Tony Mastroianni Review Collection
The Wild Angels
Cleveland Press 1966
This is the sort of movie that keeps you on the edge of your seat -- ready to leave the theater.
"Wild Angels" is about a bunch of dropouts from the human race who dash about the California countryside on motorcycles, wearing the Nazi swastika and Iron Cross, beating up anyone in the way, smoking reefers swigging whisky, having orgies and generally asserting their rights to their own peculiar brand of freedom.
The producers piously assert that the movie merely reflects our times. While it is true that there are such people (the famous Hell's Angels of California) and similar events, this motion picture is less an attempt to portray and explain as it is a blatant act of exploitation.
Peter Fonda is the longhaired, leather-jacketed leader of a gang with its own cultist talk and behavior. Nancy Sinatra is his girl, a reformed swinger who now confines her interests to one man. They both have long hair and he's called Blues and she's called Mike.
The emphasis is on sex and violence, but mostly violence. Everyone seems to have a nice streak of sadism and there's a funeral scene that is about as revolting as anything put on film.
Sick is what it is.
