Bigelow debut film in a bikexploitation key. The director proves she knows her predecessors: The Wild One (Il Selvaggio, Benedek, 1953) of course, but also The Wild Angels (I Selvaggi, Corman, 1966) and probably the project by Romero Knightriders released the same year, just to mention those "copyright." Easy Rider, 1969 by Hopper, less influential than the hippy iconography of the 1960s rather than the bikers of the 1950s. The film made a very young Willem Dafoe known at the beginning of his career. Last notation: Bigelow deals with the topic in a testosteronic key, a feature that we will find in her subsequent films especially those of a military-military setting, among all The Hurt Locker, 2008 with which she won the Oscar in 2010!