The problems do abound in The Cycle Savages, but it could have possibly been a better movie. I did get into the sheer artificiality, and unbelievability, of the movie at times just on the basis of kinda, sort of buying into it. But it's also got a central problem in that there is really nothing 'there' in the side of the 'good guys'. Not that this is a totally bad thing really, for it is the mean dirty rat-bastard bikers that really are the show for anyone seeing the film today. And it's almost luck that first time writer/director Bill Brame has Bruce Dern to fill the part of Keeg, one of the sleaziest of the kind of totally immoral, however with a kind of Little Alex ala Clockwork Orange style of immediate intelligence. Even in all of his occasional mania and outright outbursts getting into the over-dramatic, Dern has this character completely down. It's actually best in the scenes where he ends up being most provoking by having the most controlled, almost calm voice. A lot of his 'wit' in the film is scabrous, and not really funny, but on the side of giving a convincingly deranged sociopath with a penchant for intimidation and girls it makes the film usually watchable.
It's a shame then that Brame isn't able to match him up with more competent actors. Or even, despite having a couple of good 'exploitation' style scenes of violence and nudity and rape, having not enough for what the rest of the material is asking for. The group, Hell's Chosen Few (strange for a half biker/half prostitution ring club), spends a lot of the movie waiting, and carrying on with side-stuff, while the main story involving the artist who previously drew the bikers who now gets drawn into the deceiving clutches of the decoy is weak and unconvincing. The motives most of the time, even for a B-movie, seem to shift and not seem very solid aside from the man's 'I love you' phase even after fighting with a slashed abdomen wound. The ending (coming all too quick and with a lackluster climax) and the musical accompaniment (likely the most annoyingly generic riff repeated in any film from the period) are along with some of the acting the weaker points of the picture, sometimes embarrassingly so.
So it does say a lot, however, that I could possibly recommend it on a bad movie level, where some parts become so crazy it's hard not to enjoy it. And Bruce Dern helps bring a good, tiny change of pace to the proceedings of the very typical ten-cent biker production, which by the way doesn't have a big abundance of throughout the film. In a career full of playing antagonists, this one is unnerving and realistic enough to be of note.
