Iron Horsemen

Odd satire of 1960s biker flicks was produced by Aki Kaurismäki, so not too surprisingly it features an appearance by Jim Jarmusch (as a semimythical biker) and Kaurismäki himself (as a guy in a Cadillac looking for Reno). Gould plays a hapless dropout who runs afoul of a cannibalistic biker gang before throwing in his lot with a gorgeous bank-robbing Castroite. In between, much hilarity and mayhem ensues. Not otherwise distinguished but does a pretty good job evoking the films of the era, buoyed by a soundtrack featuring the likes of Davie Allan and the Arrows.

I bought the movie for a dollar in the Mission area of San Francisco without knowing what it was about except it was a biker movie. I picked up half a dozen 1960s biker movies, since the DVDs were just a buck, and watched this after Angels: Hard as They Come.

Jim Jarmusch looked really familiar. Is that Nick Cave? When was this made? It wasn't until after I watched it that I looked it up on IMDb and found out it wasn't made in the 1960s.

This is a crazy weird movie with no background sound at all. I love Davie Allen and the Arrows, but watching a movie where bands "play" but there's no sound is very interesting. By no background sound, I mean nothing. Not the sound of motorcycles or anything. Just dialogue, then it's like the mic is cut off. It was very neat when some rockers (riding a cafe Norton, a Hinckley Triumph and something else) put a song on the jukebox to look tough before wailing the tar out of the main guy, but no music comes out.

Very surreal. I thought about trying to hunt down the European version to see it in full sound and to figure out what languages they speak, but I'll stick with the surreal.

Not MY idea of the horror genre...maybe fantasy, in the form of the Silver Rider bloke, played by independant filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, who's far from a main character. Some of the actors appear to be speaking English, but that language from others (I suspect) is dubbed. The disjointed action involves a would-be member of The Cannibals (law-breaking motorcycle gang) being pursued by them. Mostly comedic, in my opinion. Really strained. Almost awful.

When I saw the DVD box it came in, I was excited at the plot summary. However, it did not pan out the way the summary said it would. The acting was stilted at best, costuming trite, music is not even there. As I read the credits at the end, I was surprised there were 8 or so songs - none recognizable. At one time, there was a band playing at a party, but no sound came out. Same for the bongos later. Bad Trip is aptly named; that's how you feel when it finally ends. Obviously, this film was a first for everyone involved. Not a horror film, and not a biker film either - not sure where it fits as to genre but would suggest somewhere around 3rd grade elementary school comedy. I wish I could get my 85 minutes back that I spent watching this wasteland of film and plastic.

Yes, it's a real shame this weird film only got released in the states on this appalling, soundtrack-less DVD. Aparrently, the rights for the music were never properly cleared, and the DVD company simply chose to take it all off the soundtrack, together with a lot of other crucial sounds. It makes the viewing of this rock 'n' roll film totally surreal, for sure ! It's too bad, because the music is great (mostly obscure garage bands from the sixties), and very important to the movie's feel. It is possible to track down the Finnish DVD, which is nicely packaged and which contains the music and all the great Harley-Davidson sounds. The film was entirely shot in Finland by a French director (his first feature), with Finnish actors and real-life bikers, who were later dubbed into English by American actors based in Paris. It's a crazy, hybrid, off-beat, wacky and tongue-in-cheek venture which remains an undiscovered, buried lost classic ! And yes, it is really THE Jim Jarmusch doing a cameo as the decapitating Silver Rider !