Pharoiste

I recently remembered seeing this featured between films on HBO in its early days (late Seventies to early Eighties), when all they had to fill the space between feature films was either previews of other films or "shorts" such as this one. After doing some searches on it, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it has an IMDb entry. I didn't think IMDb included films this short.

The Vicious Cycles are a motorcycle gang. Or, at least, they sort of are: the gang members in this film don't actually ride motorcycles. Rather, they stand in a pose as if they were on motorcycles, then "ride down the road" using stop motion photography. Along the way, they meet a cute blonde trying to hitch a ride and also encounter a couple of other cycling clubs that get around the same way the Vicious Cycles do, including a group of meek scooter riders called the Mild Ones. Antics include the leader of the Vicious Cycles challenging the leader of the Mild Ones to a drag race -- the leader of the Mild Ones declines, so the Vicious Cycles "run them off the road" and cause a big crash.

The film features no dialogue. Instead, the story is communicated entirely thru facial expressions and gestures (for example, the Vicious Cycle gang leader challenges the leader of the Mild Ones to a race by poking the other guy in the nose, then pointing at himself, then pointing down the road toward the red light where the cute blonde stands ready to give the signal to start). This works better than actual lines would have and makes the whole thing quite a bit funnier than it would have been otherwise.

I'm pleased to be the first to be able to review and recommend "Vicious Cycles". It's easy to find online. Give it a look... you'll be glad you did.

Three middle-class women, all of whom are struggling financially for various reasons, decide to solve their problems by knocking over a fund-raising event at the local shopping mall. They "psych themselves up" by committing some small stickups and so forth at first, then they put the big plan in place -- and, of course, when the big day arrives, everything goes awry. Moderately entertaining, though not particularly noteworthy apart from some interesting casting notes, such as Dabney Coleman as an unassuming nice guy (something you don't see very often), Jessica Lange in a comedic role (ditto) and Jane Curtin in her first feature film, working alongside Susan Saint James, a partnership that would later be reprised in the successful sitcom "Kate & Allie".

This is the kind of film that, if you're of a particular age, you probably saw in grade school or junior high on cable TV when you were a kid, and now that it's popping up again on broadcast TV on a Sunday afternoon when you don't really have much else to do, you think to yourself, "Oh, hey, yeah, I remember that movie -- seeing that again might be kind of fun." And it is.

It's also quite watchable if you've never seen it before. Just don't expect to come away feeling as though your life has been changed, as it usually is with truly great comedies from that era (such as 1981's "Arthur").