Les Machines du diable

When I first saw this movie, I turned off after a while, really finding it a bore. 14 years later, I gave it another day in court. I watched it to the end. This is an unremarkable movie, about a group of expendable bikies, you feel sorry for, as they are so pathetic. They're sent in to Asia to rescue a thankless CIA guy, who shouts abuse at them, after most of these poor sods are already dead. where leader, Smith is really the last man standing. This really chafed only for a moment, cause this movie really lacks any kind of interest. We do explosions and gun fire but again I just found it pointless. One bikie, having some R and R with some nude hotties, not following procedure, explains himself to one of the guys in charge of this operation, which I found funny. He brags on how he used to own this cat house, and had to pick up some money that was owing to him. At the mentioning of his bike being flogged, by a kid ,he's out of there in a flash. The scenes in this cat house were the only ones I liked in this forgettable movie, part of the Roadshow Vibrant Video collection.

When the president's chief adviser is captured by enemy forces in Cambodia, the CIA, in it's infinite wisdom, recruits members of the Hell's Angels in order to pull him out. Can we say 'expendable'? Aside from being criminally grotesque and sinfully stupid, these hog-jockeys spend most of their time trying to get organized and end up kicking the snot out of each other. And on top of that, they won't complete their mission without a bitchin' combat-ready chopper between their legs. That oughta come in handy in the jungle. Be sure not to miss the scene where a spindly member of the gang offers his fat biker buddy an ammends brewski, then hammers him in the gut with everything he's got, leading into a slow-motion exploding spit-up which I'm sure you'll want to savor every single frame of.

William Smith is my all time favorite B-Movie actor- a truly talented individual whose list of lifelong accomplishments is extraordinary. He single handedly made movies like "The Losers" watchable and even enjoyable if you don't take them too seriously. The film centers around the U.S. Army hiring a motorcycle gang to rescue a presidential adviser being held captive in Cambodia. Smith plays gang leader Link Thomas, whose Army Sergeant brother sets up the mission. Most of the movie is spent focusing on events leading up to the mission with the gang partying, smoking, getting in fights and souping up their choppers as the rescue nears.

The acting is average, although a respectable cast (Adam Roarke, Paul Koslo & Bernie Hamilton) was assembled. There is too much time spent on love interests which tends to bog down the film, but the latter half especially is very entertaining as the mission takes place. This is 70's schlock through and through, but is a treat for William Smith fans, as he gets top billing and the lions' share of screen time.

No one will confuse this with anything Oscar worthy, but so what? A good way to numb your mind for an hour and a half.

The biker film was a staple of American exploitation cinema in the late 1960's, culminating in the "generation defining" studio funded classic, Easy Rider (1969). What we have here is somewhat of a genre mash up, placing a bunch of Californian bikers in the midst of an "exotic" war zone. Five gang members, led by Link (William Smith), are employed by the CIA, sent into the heart of darkness in Vietnam, to rescue a captured agent, Chet Davis (played here by director Jack Starrett - who most will recognise as the vicious police officer, Galt, from First Blood (1982)).

The first hour of the film is spent with the gang as they integrate into a small village, basically brawling, f*****g, drinking and fomenting relationships with the all-too-easy ladies. It is a completely ludicrous premise; OK so perhaps this gang of low-life's were more expendable than the troops being sent out daily, but it is hard to believe. That being said, this is exploitation cinema at its most ridiculous.

The action accelerates in the last reel, as the bikers infiltrate a camp, their bikes armed to the teeth, but the action is repetitive, and with little merit: Bikes jump, huts blow up. Besides this though, some of the characters are likable enough, with their dialogue of clichéd, counter-cultural hyperbole, but it doesn't really save a pretty tedious affair - perhaps the trailer was exciting, so maybe you should just see that. Like all exploitation films of the time that were set in exotic climates, this was of course filmed in the Philippines (where filming is cheap!).

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In order to rescue a Presidential Advisor (in a Francis Ford Coppola costume) from a group of Chinese Communists in Cambodia, the government enlists a subdivision of Hell's Angels led by William Smith to break in there and get him out. The back of the box said this film has more action than 'The Dirty Dozen' and 'The Wild Bunch' combined. To call that a vast overstatement would be a vast understatement. In reality, the film is a bunch of bikers having sex, getting drunk, getting wasted, getting into lame fistfights, falling in love, waxing poetic and building stupid-looking motorcycles sandwiched between two decent action scenes with 2nd rate Enzo G. Castellari slow-motion (which would make it 4th rate Peckinpah). All in all, it's actually not bad, but the climax should have been better considering the time we have to wait in order to get to it. Have ear plugs ready when the title song comes up. It's a soft medley probably sung and written by some drugged out hippie chick that doesn't fit with the movie at all.