Motorcycles and Movies

The roots of the motorcycle movie are in the exploitation and juvenile delinquent genres of the 1950s and 60s. The Wild One, released in 1953, established many of the narrative and visual elements that would become familiar in future motorcycle movies: biker gangs, rebellion, chrome, and leather. But the motorcycle movie genre really began in 1966 with the release of The Wild Angels.

From Wild Angels to Easy Riders
Directed by the legendary Roger Corman for American International Pictures (AIP), The Wild Angels can best be summed up by a line from its star Peter Fonda: "We wanna be free to ride our bikes and not get hassled by the man!" The film's success prompted AIP to release many more biker films in the following years.

In 1967, producer Joe Solomon seized on AIP's success by releasing his own motorcycle movie, Hell's Angels on Wheels. Numerous other biker films of varying quality were released in the late 60s and early 70s:

But the conclusion of the quintessential motorcycle movie, Easy Rider (1969), seemed to suggest an end to a genre (and counterculture) that had only just begun.

Contemporary Motorcycle Movies
There were a few motorcycle films released in the 1980s that seemed like holdovers from an earlier era, such as Mad Max (1980) and Knightriders (1981), both of which were true to the low-budget soul of the biker genre. But the big-budget action flicks of the 80s that incorporated motorcycles, such as Black Rain (1989), weren't really "biker movies."

Thanks to the movie industry's recycling of old genres, recent years have seen a few cartoonish motorcycle movies, including Torque and Biker Boyz. Perhaps Ghost Rider, starring Nicolas Cage in an adaptation of the Marvel comic, will fuel interest in the overlooked motorcycle movie genre.

For more information on motorcycle movies, see The Big Book of Biker Flicks by John Wooley and Michael H. Price.