Chrome and Hot Leather

I saw this movie today on cable. I enjoyed the beginning of the movie and up to the part where the three Green Berets rescue their friend from the bikers. After that, it became pretty obvious that the movie was quickly going down hill. All the army equipment scenes were pretty cheesy. I never saw LAAW rockets used in the manner the Berets used them here. Why, if someone is shooting off rockets and mortar rounds, would the biker gang not leave the valley the minute the rocket blasts started. My favorite biker movie is MAD MAX. Now that was a mean biker gang.

I must say, here was a bikie flick that really disappointed me. It's the most disappointing bikie flick I've seen in my life, when I first saw it at the tender age of fifteen. The title is fantastic and the cover was so appealing, but appearances can be deceiving. How can such a great titled movie represent such a dull film? Just watch Chrome And Hot Leather. Now some people may think I'm quite hard on this. Let me give you the rundown here. It has a good story/revenge premise of an ex green beret and his mob avenging a vicious gang of bikers, who've killed his fiancée. No surprise the lead bikie here is played by William Smith from The Losers, another bikie film, who came close to this on disappointed me, in it's first view, some shades of familiarity between the two as well. The Losers had a couple of men in berets too. Why you may ask this film doesn't work. In the violence and action department, it's remarkably restrained, and there's a lot of nothing happening moments, where the end is really when the movie perks. It's just flat, with nothing happening-ness. If judging the cover too, the movie looked more recent like eighties. We did have that rush of revenge running through our veins to see this beret to kick arse, only there wasn't enough kicking arse. Too much waiting around. We needed many more emotionally charged, and anger driven moments, that required more plot points, or even turning points. Trivia note. The lead beret, and other actor Peter Brown both starred in Rape Squad as very bad guys/rapists. And again, my true thoughts here: someone should rape this movie, before it's hired out again.

The saddest thing about "Chrome and Hot Leather" (1971) is that it could have been a fairly decent film; at least by American International biker film standards. They seem to have had a large budget; at least enough to cast in quantity if not quality; and to outfit their biker gang (Wizards) with Harley's-something that was often beyond the budget of these things.

They had William Smith, the best movie baddie of the day, for their gang leader T.J. and Michael Haynes for the chain-throwing mama slapping Casey. In fact the whole biker thing is handled pretty well by the standards of the early 1970's.

Then they had an extremely young Cheryl Ladd (she looks about 16 although she was 18) and former Miss Ohio and Miss America Runner-Up Kathy Baumann (note the John Havlicek Basketball Camp t-shirt she is wearing). In high school she dated someone I knew and she also looks about the same in this film as she did then. Unfortunately neither actress gets to show much in the way of acting skills or exploitable assets. .

This is one of those movies the Army and Air Force Exchange Service saw fit to show us GI's at posts and bases around with world back in the early 1970's. To us at the time virtually everything military related was unintentionally hilarious, from Peter Brown's non-GI haircut (if it was a paying role couldn't he at least have cut it enough so you could see a portion of his ears) to the moronic combat training. It got laughs from us for months whenever someone brought up the topic. On the other hand what was supposed to be the film's comic relief, sequences of Peter Brown and Company learning to ride motorcycles is funny only to those amused by things totally lame and stupid.

In retrospect the film never had a chance given its director Lee "The Man With Two Heads" Frost and its star, the aging Tony Young. When you look bad in comparison to a non-actor (Marvin Gaye plays Tony's pal) it is time to find another line of work. Young lined up the financing for this baby and hired Frost on the condition he be given the lead. You won't find a more wooden actor than Young, whose character looks like an extremely dour 55 year-old man and is supposed to be the love interest for the two teen actresses.

Several times they appear headed in the self-parody direction (if that is what they had emphasized the film would be a classic) and Smith lets you know that he is playing this thing for laughs. But this tiny attempt at real humor is dwarfed by the unintentional hilarity and the giggles you will get from the many continuity errors that occur throughout the movie.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

CHROME AND HOT LEATHER contains more biker mayhem perpetrated by folks who kinda, sorta look like actual bikers.

A motorcycle gang called THE WIZARDS are peeved when two women in a car accidentally knock one of them off their bike. This is a no-no, and costs the women dearly.

Enter Mitch (Tony Young) a Green Beret / Vietnam Vet, and fiance of one of the victims. Mitch is none too pleased and seeks satisfaction. Packed with action and early-1970's ambiance, CHROME is one of the better films of its sub-genre.

William Smith is really good as T. J. the leader of THE WIZARDS, and so is music legend Marvin Gaye as one of Mitch's Green Beret pals...

Come on now...a biker flick is supposed to be violent and sleazy. This one is so antiseptic it would have made it by TV censors in the 70's--even if the original American-International ads tried hard to suggest otherwise. It does contain one great line: As the biker gang leader prepares to rough up one of our heroes, he is distracted by a fellow gang member playing a noisy pinball machine, leading to remark, "Gabriel, can't you see that we're menacing someone?" Ludicrous music, seemingly from another film, accompanies one of the climactic fight scenes. Sadly, this film could give the Hell's Angels a good name.