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Truly horrifying. Not even the romantic involvement of Ann-Margret (The Swinger, 1966) helps it. Hardly a single redeeming feature and nothing that might lend itself to shift it into the so bad it is good category. To tell you the truth, my impression of it is that it would probably go onto a lower class, the so bad it’s worse than you can possibly imagine strata. Nearly forgotten for more than fifty years, and not surprising at all.
And boy did Ann-Margret need a hit after her three year self unveiling in Italy, where she managed to snag a fortune for pictures that were not touched at all by the US release circuit, which greatly hampered her marquee weight. In theory she was supposed to come back home with a bang as the female lead in a stanley kramer production R.P.M (1970) which was the most expensive picture that she had ever been associated with and easily the best director. But, riding the counter culture wave this was a huge flop.
This was her second attempt at counter culture. Motorbike sagas were bankable after the success of easy rider ( 1969 ) and even as B-pictures they had decent audeinces for The Wild Angels (1967) and Run, Angel, Run (1969).
However, the movie was accompanied by a dreadful star cast in Joe Namath, along with a dreadful script written by Roger Smith. He was Ann-Margaret’s spouse and also her manager. Rogers puts the savage bike riders in a motocross competition, where they trade their high-powered motorcycles for the smaller Kawasaki engines used in motocross.
If you were an American, Joe Namath was like a deity. If you were not, he was an unknown. Joe was one of America’s most talented football players. He even starred in another box office disaster Norwood (1969). My guess is that Evan-Margret was present to assist her husband, who also produced the film, and make the movie more marketable.
However, Joe thoroughly resembles an oversized schoolboy rather than a famous Hells Angel character. Joe looks like a Hell’s Angel and his character is an overgrown schoolboy. It is for a lack of believability in the character that he happens to share a resemblance with pop singer Fabian from Tenn Little Indians (1962).
Anyway, back to this peculiar tale. So, fashion director Ann (Ann-Margret) comes up with a sensational idea like fashion directors did in those days, a shoot against the backdrop of a motocross event, something like Zabriskie Point (1970) but with bikes. On the way, her car breaks down, now those two bikers passing by who come for help have other ideas and she is only saved from being raped thanks to Ryder stepping in.
He is part of her biking troupe commandeered by Moon (William Smith), the most rabid of all the women haters, who at least claps his women about and sends them to the highways to sell them off because the more savvy lads in Easy Rider have not put together a drugs business. Then he does get inspired and thinks these fools will be good for something, cashing in on the lazy soft option of having them compete in the motocross game because, as serious motorcycle fanatics, they should be able to smash every professional motocross rider who does it for a living into the ground.
Surely, we get to root for the amateurs like we always do for the youngsters from other shows that have to put on their own performances to save an orphanage and what not.
Of course, Ryder is in love with Ann. And of course, Moon has a problem with that. He then goes on to kidnap Ann so that Ryder can look for her and rescue her. That’s where the face off begins. I wonder if we are to be treated to the stunning spectacle of a duel with chains and wrenches to this duo of stars rolling in the dust, blades flashing.
Absolutely not! Let’s get on with it and locate an accessible football stadium and make a few laps around the athletic dirt track. Surely this must be more entertaining. Watching goldfish in a pot is far more entertaining than this.
In theory, the combination of Namath and Ann-Margret ought to have achieved the intractable heights of opinion expansion which accompanied football star Jim Brown’s sexual tussle with Raquel Welch in 100 Rifles (1969). Wrong. Namath has all the screen presence of a rhinoceros beetle and there is nothing Ann-Margret could do to change that. You could not have squandered her first nude scene on a less worthy candidate.
It is obvious from the start that Ann-Margaret dances, but for reasons unknown, the camera prefers to concentrate on Namath who does not know how to ‘shake that thang’.
As far as scenes are concerned, there is one decent scene and one interesting shot. Unfortunately, the only good scene is the opener, giving the audience a false notion that this could be an interesting picture. It involves Namath ‘grazing’ his way around a supermercat, concocting a sandwich from just about everything that is easy to obtain, even mocking taking a tissue out of a box to wipe his lips after. What a rascal, it is no wonder everyone would be scared stiff of such a biker. And in the climactic race one of the bikers hits a fence that collapses concertina style.
Well, that is about it. A 94 minute vanity documentary exercise that finished off Namath’s prospects in the movie business, and
almost put an end to Ann-Margret’s. You cannot completely blame television director Seymour Robbie (Marco 1973) for trying and failing to do wonders with the material and the stars.
It is not always a good thing to be a completist in this instance where someone tries to follow Ann-Marget’s career.
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