Chrome and Hot Leather

Come on now...a biker flick is supposed to be violent and sleazy. This one is so antiseptic it would have made it by TV censors in the 70's--even if the original American-International ads tried hard to suggest otherwise. It does contain one great line: As the biker gang leader prepares to rough up one of our heroes, he is distracted by a fellow gang member playing a noisy pinball machine, leading to remark, "Gabriel, can't you see that we're menacing someone?" Ludicrous music, seemingly from another film, accompanies one of the climactic fight scenes. Sadly, this film could give the Hell's Angels a good name.

I saw this movie today on cable. I enjoyed the beginning of the movie and up to the part where the three Green Berets rescue their friend from the bikers. After that, it became pretty obvious that the movie was quickly going down hill. All the army equipment scenes were pretty cheesy. I never saw LAAW rockets used in the manner the Berets used them here. Why, if someone is shooting off rockets and mortar rounds, would the biker gang not leave the valley the minute the rocket blasts started. My favorite biker movie is MAD MAX. Now that was a mean biker gang.

The saddest thing about "Chrome and Hot Leather" (1971) is that it could have been a fairly decent film; at least by American International biker film standards. They seem to have had a large budget; at least enough to cast in quantity if not quality; and to outfit their biker gang (Wizards) with Harley's-something that was often beyond the budget of these things.

They had William Smith, the best movie baddie of the day, for their gang leader T.J. and Michael Haynes for the chain-throwing mama slapping Casey. In fact the whole biker thing is handled pretty well by the standards of the early 1970's.

Then they had an extremely young Cheryl Ladd (she looks about 16 although she was 18) and former Miss Ohio and Miss America Runner-Up Kathy Baumann (note the John Havlicek Basketball Camp t-shirt she is wearing). In high school she dated someone I knew and she also looks about the same in this film as she did then. Unfortunately neither actress gets to show much in the way of acting skills or exploitable assets. .

This is one of those movies the Army and Air Force Exchange Service saw fit to show us GI's at posts and bases around with world back in the early 1970's. To us at the time virtually everything military related was unintentionally hilarious, from Peter Brown's non-GI haircut (if it was a paying role couldn't he at least have cut it enough so you could see a portion of his ears) to the moronic combat training. It got laughs from us for months whenever someone brought up the topic. On the other hand what was supposed to be the film's comic relief, sequences of Peter Brown and Company learning to ride motorcycles is funny only to those amused by things totally lame and stupid.

In retrospect the film never had a chance given its director Lee "The Man With Two Heads" Frost and its star, the aging Tony Young. When you look bad in comparison to a non-actor (Marvin Gaye plays Tony's pal) it is time to find another line of work. Young lined up the financing for this baby and hired Frost on the condition he be given the lead. You won't find a more wooden actor than Young, whose character looks like an extremely dour 55 year-old man and is supposed to be the love interest for the two teen actresses.

Several times they appear headed in the self-parody direction (if that is what they had emphasized the film would be a classic) and Smith lets you know that he is playing this thing for laughs. But this tiny attempt at real humor is dwarfed by the unintentional hilarity and the giggles you will get from the many continuity errors that occur throughout the movie.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

Lee Frost was a capable and half-way decent director and cinematographer, I guess. He has a catalog of work from the 60s and 70s, such titles (and such titles I've yet to see the movies of) that includes Zero in and Scream, Mondo Bizarro, Nazi Love Camp and The Black Gestapo. I don't know if having such a catalog of work and a halfway decent eye as a DoP meant he made good movies. Probably not entirely the case. But Chrome and Hot Leather, aside from its hard-knock-awesome title, has a few things going for it. For one thing its star, the Lieutenant who returns from Vietnam to discover that his girlfriend was run off the road by a hothead member of a biker gang called the Beards (?), has a hard-jaw face and voice that's like a knock-off of Sterling Hayden. It's also got a likable-cum-sleazy cast of biker folk who get drunk, arm wrestle and sometimes have some group sex. Not that you see too much of it, of course, since it's PG-13 (at least today, maybe it was G-rated back then, who knows).

But the few things going for it, which also, I should add, includes an absolutely hilarious climactic battle where the Lieutenant and his army buddies take a whole lot of ammo and bombs and bullets to the bikers just to, you know, scare them and get them loaded with gas that the ex-Vientam guys need gasmasks for (!), are not enough to make it something you should rush out to see. Even if you're into trashy biker movies from the 60s and 70s, such as I am in that true-blue guilty pleasure kind of way, it's something to see further down the pike, preferably on the double-bill I viewed it with, the Mini-Skirt Mob. It's got a plot that's got enough meat on it to keep things a little interesting, even as the acting is sewer-tastic and the final showdown between the Lieutenant and the (accidental?) killer of his girlfriend is underwhelming to say the least. But, yet, Lee Frost puts in little moments, like one particular line by a biker in a bar about harassing someone, and seeing how the soldiers hilariously train on their newly purchased Kawasakis. You'd think they were getting ready for a reenactment of the video-game Excitebike as opposed to seeking vengeance on a bunch of dopes.

As biker movies go, Chrome And Hot Leather is unusual. Biker films, tended to highlight the wild lifestyle of the outlaw biker culture, as desirable. But this film doesn't glorify bikers. In fact, the military establishment, and their straight-arrow values, are the focus of heroism in this movie.

It's true that by the time this film was made in 1971, outlaw bikers were no longer romanticized like they had been just a few years earlier, by the youth culture. Still, it's hard to believe that during the Vietnam war era, when antiwar sentiments were strong, Hollywood goes and makes a film with the military as the good guys.

The plot centers around a Green Beret Sgt. named Mitch, who is headed home after his tour of duty in 'Nam. He's engaged to be married to a beautiful young woman, and ready to begin a new life as a civilian. Meanwhile, as his fiancé and her friend are out for a drive, they're harassed by a biker gang. This results in an accident, that kills the two women. Mitch, along with a few of his army comrades, are determined to catch the bikers who are responsible for killing his fiancé.

Actor Tony Young infuses the character of Mitch with a steely, square-jawed resolve, to avenge his fiancé's murder. The great R&B singer Marvin Gaye, appears as Mitch's Green Beret buddy. Marvin does an adequate job in his role, but he's a much better singer than actor. William Smith plays the biker gang leader. William has appeared in more biker films over the years, than probably any other actor. With his burly, threatening appearance, Smith seems like he was born to play badass outlaw bikers.

Mitch and his Army pals work together as a cracker-jack military unit, to accomplish their mission of nabbing the biker gang. The way Mitch and company carry out their quest for justice, reminds me of the fictional TV military group, called the A-Team. I wonder if the creators of the A-Team, were inspired by this movie.

Chrome And Hot Leather isn't the best biker film around, but it's different. For fans of biker movies, this one won't validate the bikers as cool. This movie would be most enjoyable for those that admire the military, and how it's members triumph over the bad guys.