WILD RIDERS is a slick and sleazy 'home invasion' type movie masquerading as a biker flick. Despite the opening scene this isn't a biker movie at all, but more of a grubby thriller. Throwing in a couple of biking scenes and having the main characters be members of a motorbike gang doesn't make it a biker flick.Instead it's a bad taste film that seems to glorify violence and abuse against women. A couple of Neanderthal characters end up holding two women captive in their home and proceed to abuse them mercilessly in various scuzzy and unpleasant ways. There's gloating nudity and enough misogyny and rape that the BBFC banned it here in the UK, although amusingly enough I caught a showing on late night TV regardless.WILD RIDERS feels slow and pointless for the most part, and the only real thrills and action come in the last twenty minutes or so. The ending is particularly satisfying, but there's a whole lot of bad stuff to sit through before then. Main star Alex Rocco was well known for starring in THE GODFATHER the following year.

Part of the "Savage Cinema" collection from Mill Creek... this one opens with a violent nude scene, where someone is attacking a woman, and we're not sure just what is taking place. The group of bikers talks about where they are heading... some are headed to California, and some are not. Pete (Arell Blanton) & Stick (Alex Rocco) meet up with some girls that are sunbathing on a roof-top, and trouble comes calling when Stick starts some serious trouble, and they don't want to leave. The plot just gets more and more strange from there, so you'll have to watch it for yourself. Be sure to make the kids leave the room first. Co-star Elizabeth Knowles made a whole bunch of these rad rebellion danger-chick flicks in the 1960s and 1970s. Written and directed by Richard Kanter, who wrote and directed seven other films in the same time period.

This film starts off promisingly, (for sick, sick thrills) when our two main characters torture and kill Pete's girlfriend because she dared to cheat on him, and with a man who had the gall to be born with a high melanin content, no less. This is too much to stand, even for the rest of the scuzzy biker gang they are riding with, so the gang leader tells them to beat it, hit the road and don't come back, the gang is splitting up and some of us are going to California.So, the two scuzz buckets, Pete (reminiscent of Peter Fonda's Heavenly Blue, only meaner) and Stick (he's a bit slow but lovable, for a moronic sadist), go off by themselves like some crank-addicted George and Lennie in a white-trash version of "Of Mice and Men". Out of money and desperate, our two anti-heroes take over a somewhat posh suburban home where two sisters are holed up, bickering, since hubby is away on business.The two creeps take over the house and hold the ladies hostage, and we settle in for over an hour of what appears to be a sort of bargain-basement "Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf" on meth. Various physical and psychic tortures are inflicted upon both the victims and tormentors, as mind games galore play themselves out, until the inevitable, bloody conclusion. And since this was made during the post-Altamont era, you just know that the ending is most certainly NOT going to consist of the main characters going off into the sunset or sharing milk and cookies. Let's just say you'll never look at the cello the same way again.A violent creep fest full of ugliness, recriminations and unnecessary cruelty. But in spite of that, I still didn't like it.I can sum up the problem here in four words: not enough bike riding. A few more chase scenes, biker parties with naked chicks, or even a shootout with the police, and I might have gotten on board with this little sleaze fest. But, they blew it. I totally get that they had a very low budget to work with, but this wasn't the way to solve that problem. In spite of this, I give it a three since Alex Rocco puts in a good performance as a mildly retarded reprobate.

This typically trashy Crown International Pictures release may not be the foulest, single most scuzzy and revolting biker movie ever made (Al Adamson's cartoonishly repellent doozy "Satan's Sadists" gets my vote for that particular dastardly dishonor), but it still rates pretty highly as a real sleazy slice of wonderfully rancid drive-in cinema schlock just the same.Vicious, quick-witted dirtball Harley hound Pete (sneerfully played to the hissable hilt by Arell Blanton, who also co-wrote and sings the hideously slushy folkie theme song) and his brutish, mangy, unshaven, garbage-eating rapist retard buddy Stick (a terrifically odious and ferocious let it all hang out greasebag performance by Alex Rocco; Moe Greene in "The Godfather") get tossed out of a Florida motorcycle club after they murder a woman by nailing the luckless screaming lass to a tree (ouch!). En route to California the deadly disgusting duo seek refuge from the authorities in a remote hillside mansion. In said fancy abode resides bored buxom brunette thrill-seeker Elizabeth Knowles and repressed ravishing redhead Sherry Bain (who also appeared in the excellent, underrated AIP biker item "The Hard Ride" the same year), who not surprisingly wind up being savagely victimized by our twisted sicko outlaw twosome.Director Richard Kanter gleefully rubs the audience's noses in a virtually nonstop graphic orgy of coarse violence, raw fisticuffs, abject degradation and stirring last reel harsh retribution, thus making this so-nasty-it's-downright-gnarly nugget a must-see for hard-core fans of lowdown gritty early 70's exploitation swill. The spirited performances, unceasingly gross and seedy subject matter, and especially the rough, unpolished production values -- shaky cinematography, ragged editing, a raunchy sub-Davie Allan fuzztone guitar burning score -- add immensely to this grungy marvel's substantial scroungy appeal.