The Rebel Rousers

Many times as I sat watching this god-awful film it sure looked like there really wasn't a script. In many places, it looked as if the director, if there was one, just told everyone to 'wing it'--and often the actors talked over each other, spouted gibberish or just talked to hear themselves talk. In addition, sometimes the actors did things that made almost no sense--giving further evidence to the idea that there was no script...or even plot. This is especially true for at least the first half hour of the film where most of it just involves a biker gang running amok. Amidst all this, there is a plot that keeps trying to appear that involves Cameron Mitchell trying to get his pregnant girlfriend to marry him. Eventually the two plots intersect as the two are eventually terrorized by the evil bikers--but in the interim there is still more rambling and pointless prattle. All this makes up the last 2/3 of the film. Not a whole lot more to it than this. Amateurish and silly throughout but not outlandish or silly enough to make it fun for bad movie buffs.

The strange behavior of various characters in this movie made me wonder if this might be a parody of biker movies. It was funny when the stereotypical dumb, lazy and cowardly Latino deputy was on screen. He and the sheriff were the only law, and at one point even the sheriff wasn't around. The bikers could have taken over and terrorized the town. And yet they weren't as mean as they could have been, which was never really explained. It was like there was an on-off switch deciding whether the bikers were going to be violent, or funny, or whatever. Some of them were more peace-oriented than the others and tried to get the meaner ones to behave.

What really made no sense was the reaction of Cameron Mitchell's character to the bikers. At first I thought he and Diane Ladd were giving good performances. Now I have to wonder. I can say this much: I enjoyed the music that was played in the scenes where Cameron Mitchell and Diane Ladd were together, and of course the funny deputy.

Other than that, what was this?

As another commenter stated, I believe this film sat on the shelf for a while, not being able to get a release since it was so bad. Then, once Jack Nicholson's career break-out occurred, this was rushed out to the drive-in circuit.

The 74 minute running time of the film gives away its intentions: classic B movie fare, bottom-of-the-bill, baby. Okay, for 1960's drive-ins, and not the 1940's neighborhood Bijoux, but the same principle is at play. This film looks like it was shot in two days on a budget of two cents. They drag a film camera, about ten motorcycles and a ten-year-old Ford out to some blot on the map out past Barstow, then start filming. There were about six locations, and most of them were outside, including a beach. Half of the dialog sounds improvised. Much of it is incoherent yelling.

Nobody actually says it, but I think this is supposed to take place in Mexico. And what a horrible, stereotyped version of Mexico it is. (Call me "politically correct" all you want, this film is ridiculous). All the Mexican characters are played by Gringos with "seester" type of phony accents, if they even tried to fake an accent at all. A lot of lazy, siesta-taking, serape-wearing caricatures. Pinatas hang from every ceiling. They have no modern technology; the "sheriff's office," a crumbling adobe hut, has a hand-cranked telephone! No wonder this hasn't been out on DVD.

The plot, what little there is of it, is highly simplistic. Bikers, led by Bruce Dern, menace Cameron Mitchell and pregnant ex-paramour Diane Ladd, taking her prisoner and beating him up. But Dern doesn't like it. He tries to keep his sadistic buddies in line, he just wants to ride around and party and doesn't like all this violence, man. So how did he end up leading a group of violent bikers? "It's a long story, man." That's it? That's all the back story we get?? Lame!

The only positive thing I can say about this movie is the acting. Watch Nicholson, you'll begin to see why has the legendary career he has today. Dern is quite good, coming across as his usual jittery, manic self, tempered with sincerity and gentleness. Diane Ladd is quite believable as The Post-Feminist Woman Who's Gonna Have Her Baby By Herself, Dammit. Harry Dean Stanton is also around, providing some goofy charm. Also seen are Robert Dix and the omnipresent (if you watch genre movies) John "Bud" Cardos, later director of the William Shatner clas-sick "Kingdom of the Spiders"!!

I give this movie a four only for the acting. Unless you are a biker movie completist, you should give it a pass. Other biker movies I would recommend: The Wild Angels, The Tormentors, Satan's Sadists.

A quick once over and The Rebel Rousers seems nothing more than a good guy versus evil biker gang midnight movie. But,look closer and you see a story about the conflict of conforming to the norms of society or rebelling against them. The star of the film is a heavy-set Cameron Mitchell who plays a middle-class businessman in a stormy romance with Diane Ladd. Mitchell meets a former high-school buddy played by an intense Bruce Dern(kind of weird pairing here as Mitchell is 18 years older than Dern in real life)the leader of a gang of misfit bikers. Both men seem both happy and sad to see each other. It's as if each man is jealous of the other's lifestyle. Yet, neither one is happy. A rugged looking Jack Nicholson is Bunny, a psycho member of the Rebels. It's clear even here, that Nicholson is a star in the making. There is not one moment when you feel he is "acting" his part. The main focus of the film is Nicholson's attempt to rape Ladd, with both Mitchell and Dern preventing it. Ladd's character represents the family values of the 1950's and Nicholson's Bunny is symbolic of the devil-may-care 1960's lifestyle that may destroy it. If you like movies with a "meaning' The Rebel Rousers is for you.

The Rebel Rousers a few times feels like it could be aiming for something more on its lunch-money used for a budget. It's got a very simple crux to the story- Bruce Dern and Cameron Mitchell as old school friends (hey, they may be oh two decades apart, but it was college I guess) say hello and go their separate ways at the start of the film, the former being a biker club leader and the latter a soon-to-be father of a possibly illegitimate child by Diane Ladd's character. Then, some of the bikers one day find the two in a car, take them down to a beach, and beat the crap out of him for just, well, being there. He slugs off to get help while the other bikers race to see who'll get their 'time' with her, with Jack Nicholson's Bunny (ho-ho) vies for the prize.

This crux is given some actors who actually say very basic lines of dialog with some conviction and faith in the material, but not much. Some of the acting, or at least casting, is a little strange though. Nicholson is given the top billing on most VHS releases of the film, but his is a supporting role that is like RP McMurphy from Cuckoo's nest with his wonderful sarcasm replaced by striped pants (which the director decides to use to block some shots). There's also the versatile Harry Dean Stanton among the pack, with possibly the most ridiculous get-up in his whole career. It all leads up to a climax that includes a fight, but also a letdown in not having the bikers square off against the Mexicans who show up with their pitchforks on the beach after finally being alerted.

All of this is up for good times in the B-movie guilty pleasure sense by the sound of it, and everything that can be made as 'surface' as possible is used for dramatic or just 'there' effect; Mitchell and Ladd's characters have not much else to say except the baby and marriage; the bikers, aside from Dern and possibly Nicholson (who when he does have a line or something to do is very funny), are hard to discern with any distinguishing characteristics; the police are (amusingly) very limited to a Deputy who's never around and a lummox with bricks for brains. There's even a very good scene where Mitchell gets no response from a bar full of patrons even in his beat-up, bloodied state. But the problem with all of the expended effort put into The Rebel Rousers is that it's too amateurish to be taken at all seriously as a fun time, if that makes sense.

Producer/writer/director Martin B. Cohen seems to understand point and shoot (and the previously mentioned stripe-pants blocking shots), and not much else. There is also the issue of lighting, to which it looks like the filmmakers didn't have enough money for or just didn't give a crap about- the climax is a letdown mostly for how you can't see a damn thing that's going on. It's ironic to think that Laslo Kovacs went from Easy Rider to this (or vice versa). His music choices are mostly awful, at least a few supporting actors brought on look like they're improvising on the set (and not for the better of the actual script), and any real guilty fun (ala Angels Hard as They Come) of seeing a bunch of bikers being really mean and ruthless is compounded by the Mitchell/Ladd moments which are un-evenly paced.

But even with all of this, as a pre-Easy Rider kind of spectacle (shot before it but not released till after it came out, a shelved movie for three years), it's not bad to look at as a curio piece for some of its main players. For fans of the actors who got their feet wet in these kinds of pictures it's of a little interest to see Dern as the unlikely protagonist and Nicholson as the grizzly heel, or Stanton in his sometimes whacked out state. That it leaves no real lasting impression is no surprise though, aside from being a mixed bag.