3 Movies / January 21
“What the hell’s wrong with freedom, man? That’s what it’s all about!” says Jack Nicholson’s character in Easy Rider (1969), considered by some the greatest motorcycle movie of all time.
Surely that sense of liberation and adventure is at the heart of the appeal of films about bikers that have been so popular with moviegoers over the years. In our ode to the freedom of the road, TCM presents three outstanding titles from the genre.
Easy Rider, a counter-culture touchstone of its era, stars Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper as two bikers who travel from Los Angeles to New Orleans, moving through open country, farmlands, small towns and the desert. Nicholson was Oscar-nominated for his breakthrough supporting role as a bourbon-swilling liberal lawyer they meet along the way.
Hopper directs from an Oscar-nominated screenplay he wrote with Fonda and Terry Southern. The atmospheric soundtrack includes music from The Band, The Byrds, Jimi Hendrix and Steppenwolf. The iconic Harley-Davidson ridden by Fonda sold at an auction of Hollywood memorabilia in 2018 for $1.35 million.
Electra Glide in Blue (1973) is named after the Harley-Davidson Electra Glide ridden by cops across the country. The movie stars Robert Blake as a rookie motorcycle traffic cop in Arizona who tries to prove that a suspected suicide was in fact a murder. Costarring are Billy “Green” Bush as Blake’s partner and Mitchell Ryan as a homicide detective.
Blake’s performance, along with the striking motorcycle action captured by cinematographer Conrad Hall and music by the band Chicago, helped this film achieve cult status. Harley-Davidson had introduced the Electra Glide about eight years earlier, and the model used in the movie was notable as the first “Hog” to have an electronic push-button starter.
Mad Max (1979), the Australian post-apocalyptic action film that introduced Mel Gibson to international audiences, was startling at the time for the supercharged violence of its chase sequences. Gibson plays a police officer who has gone, well, mad with his desire for revenge after his partner, wife and baby are murdered by an evil motorcycle gang. George Miller directed the movie, which spawned a number of sequels.
In addition to its four-wheeled vehicles the series features a number of iconic motorcycles including the one ridden in the original film by Steve Bisley, who plays officer Jim Goose, Max’s best friend. The bike, identified in the film as an MFP (Main Force Patrol) “pursuit machine,” is actually a 1977 Kawa Z1000 modified by the Melbourne-based company La Parisienne.
