1994 - MOTORCYCLE GANG, my first film in the Rebel Highway series.

Time to give the Rebel Highway series a look.  This series was an attempt to recreate the exploitation films of the 1950's and early 1960's by giving directors a small budget and allowing them to have control over their films.  Macho director John Milius is up with this pagan to the motorcycle films that AIP cranked out for a while.

The film is unsurprisingly called Motorcycle Gang. TV veteran Gerald McRaney plays a father who is traveling to California with his hot to trot daughter played by Carla Gugino (a 22 year old actress attempting to pass for a teenager) and his cheating wife.  The family gets involved with a motorcycle gang of killers who kidnap the daugher.  The film deals with the father and mother attempting to get their daughter back.  However all is not what it seems, the father has a secret violent past unbeknownst to the motorcycle gang.   Let the violence commence.

 

This would seems like a film right up John Milius's alley but he directs the film in an extremely pedestrian manner.  The actors at times seem like they are kind of sleepwalking through their cliched characters and the whole thing kind of suffers from a lack of tension.  The action scenes are somewhat on the lame side as well.

 

This is not a particulary good start for the first film I'm viewing in the series, kind of a disappointment.  The running time is 84 minutes.  It was written by Laurie McQuillan and Kent Anderson.