THE DRIVER (1978)

 I really love Bruce Dern in all those old biker flicks from the 60s and 70s that he did but in this one he plays one of the biggest unlikeable douchebag cop characters I've seen in awhile. I guess that's why they call it acting and this is a great film to see a lot of top-notch acting by everyone involved, including Ryan O'Neal as the titular getaway driver. As you would expect the chase scenes are incredible, equal to those in the way more famous FRENCH CONNECTION. Director Walter Hill's very next movie was the highly regarded  THE WARRIORS but that seems very cartoonish in comparison to the gritty realism on display here, not that that is necessarily a bad thing, but if you wanna check out something a little more based in reality this might be the ticket. Too bad, for some reason, it's not more well known these days.
 There have been a few recent films which this was purportedly the inspiration for, including DRIVE and BABY DRIVER, but since these are probably full of cgi car stunts I have very little interest in ever watching them.

HANG 'EM HIGH (1968)

 After viewing a cheap-ass kung fu flick recently that stole the theme song from this movie and used it repeatedly I had to give this a re-watch. After having done the classic Leone spaghetti-westerns Clint Eastwood returns to the U.S. and stars in this, which in some ways is pretty similar to the Italian flicks with maybe the good and bad guys being more clearly delineated. It's also fairly similar in quality thanks to director Ted Post who did mostly TV work but is also responsible for the great bizzare-o film THE BABY which is one of my personal all-time favorites. What you get here is a man(Eastwood) wrongly hung and on the trail of revenge. It's pretty simple stuff but it features one of the best scenes of a group of men being executed by hanging that has ever been shot. Bruce Dern plays a bad-ass outlaw, Dennis Hopper appropriately portrays an insane religious-nutso and even Skipper from GILLIGAN'S ISLAND(Alan Hale Jr.) is a convincing tough guy. Even though I've seen this one pop up a million times on cable it hasn't ruined it for me and it has an excellent soundtrack!



                                  Italy meets America Double Western Feature!:

Spanish style!(THEY MADE TWO MISTAKES):

Sadly this song is not on the soundtrack:

THE REBEL ROUSERS (1970)

 After EASY RIDER was a big hit there came a whole slew of these outlaw biker flicks and many of them, like this one here, had an all-star cast.  Cameron Mitchell is our main main, not looking nearly as bloated as I'm used to seeing him, as a fellow who runs across some bikers led by Bruce Dern who he went to college with.  This doesn't stop the gang from beating the shit out of him just for the hell of it.  These are the kind of bikers that I don't think are necessarily evil but they don't really give a fuck about what they have to do to have a good time or a cheap thrill.  Dern is the only one of them who has any kind of conscience at all regarding his actions and this leads to some bickering and bike-racing on the beach.  Their disregard for decency  might eventually lead our gang of knucklehead hog-riders into the neighborhood of rape and murder as the movie goes on and things get more serious.  Diane Ladd, who is in a few of these biker flicks and later on the mom in WILD AT HEART, is Cameron's lady friend and the object of Jack Nicholson's molesting hands and tongue.  Nicholson is pretty awesome here as a sleazeball in awesome stripey-pants who will fuck over his best friend for a thrill.  Harry Dean Stanton is also part of the gang in a stupid-looking suit and pork-pie hat.  While overall this film teases a lot more violence than you actually get onscreen(you mostly just get a lot of general mayhem and anarchy) it's still a neat little low-budget, time-capsule, throwback, drive-in semi-classic that would play all the time on TV back when I was a kid and broadcast TV had a reason to exist.    
 This was actually filmed in '67 and not released until after EASY RIDER to cash in on the Nicholson connection.

“With the unbridled passion of men possessed, they blasted their way through all opposition in a campaign of sexual self-indulgence that left nothing but burned-out shells of humanity strewn in their path.”: