HELL’S ANGELS ’69 (1969)
Run Time: 1:37:00
Producer: American Internation Footage (AIP)
Director: Lee Madden
Author: Don Tait, Tom Stern, Jeremy Slate
Key Solid: Tom Stern, Jeremy Slate, Conny Van Dyke
FILM MAKERS
It’s gonna be a mindbender. An higher to finish all uppers
Roger Greenspun of The New York Instances wrote in his overview: “HELL’S ANGELS ’69, which opened about 30 per cent out of focus on the DeMille yesterday, makes use of that famous law-and-order group, the Oakland Hell’s Angels, as heroes in a dismal story that wastes most of its consideration on the villains. By now their bodily resemblance to lovable teddy bears might properly have affected the Angels’ self picture, however not, I hope, to the extent that they proceed to undergo such degrading elevation in American folk-demonology. Two California playboy varieties (Tom Stern and Jeremy Slate, who additionally wrote the movie wherein they star) be part of the Angels and con them into using to Las Vegas, the place they use them as public diversion to cowl a theft from Caesars Palace.
They make their haul, and their getaway, however not with out the encumbrance of a buxom Angel mamma (Conny Van Dyke) and the specter of the Angels’ revenge. Revenge comes after a desert motorbike chase, photographed with such concern for getting pursuers and pursued right into a single body that it seems much less like a chase than a pleasure journey. Earlier than the Angels have brutally righted the improper, the Nevada desert has been lined with a amount of misplaced loot maybe unequaled because the windblown paper cash finale of Allan Dwan’s The River’s Edge (1957). However comparisons can solely harm Hell’s Angels ’69, which greater than lacks in character and conviction what it makes an attempt to make up in sucker’s-eye views of Vegas casinos and timid glances at bike-groups’ mores. With this caper, as with so many in latest films, the theft is for a lark relatively than for the cash — a squandering of time and power (extra time than power) that appears each unaesthetic and immoral. Solely Miss Van Dyke emerges, her appearing capacity nonetheless in query (a plus within the context of Hell’s Angels ’69), however her bodily presence excellent. Plump, fairly, with a sort of facial the Aristocracy that relies upon extra on soul than on bone construction, she catches the picture of the American misplaced lady with an indirection that deserves a greater film than this.”
SUMMARY
This was the RUMBLE that ROCKED Las Vegas!
Two brothers, Chuck and Wes, plan to rob the Caesar’s Palace On line casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. They determine to make use of the Oakland Hell’s Angels as dupes of their plans by pretending to be members of an East Coast motorbike membership/gang and successful the Angels’ belief, after which utilizing them to create a disturbance outdoors the on line casino whereas they’re inside robbing it. Whereas gaining the belief of the Angels, Wes turns into romantically concerned with Betsy, one of many Angels’ “outdated women” who has a rocky relationship with the Angel Tramp.
Chuck and Wes’s plan to rob Caesar’s Palace first entails them persuading the Angels to make a weekend run to Las Vegas, the place the Angels occupy a farm simply outdoors of city belonging to the sister of 1 the membership members. Chuck and Wes make a wager with the Angels that they’ll go on to Caesar’s Palace, regardless of their shabby biker appearances, to each gamble and lease a resort room. Betsy asks the brothers to take her into city with them, however they go away her behind, after which she decides to hitchhike into city to hitch up with them. As soon as inside Las Vegas, the brothers cease at a bus terminal mail cease and choose up a set of costume fits they’d shipped to themselves prematurely of the deliberate theft.
Chuck and Wes test right into a reserved room at Caesar’s Palace carrying their biker garb. They then make a cellphone name to the farm the place the Angels are tenting, feigning harassment within the resort for being bikers, asking for the membership to return into city to again them up. With the bikers en path to the resort, they shortly grow to be their fits and a extra “sq.” look. They enter the on line casino and use the pretense of certainly one of them having a stolen bank card and being detained by on line casino safety as a method by which to realize entry to the money cage, while outdoors the Hell’s Angels arrive, squaring off towards on line casino safety and the police, demanding entrance to the on line casino whereas Chuck and Wes return to their room (and are witnessed doing so by the just-arrived Betsy), change again into their biker garb, and go away the resort with $600,000 in stolen money, unbeknownst to each the Angels and regulation enforcement, who’re on the lookout for two suspects in fits as a substitute of two bikers.
As soon as tenting again outdoors of Las Vegas, the Angels expel Chuck, Wes, and Betsy from the group for losing their time over coming into Las Vegas over far much less obvious bother than they presupposed to be having. The trio alternate their choppers for smaller scrambler bikes and plan to cross the open desert to make their approach again towards Los Angeles. Shortly afterward, the native sheriff pays a go to to the Hell’s Angels and relays his suspicions that the theft might have been carried out by Chuck and Wes, who in flip had been enjoying the Angels this complete time. The Angels plan to trace down Chuck and Wes, finding the motorbike store the place in addition they get hold of scramblers and pursue the brothers and Betsy out into the desert.
It turns into revealed that Chuck and Wes are in actual fact half-brothers, and that neither of them wanted the cash from the theft as a result of they dwell off of a large inheritance which is solely in Chuck’s title. The theft was carried out merely for the joys of it with the intention of returning all the stolen sum as soon as the brothers have returned to their house in Los Angeles. Wes, nonetheless, turns into resentful on the concept of frequently relying on Chuck for his livelihood and decides to maintain half of the cash stolen from Caesar’s Palace. They battle, with Wes and Betsy splitting off from Chuck. The Angels arrive and see that the trio has cut up up. They journey after Chuck on a protracted motorbike chase. Chuck is almost trapped, and makes an attempt to leap his bike throughout a gorge to get away from being surrounded by the Angels. Chuck jumps quick, his bike explodes on the opposite aspect of the gorge and he’s killed.
Wes and Betsy arrive simply in time to see Chuck die, after which they’re surrounded by the Angels, who take the stolen cash, disable Wes and Betsy’s bikes, and dump out their water provide. The Angels journey off as Wes and Betsy abandon their now ineffective bikes and are left to an unsure destiny because the film ends.
The film is noteworthy for having many distinguished members of the Hells Angels (most notably Sonny Barger) play themselves.
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