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Customer Reviews of Rebel Rousers

Sublimely ridiculous bad biker flick; find the Rhino DVD
Yes, Rebel Rousers is a great Bad Biker Movie. I wasn't sure at first, as it starts off a little tepidly, but by the finale, the absurdities were piling up at such an astonishing rate that any doubts that it merits Trash Classic status had long since evaporated. First, the Rebel Rousers are one motley, unconventional movie biker gang: Bruce Dern is fascinating as always as the sensitive (!), moral (!), philosophical (!) gang leader, J. J.; Harry Dean Stanton as sarcastic Randolph, his lapels and fedora festooned with buttons, looks like some kind of punk-rock zoot-suiter; another gang member is a meditating Hebrew; and yet another a violent, leering Cowboy-psycho type. Jack Nicholson, wearing B&W striped prisoners' pants, stocking cap, and scarf, gives one of his prototypical nasty jerk characterizations as J. J.'s chief rival, Bunny, a more generic 'scuzzy biker dude.' They all roll into a dusty border town (Chloride, Arizona), where the chief pasttime seems to be playing checkers, and literally run into Paul Collier (Cameron Mitchell), an old high school football buddy of Dern's. Diane Ladd (then-Mrs. Dern) plays Collier's pregnant, estranged girlfriend Karen, who's shacked up in the local motel. Ladd and Mitchell try to inject some seriousness into the proceedings with earnest but meaningless, convoluted discussions about their relationship (accompanied by romantic guitars, flutes, electric piano, and cigarettes). Meanwhile, the bikers terrorize the local Padre and a little boy, and party wildly at the town watering hole, where they dance and strip on the bar, and introduce themselves to tippling little old ladies and farmers. Paul and Karen run afoul of the bikers, who argue a lot incoherently, and hold races on the beach to see who gets to have Ladd for the night. Assorted priceless moments include: Mitchell smoldering while the creepy bikers make shameless, lascivious plays for Ladd right in front of him; Bob Dix as Miguel performing the Mexican hat dance at his birthday party; a bloodied, frustrated Mitchell seeking help from the checker-playing farmers and drunks at the bar; Dern performing a "wedding," reciting passages from the Harley Davidson Service Manual (their "Bible"); Mitchell casually saying "Hi, Bunny" to Nicholson; and Nicholson arguing with Dern, who says "Don't look at me with that kind of grin on your face!" Like other bad biker movies, Rebel Rousers is, shall we say, thinly plotted and unfocused, with many scenes that seem improvised, directorial flourishes that will leave you scratching your head (like the final shot, for instance), and enough bad dialogue for several movies. According to Dern, this was filmed in 1966 and shelved, then had a limited release in 1970 timed to cash in on Nicholson's star turn in Easy Rider. The soundtrack of generic Ventures/Arrows-style twang sounds about right for '66. The cinematography by then-unknown Laszlo Kovacs (Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, Shampoo, Ghost Busters, etc.) looks typically fine, although some of the dialogue is obscured by background noise, loud music, or everyone talking at once. Dumb, strange, hilarious, and never boring, this is right up there with The Hellcats in the pantheon of Sublimely Bad Biker Movies. From the producers of The Brain That Wouldn't Die and Nightmare in Wax! Recommended.
This review is being posted under the "Passion Productions" DVD release, though I actually viewed Rhino's DVD edition, which may be going out of print but is still fairly easily obtainable at this writing (it has the same cover art as their VHS). Rhino's transfer looks surprisingly fine, better than I had expected, with some minor speckling, but otherwise displaying well saturated color (!!) and acceptable fleshtones, crisp detail, and good contrast/black level. The movie doesn't appear to have been shot widescreen and there is no mention of this in IMDb, so the full-frame transfer is not problematic. There are no extras other than 18 chapter stops, but Rhino gets points just for putting such an obscurity out in such a nice transfer. From comments in other reviews, it seems the other DVD editions of this are typical PD junk, so definitely track down the Rhino version.