Les démons de la violence

Two brothers have a plan on how to rob the Ceasar's Palace in Las Vegas.

They join a motorcycle gang and while the others are drinking and partying outside of town, they change their clothes and head off to rob the casino.

Of course, the police do not look for two well dressed criminals among the Hell's Angels.

Not a fan of this genre, but this is actually a good little movie with real Hell's Angels.

Interesting to take a look back at Las Vegas in the 60s too.

This movie begins with two brothers by the name of "Chuck" (Tom Stern) and "Wes" (Jeremy Slate) who mysteriously decide to head out west in order to meet the Oakland branch of the Hell's Angels. Donning a jacket with their own motorcycle club logo they manage to partially ingratiate themselves with the group and then proceed to coerce them into riding to Las Vegas. What the Hell's Angels don't realize is that these two brothers have a secret plan which carries a great amount of risk for all concerned. Now rather than reveal any more of this movie I will just say that it had a bit more mystery than most "biker films" out there and tended to get better as the movie progressed. Admittedly, the acting wasn't exactly top-notch but even so it was adequate enough. Likewise, there were a couple of scenes toward the end which seemed a bit too unbelievable but that's typical of Hollywood I suppose. In any case, I thought that this was a solid biker movie and because of that I rate it as about average.

The Orson Wells of Motorcycle films, Tom Stern, turns in one of his best performances. For nothing more than a "B" film, this turns into a highly enjoyable robbery heist flick in the nature of Ocean's 11.

Stern teams up with his buddy Jerome Slate to play spoiled,bratty, millionaire brothers who decide to rob a Vegas hotel while posing as members of the Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club. The story plot is surprisingly good and the acting and action scenes are very well done.

The Vegas of 1969 is captured, and boy has it changed! Hell's Angel leader Ralph "Sonny" Barger steals the show simply by playing himself. Overall an impressive effort by Tom Stern.

I'd watch "Hell's Angels 69" a hundred times before I'd watch "Easy Rider" again. If you are tired of stoner biker movies where essentially nothing happens other than perhaps several pretentious ego trips, then skip "The Wild Angels", and come along for a ride with the real deal, "Hell's Angels 69". This is a film that actually has a plot, infiltrating a biker gang to pull off a casino heist, while leaving the bikers holding the bag. Things don't exactly go as planned, ending with a desert chase on dirt bikes, and a final showdown. Sonny Barger and his authentic cycle gang buddies deliver realistic performances not found in other biker films. Recommended of it's type. - MERK

I saw this in a theater when it came out, but I wasn't sitting with the audience, I was running the projectors. Every other biker film had come through there so I had seen them all. I didn't notice it at the time, but the dialog in this one is pretty well written. Jeremy Slate, that B movie bad guy who would show up in a big production once in a while, wrote the screenplay and he did a pretty good job.

The acting is hit or miss, since some of the important roles were played by people who weren't professional actors. A few of them spoke some funny lines which may have been improvs by the players. Those players were famous in their own right since they were Oakland Hell's Angels. The line by Tiny, "You know what? Mark it onna map fo'us" cracked me up and that was the second funny line he had spoken. Earlier in the story, he said of his aunt, "She thinks I'm still matriculatin' at Stanford."

The story and the dialog were quite a cut above what is usually on display in biker flicks. I liked this one better 54 years later when I saw it for the second time.