L'Ange sauvage

I have to confess that pretty much all biker movies leave me cold, so I approached "Angels Die Hard" with some prejudice. However, I am pretty sure that fans of biker movies will find this effort to be really below par. It's really badly scripted - there's next to no plot, with the movie more often than not coming across as if it was being made up as filming was going on. The characters are either stereotypes or, in the case of the bikers, poorly introduced and given little to make them real characters. Headline star William Smith can't seem to do a thing with his poorly written character, though his half-hearted performance definitely is much better than the abysmal acting by the rest of the cast. The movie's one saving grace is its soundtrack, filled with songs by unknown rock n roll groups (including East-West Pipeline, who later did the fabulous songs in the biker movie "Bury Me An Angel) that are interesting and/or catchy. I don't know if a soundtrack album was released for this movie, but look for that instead of watching the movie itself.

This movie begins with approximately 30 members of "the Angels" motorcycle gang riding into the small town of "Whiskey Flat" and starting a drunken brawl at a bar that night. However, after the sheriff arrests one of the members the bikers agree to leave town if he is released in a couple of days. True to his word he releases his prisoner but he is subsequently killed by an unknown person while attempting to make it back to his gang. Naturally, the bikers are furious and want to get even but first they have to bury their dead comrade in their own customary manner. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that the main problem with this film is that it spent a great amount of time on less-important matters than it did with some of the more relevant scenes. The funeral for the dead biker is one such example. But even so, although there are certainly better "biker movies" made during this particular period of time, I didn't think this film was a total waste and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.

Mostly knew what I was in for, but tuned in anyway because I'm a sucker for seeing CA towns on film as they appeared back in the '70's.

Was proud of self for just *knowing* that that was Battlin' Bill Smith, though couldn't come up with his name at the time.

But the surprise takeaway here, as pointed out by other reviewers, is that the "soundtrack", as it were -- effectively a collection of songs playing over, and essentially unrelated to the events on the screen -- was really, *really* good.

Sadly, you may have to sit through the flick to hear it, or try to track it down separately. But by the time the film was on to the third or fourth song, with me struggling to stay awake besides, I remember thinking that each tune was either (a) catchy, in a quirky way, or (b) something I had never heard before, yet which was listenable *and* seemed to capture the "feel" of the times.

Probably way more time and effort spent on this than it was worth, but seriously, try it out and see if it's not a great musical backdrop to an otherwise, y'know, mediocre flick.

I don't know about the other reviews, but this is possibly the best biker flick of 70. Good cast with William Smith- GREAT Bikes, and a partial plot. That was more than 90 percent of the biker movies from that time. I got mine from Snappy video, and they cleaned it up fairly well, in Widescreen with a good soundtrack. Even has real songs, though dated. This is one for the late night library.

This film doesn't really have a plot. It just seems to meander from event to event until it runs out of movie.

The pacing is S-L-O-W, and even the fight scenes are confusing and not much fun to watch. Better than "Black Bikers From Hell" or "The Dirt Gang," but not by much.

Memorable scenes include the biker poetry reading, the spaghetti rape sequence, and the funeral oration.

If you have a tolerance built up for bad movies, it's almost worth watching. If you don't, it will swallow your soul.