Angels Hard as They Come

I, John Hand, was the editor of CUSTOM CHOPPER Magazine in 1971 and I had a car and bike painter friend named Bill Carter who was appearing in the movie with his Harley. So I went out to the desert and watched them shoot some scenes. I put a report of this movie in my magazine but I have to admit that I never saw the movie later. Mr Demme the director sent me a letter with some clarifications about the movie and I put the letter in my magazine. Jonathan Demme, the director also told me to keep my eye on Scott Glenn, because he was going to go places. Well, as it turned out, they both went on to make and star in the big blockbuster and award winner SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. Who would have thought?

A pretty good standard biker flick made by the fact it was written and produced by the guy who would go on to direct such hit Hollywood films and The Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia. It was also one of the first films released on Roger Corman's own New World Pictures for which it turned a pretty impressive profit for. Scott Glenn isn't the most charismatic lead, but, he moves the films very western style plot onward with the help of the guy that plays "The General" who throws in some fun evil overacting. Theres some boobs towards the end and Gary Busey cameos as a young hippie leader, so what's not to like.

I mistakenly watched this DVD thinking it would offer something slightly different from the usual Hell's Angels road movies. The fact that the title suffixes "As hard as they come" I was literally expecting a proper blood & guts flick-instead I got a 2nd rate movie length version of a staple A-Team story line! The basic premise is Long John (Scott Glenn) is seen arranging a shady drugs deal out in the desert with his buddies Juicer (Don Carrera) and Monk (James Inglehart). They get tailed by the police but eventually lose them and end up at a petrol station.

Here they meet fellow road warriors "The Dragons" and are invited to a hippy commune that the Dragons have gatecrashed-for a party.

Basically, we discover that the Dragons are a little heavy handed with the hippies, climaxing in the attempted gang rape of one of the hippy chicks that Long John has taken a liking to. Long John intervenes and in the melee the hippy chick gets stabbed.

After a Kangaroo court presided over by the Dragons leader "the General" (Charles Dierkop) the Angels are found guilty and sentenced to "fun & games" (dragged around on the back of the Hogs) and eventually death.

Monk escapes and alerts the rest of the gang and the Hippies finally get some backbone to help the Angels. The movie's finale is of the Angels whupping the Dragons and everyone going their separate ways.

The "violent" scenes are marred by terrible lighting and really bad 70's fisticuffs, the movie is clichéd and doesn't work on any level-it's not even amusing from a nostalgia point of view.

Rent/Buy this movie at your peril!

During the end of the 1960s/beginning of the 1970s there was the vogue of the biker movie genre. These movies where made with cheap budgets, actors who were making it big and directors who have only these as their only credits. I am not a fan of the genre as you probably can guess from the summary, but I gave it a try once it was on TV.

The Angels motorcycle gang has a feud with the Dragons and things get worse after they invite the Angels in the desert town of Lost Cause. The Angels' leader Long John (Scott Glenn) is challenged by the Dragons' leader General (Charles Dierkop) to a race and loses. Soon after that John meets a young hippie woman and it's infatuated with her. The leader of her gang Henry (Gary Busey) is not happy about the Dragons. After some races and some imprisonments, the Angels will have their victory.

The acting by Glenn and Busey was decent, and it was surprising since they were unknowns, but the pacing was dull and after a while the plot got stale. Apart from the acting, the music was the only good and memorable asset. A must see only for biker movie fans.

What an awful movie ... A bunch of "hip" motorcyclists invade a California ghost town called "Lost Cause". There, they confront a rival gang of bikers and some hippies. The story has no real point to it, nor any theme that I could detect.

There are way too many characters. And none of them are interesting. But they sure are "tough". They drink lots of booze. They smoke. They swear. They fight. They kiss their babes. They kick up a lot of ruckus. They emit dialogue like: "Lay it on me man" ... "I don't want a beer now, man" ... "Let's dig it, man" ... "I hope this works, man" ... "Make it good, man". They all act like rowdy ten-year-olds on a school playground.

And that playground is not the least bit interesting. Lost Cause looks like the back lot of some movie studio. The film's color cinematography is dreadful. Some of the images are either blurred or out of focus. Interior lighting is too dim. You would think that the filmmaker could have at least inserted some good music from that era; alas, no.

Just because it's a biker movie doesn't mean that viewers will tolerate a shabby screenplay, bad acting, or poor quality visuals. There are good biker films out there. "Angels Hard As They Come" is not one of them. At least the ghost town has an appropriate name. It's a good metaphor for this film.