Rating: C
Dir: Daniel Haller
Star: John Cassavetes, Leo Gordon, Beverly Adams, Mimsy Farmer
“Is this all you guys do, is race around, raise hell and have fun?” This is a question posed by local girl Marianne Fielding (Farmer) to members of the Skulls biker gang, who have arrived in her small town of Brookville. The viewer may well be asking themselves the same question. Because to this point, it is pretty much all they have done, under leader Cody (Cassavetes). He has been suffering a bit of a midlife crisis, his gang having dwindled from several hundred members to twenty-six. To get a fresh start, he leads them onto the road, heading towards a legendary bikers’ nirvana inspired by Butch Cassidy, where there are no cops to hassle them.
To be frank, they deserve all the negative attention from the law enforcement community. Because the first half is the Skulls basically acting like dicks. They break a member out of jail, loot a convenience store, and destroy the camper of an elderly couple. This is all before arriving in Brookville, where they disrupt the local festival. That gets them a stern talking-to from local sheriff Charlie Henderson (Gordon), who lets them stay overnight, on condition they leave first thing in the morning. Things do not go as either party want. Marianne’s presence triggers a somewhat unwarranted sexual assault accusation (top), getting Cody locked up despite the sheriff’s objection. The rest of the gang call up reinforcements, and prepare to storm the town, both to release their leader, and teach the townsfolk a lesson.
Once it gets going, this is quite interesting, mostly because Cody and Charlie are not as different as they initially seem. The two men are not without honour, and both are aware of the potential for, and trying to avoid, serious trouble. But they are equally struggling to keep in check, those over whom they supposedly exercise control: the amoral gang members and intolerant townsfolk respectively. Seen in this light, it almost has an authoritarian moral, depicting the problems which result when the masses and their emotions are not kept in check by those who rule them. “Weak men create hard times,” if you like. Seems unusual, especially for Roger Corman-produced, sixties biker flicks, which normally had a strongly rebellious streak.
It merits the Arizona tag, because the town of Brookville was played by Patagonia. This is a town, population around a thousand, which is located south of Tucson, near the Mexican border in Santa Cruz County. I’d never even heard of it, so quite how Corman did, I’ve no idea. I may be biased by this, but I can’t help feeling the film would have been significantly improved by getting to Arizona a good half-hour faster. Up until it does, there’s no particular conflict, just a sense of nihilistic chaos, without focus. Outside of Cody, there are few notable characters in the gang either; even his ol’ lady (Adams) does not make much impression. What it does share with a lot of Corman’s movies, is being thirty minutes of potential, stretched out to feature length.