Infamousta brilliant actors, brilliant editing

ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Michael_Elliott Rebel Rousers, The (1970) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Silly but mildly entertaining biker flick about a man (Cameron Mitchell) who travels to a small town to try and get back his pregnant wife (Diane Ladd) but while the two are talking he's beaten and she's kidnapped by a biker gang led by Bruce Dern. The battered husband manages to make it back to town where he tries to find someone to help him. The highlight of this film is the wonderful cast as we get not only Mitchell, Dern and Ladd but supporting performances by Jack Nicholson and Harry Dean Stanton. As far as biker films goes this one here is a long way away from titles like EASY RIDER and THE WILD ANGELS but there's enough mild charm here to make this worth viewing. The film runs a fairly short 78-minutes and I do wonder if there's some stuff on the cutting room floor as there are a few side plots that never really add up to much and we even get some questionable moments from start to finish. We're told that Mitchell and Dern played football together but this never really adds up to anything. We get the escape scene with Mitchell taking off yet it's never quite clear why his wife doesn't try to escape with him. Probably because if she had then the movie would have ended right there. The kidnapping leads to a pretty good ending when some Mexican guys with rakes show up to get back Mitchell's wife as well as one of their daughters who was delivering tacos to the bikers!!! Mitchell is a real head-scratcher here as he pretty much sleepwalks through the role and his scenes crying are pretty funny as there's obviously no real emotion behind them. Ladd is charming as the wife and it's always fun seeing Stanton no matter how small the role is. Dern clearly steals the show as the "mature" biker who is always saying the right thing even though it's hard to trust what he's saying. Finally, there's Nicholson wearing some zebra colored pants that are a real hoot. Fans of the genre will want to check this one out but others should see the classics first.

Woodyanders Architect Paul Collier (an incredibly insipid performance by Cameron Mitchell) stops off at a small Arizona desert town to visit his headstrong pregnant girlfriend Karen (a sound and sympathetic portrayal by Diane Ladd). Paul bumps into old high school buddy J.J. Weston (the always solid Bruce Dern), who's now the amiable and laid-back leader of a gang of rowdy bikers. Naturally, J.J.'s scruffy chopper chums take an unsavory interest in Karen. Sound exciting? Well, alas it ain't. Martin B. Cohen's bland direction, working from a drab and talky script which he co-wrote with Michael Kars and Abe Polsky, relates the meandering narrative at a draggy pace, fails to bring any real tension or vitality to the proceedings, and gets further bogged down in a sappy love story between Mitchell and Ladd. The cast do their best with the sub-par material: Dern and Ladd contribute respectable work, Jack Nicholson sports an amazing pair of gloriously ghastly striped pants and makes the most out of his regrettably minor role as volatile rotten apple Harley hound Bunny, and Harry Dean Stanton is a hoot as flaky hipster Randolph Halverson. Both Laszlo Kovacs' fairly polished cinematography and William Loose's groovy jammin' score are above average. While the movie occasionally bursts to life with some decent fisticuffs and motorcycle races, it's overall not gritty or energetic enough to qualify as anything more than a strictly passable time-waster.

wentz_nicholas I think that "The Rebel Rousers" is not even close to the worst biker movie ever made. I think this is quite good on a low budget. Bruce Dern is always cool and my hero Jack Nicholson is the best "Rebel" I think this beats the hell out of "The Wild Angels" which even though the talented and groovy duo of Dern and Peter Fonda were in it. I think "The Wild Angels" is the worst biker film ever made, not "The Rebel Rousers". Granted that I wish that there were more scenes of actual motorcycle riding and that most of the movie took place on a beach. I enjoy the opening music of the movie and the location in which the film was shot. Jack Nicholson is delightfully sadistic as "Bunny" especially where he beats the hell out of Cameron Mitchell. The biggest kick I got out of seeing Jack in this movie is his black and white striped pants. Bruce Dern is out of sight as the "Rebels" leader, "J.J." Bruce is much better in this part than his role as "Loser" in "The Wild Angels" which reminded me of Terry Kiser in "Weekend At Bernie's" where they all drag Bruce's dead body around.

vchimpanzee The strange behavior of various characters in this movie made me wonder if this might be a parody of biker movies. It was funny when the stereotypical dumb, lazy and cowardly Latino deputy was on screen. He and the sheriff were the only law, and at one point even the sheriff wasn't around. The bikers could have taken over and terrorized the town. And yet they weren't as mean as they could have been, which was never really explained. It was like there was an on-off switch deciding whether the bikers were going to be violent, or funny, or whatever. Some of them were more peace-oriented than the others and tried to get the meaner ones to behave. What really made no sense was the reaction of Cameron Mitchell's character to the bikers. At first I thought he and Diane Ladd were giving good performances. Now I have to wonder. I can say this much: I enjoyed the music that was played in the scenes where Cameron Mitchell and Diane Ladd were together, and of course the funny deputy.Other than that, what was this?