- Director: Michel Levesque
- Writers: David M. Kaufman, Michel Levesque
- Stars: Steve Oliver, Donna Anders, Gene Shane
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 25 Minutes
- Link: https://amzn.to/3kNamlP
Synopsis
We get shots of the biker gang as credits roll. A guy in a truck runs one of them off the road and the rest follow him to get their revenge. They catch up at the gas station, where they beat the crap out of him and send him packing.
None of the bikers want to let “Tarot” read their futures. As the guys have fun, Tarot reads the future for one of the girls, and he tells her how she’s going to die. He explains that she’s going to die in a tower, stuck by lightning. They get back on the road.
They all stop out in the woods and find an old church. There’s a bunch of monks out there, and the bikers are a loud bunch, disturbing the peace. The monks aren’t the usual kind; they’re Satanists. The Devil worshippers surround the bikers, who eat their bread and wine.
The leader is called One, and only he is allowed to speak. He puts a hair from one of the bikers in his pentagram medallion and commands them all to sleep.
One does an unholy ritual and asks Satan to take a bride. It’s Helen, the girl who had her fortune told earlier. First, she’s in a wedding dress, then she’s eating One’s bread, next she’s naked-dancing with a snake.
Meanwhile, the bikers wake up and run inside to rescue Helen. They fight the monks who fall down really easily. The bikers get on their bikes and head out to the desert to get their heads straight. They ride all day, but that night, Helen starts screaming and dancing for no reason. A couple of them, Shirley and Mouse, are killed by werewolves. Wait— what? Where did those come from?
They find the bodies in the morning. Tarot says, “Somebody’s controlling the vibes,” as he doesn’t think their deaths were an accident. They ride on through the desert and stop for the night in a junkyard.
Adam warns Tarot that he’s freaking out the other guys because of his mystic garbage. They plan to burn the junk cars that night to keep any animals away. That night, there are more werewolf deaths. They find what’s left of Movie’s body in the fire.
Soon, Tarot and Adam start fighting in the dirt. That night, Adam turns into a werewolf. There’s lots of growling and pushing of torches with no clear goal for anyone. Eventually, they set him on fire. There’s a second werewolf, but we don’t even see that until he hops on a motorcycle and rides off. For some reason, he flies into the air and explodes; it’s very dark.
Later, the bikers go back to the Satanic temple and say they are all one with Satan.
Commentary
For the first half-hour, I kept thinking that this was somebody’s idea of stereotypical hippie bikers from the 70s. Then I remembered that this was from 1971, and those weren’t stereotypes yet. So does the mean this was all real? Somehow, I doubt it.
The Satanic ritual is long and pretty detailed, but it’s clear that One is just mumbling Latin-sounding noises at one point. There are lots of scenes of guys riding motorcycles through the desert; someone here really thought that was fun to watch.
The poster made it look like there would be werewolves riding motorcycles, which would be cool. In this film, you don’t even get a good look at the werewolf at all until the end, and even then, they’re just creeping around in the dark, not doing anything that’s fun to watch. Although one does eventually hop on a motorcycle, he only rides for a few seconds in the dark, and you can’t see anything. It’s quite a let down for the “money shot” of the film.
The audio is pretty terrible, a lot of the dialogue is muffled and mumbled. It seems like it may have actually been recorded out in the desert with all the background noise. Basically, the ending is so dark, I couldn’t really tell you what happened after Adam turned into a werewolf.
It’s pretty bad.