeed.

By the way, if you do watch this film, note that the police must all be legally blind and stupid. See the last 10 minutes of the movie and you'll see what I mean!

Wild Rebels is fun in a bad way, but also frustrating due to the actual good, or at least workable, elements in the story. It deals with a race car driver (Steve Alaimo) who gets mixed up in a group of bikers called Satan's Angels, who hang around a lot until they decide to rob a bank. Meanwhile Alaimo also gets recruited by the cops to report back to them what the Angels are up to and where they'll rob next. It's not even that the film is really too 'dated', though it does of course carry the significantly crude and stupid music in the film (from the band on stage in one scene, to Alaimo "performing" if you could call that drek that, to the regular generic score).

It's just that there's not more care taken by the filmmaker into putting a little more logic, direction, and better actors for the parts. As it is I didn't have a major disliking towards the film, as I did with the Hellcats, but it almost left me a little indifferent to it all, too. What could come through as being unpredictable only comes through with stupid things like the name of the Florida town ('Citrusville' ho-ho). So it's not completely un-worthy then of its Mystery Science Theater 3000 status as of late. The commentary is good on the movie, even if once or twice I almost wanted to hear what the characters on screen were saying in case it might have some worth. Wild Rebels might be more of a good time if you've got a six-pack and low expectations, but as it is I wouldn't watch it again.