 It's ride or die on the streets of Kyoto. 
Toei Company goes biker culture for Boso sekkusu-zoku, known in English as Hell Riders in Kyoto and Wild Sex Gang, which combines the typical Toei action film with aspects of American b-movies like Easy Rider and The Rebel Rousers. Takashi Shirai is a nihilistic and lawless twenty-something addicted to speed, and especially to motorcycles. When he's caught speeding by police his obsession goes into overdrive, and he decides to buy a 750cc bike that will enable him to outrun even the cops. Tsunehiko Watase is also obsessed with speed. He couldn't afford a bike to satiate his addiction, which is why he became a motorcycle cop. It allowed him to ride the 500cc bike he desired. Now Shirai is outrunning him. The rivalry between these two leads to one-upmanship that spills from the roadway and into other areas of their lives, but just when Shirai seems doomed the beautiful Miki Sugimoto arrives on the scene, and he starts to see that there's some value to life after all. But is it too late? Well, maybe.
Boso sekkusu-zoku is an interesting but not great entry from Toei that, like many crime movies from the ’70s, hinges on the presumption of redeemability. Shirai is lost, and is a danger to all those around him, but with luck and love he could become a good person. Needless to say, this is a retro concept today, in the age of non-forgiveness, and the belief that punishment must be decisive, vengeful, and usually permanent. For that reason it's interesting to watch the filmmakers here weigh Shirai's potential value. And it's also interesting to see how the cop Tsunehiko threatens to be corrupted by his hatred for Shirai. But these themes are not new, and exploring them as perfunctorily as Boso sekkusu-zoku does is a fatal flaw, in our view. More plot, more depth, more stuntwork, and more commitment across the board would have helped immensely. Still, though, it's worth a watch. It premiered in Japan today in 1973.
    
 This definitely is not a love song. 
Melody Patterson gets unhinged, unchained, and generally uncivilized as she settles a score in this photo made in 1969 as a promo for her biker outlaw flick The Cycle Savages. It was one of only a handful of movies she made, along with such efforts as The Angry Breed and Blood and Lace. We're far too weak on the outlaw biker genre. We've seen Easy Rider, The Wild Ones, The Wild Angels, Hell's Bloody Devils, and one or two others. Well actually, maybe we're better in the genre than we thought. But we still need to see The Cycle Savages just to find out how and why Patterson gets pushed to this point.
 This one is paved with bad intentions every inch of the way.  
When we saw these two Italian posters for 1966's I selvaggi our eyes deceived us and we thought—for a wonderful split second—that they were for a film starring Frank Sinatra and Jane Fonda. But then we realized it was Nancy Sinatra and Peter Fonda, who are pretty big downgrades, quality-wise. No offense intended toward them. Fonda is an icon of cool, but not because he can act. We aren't aware of Nancy Sinatra wowing people with her thespian chops either. But we watched the movie anyway.
It's better known as The Wild Angels, and it's Roger Corman directed schlock from American International Pictures about a group called the Hell's Angels ripping and bombing around Southern California, causing problems to law abiding folk and the police. While it's obviously a take on the infamous motorcycle gang, in real life the gang spells its name without an apostrophe. Why that makes a difference in terms of trademark infringement we have no idea, but we assume that's why it was put there. Or maybe it's just a correction of an assumed typo in the real gang's name. Or maybe nobody even noticed the difference.
Whatever the case, the Hells Angels couldn't really have claimed that the racist and violent Hell's Angels portrayed by Fonda, Sinatra, Bruce Dern, and company differed greatly from reality. The real Angels may not have clobbered preachers and taken over churches for all night bacchanals, but they did some terrible shit. Despite the incendiary verisimilitude of the movie, it's mostly a bore—but one that helped establish the outlaw biker genre and pave the way for 1969's Easy Rider. For that it deserves a little credit. Now we're going to try and find out if Jane Fonda and Frank Sinatra ever acted together, because that's a movie we'd like to see.
 What are they rebelling against? What have you got? 
Bad girl biker Anne Neyland encourages a rivalry between good boy biker Steven Terrell and bad boy biker John Ashley and the results are disastrous. Motorcycle Gang isn't original or compelling, but it may be worth watching for fans of ’50s hipster lingo and for admirers of Ashley, who later starred in numerous terrible-but-funny Eddie Romero b-movies filmed in the Philippines. Regardless of Motorcycle Gang's lack of quality, the promo poster is absolutely wonderful. The movie premiered in the U.S. today in 1957.
 Knievel’s grandest stunt nearly results in fatal Snake bite. 
Photo of American motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel, from today 1974, just before his ill-fated attempt to jump Idaho’s Snake River Canyon while strapped inside a steam-powered rocket. Knievel was the most famous daredevil in history at this point, and had conceived the Snake River feat as a way to further burnish his already considerable legend. But the jump failed when a chute accidentally deployed, causing the cycle to float into the canyon, where it crash-landed mere feet from the river. Had it landed in the water, Knievel would have drowned due to a jammed restraint harness, but instead he lived to jump another day.
 Japanese chopper show borrows Nazi terminology. Now this is interesting. In our constant digging for pulp from all countries, we are always struck by how symbols, images, and terminology are appropriated by different cultures or subcultures, and how the meanings of those images mutate from their original form. So here we have a promo poster for Japan’s New Order Chopper Show, this year’s version of which takes place tomorrow, August 9. Anyway, you’ll notice the above figure is sporting a Prussian helmet, or Pickelhaube, emblazoned with a Prussian Iron Cross. Or at least that’s what they look like, but a biker will tell you these are entirely different symbols that have nothing to do with Prussia or Germany, save that the shapes were borrowed, much like Hitler borrowed his swastika from a similar Hindu shape. So, symbols evolve—we get that. The Pickelhaube was phased out during World War I and was just a relic by the time World War II arrived, so the many people who associate the helmet with Nazism are mistakenly mashing up two distinct eras in Prussian/German military history. But here’s the question—when people already tend to think your symbol has something to do with Nazism, why call one of your biggest events the New Order show? After all, that was the name of Hitler’s grand vision of world domination. And since Japan was neck deep in this scheme, via an agreement to evenly divide Asia, millions of Japanese, as well as Westerners, know what the term means. Bikers tend to get bent out of shape about these kinds of discussions, but the reaction strikes us as hollow indignation. Which is to say, even though they pretend otherwise, they’re deliberately mindfucking us and we know it. Okay, enough of that. We only brought it up because it would have seemed strange to post the art without addressing the point. And what art it is, by the way, painted by one of Japan’s foremost illustrators, who goes by the name Rockin’ Jelly Bean. Jelly Bean specializes in these sorts of voluptuous cyberbikers and has built a worldwide cult following. He’s often imitated, but never duplicated. You can see more of his work here, and below.     
 I'm gonna take this joint apart and you're not gonna know what hit you.  
A few days ago we alluded to Marlon Brando's weight struggles, so we thought it would be fair to post a reminder of how he looked during that time when he was the top male sex symbol in film, and the face of American rebellion. These two stills are from his seminal biker flick The Wild One, 1953.
 Money for nothing and your chicken for free. 
Just in time to capitalize on the infamous 1969 Altamont killing that brought eternal notoriety to the Hells Angels and Rolling Stones came Hell’s Bloody Devils. Less than a month after the December killing this film hit theaters, but if audiences were hoping director Al Adamson had insights into biker culture they were disappointed. The promo copy promises all sorts of mayhem, but instead we get a disjointed thriller with neo-Nazi villains, and Kentucky’s own Colonel Sanders in a surprising cameo. Word was he got face time in exchange for feeding the production crew. He should have cried fowl, because he gave away his chicken only to end up in a turkey. If you see this one coming your way, be sure to duck. Hell’s Bloody Devils premiered today in 1970.
 Gang killings—not just for kids anymore. 
In Britain, seven defendants were sentenced to life in prison yesterday for the murder of 35 year-old Gerry Tobin. Tobin was a member of the Hells Angels biker gang, and his killers—who ranged in age from 41 to 57—were members of the rival Outlaws gang.
In August 2007, Tobin was riding home from a motorcycle festival called the Bulldog Bash. His route took him along highway M-40 through territory the Outlaws considered theirs. They gave chase in a car, overtook the unsuspecting Tobin, and shot him once through the back of the head as he traveled at 90 mph. Two other motorcyclists trailing the scene witnessed the shooting.
Authorities were shocked by the senseless nature of the killing—the gunmen had never met Tobin. As Queen’s prosecutor Timothy Raggatt explained to the jury: “This wasn’t a case of a man being killed for any personal motive or any personal reason. This was a man who was targeted not because of who he was, but because of what he was. In one sense, Gerry Tobin was a random victim.”
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1986—Otto Preminger Dies
Austro–Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer's disease. 1998—James Earl Ray Dies
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray's fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King's killing, but with Ray's death such questions became moot. 1912—Pravda Is Founded
The newspaper Pravda, or Truth, known as the voice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, begins publication in Saint Petersburg. It is one of the country's leading newspapers until 1991, when it is closed down by decree of then-President Boris Yeltsin. A number of other Pravdas appear afterward, including an internet site and a tabloid. 1983—Hitler's Diaries Found
The German magazine Der Stern claims that Adolf Hitler's diaries had been found in wreckage in East Germany. The magazine had paid 10 million German marks for the sixty small books, plus a volume about Rudolf Hess's flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945. But the diaries are subsequently revealed to be fakes written by Konrad Kujau, a notorious Stuttgart forger. Both he and Stern journalist Gerd Heidemann go to trial in 1985 and are each sentenced to 42 months in prison. 1918—The Red Baron Is Shot Down
German WWI fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, better known as The Red Baron, sustains a fatal wound while flying over Vaux sur Somme in France. Von Richthofen, shot through the heart, manages a hasty emergency landing before dying in the cockpit of his plane. His last word, according to one witness, is "Kaputt." The Red Baron was the most successful flying ace during the war, having shot down at least 80 enemy airplanes. 1964—Satellite Spreads Radioactivity
An American-made Transit satellite, which had been designed to track submarines, fails to reach orbit after launch and disperses its highly radioactive two pound plutonium power source over a wide area as it breaks up re-entering the atmosphere.
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