Rebel Rousers
Rebel Rousers
R | 01 April 1970 (USA)
Rebel Rousers Trailers

In a small, US costal town with many Spanish speakers, a motorcycle gang arrives on holiday. Also in town to try to reconnect with his pregnant girlfriend, Karen, is businessman Paul Collier. Paul and a leader of the cyclists, J.J., knew each other years before, so when the gang comes upon the couple and, led by the menacing Bunny, beats up Paul and begins a sexual assault of Karen, J.J. tries to intervene: he suggests they hold cycle-riding contests, with the winner claiming Karen (he promises, sotto voce, to set her free if he wins). After the contests commence, Paul crawls away to look for help. He meets with a shrug from a cowardly sheriff's deputy; where can he turn?

Reviews
Hellen

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

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Diagonaldi

Very well executed

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Spoonatects

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

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Jonah Abbott

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

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preppy-3

J.J. Weston (Bruce Dern) belongs to a biker gang that includes a man named Bunny (Jack Nicholson). He runs into an old college buddy named Paul (Cameron Mitchell). Paul is living with Karen (Diane Ladd) who's pregnant with his baby. The biker gang get Paul and Karen alone on a beach. They beat up Paul (for no reason) and propose to marry Karen to Bunny. J.J. wants to stop this...but how? Boring and stupid biker flick. A terrible script really sinks this one. The biker gang acts and sounds like no biker gang I ever heard of. The dialogue is stilted and the basic plot is just so stupid it's mind-boggling. The part where J.J. starts a "marriage" between Karen and Bunny is just beyond belief. This is only of interest for the cast. It has a pre-stardom Nicholson (wearing the most annoying striped pants I've ever seen) and a very young Dern and Ladd (who I believe were married at the time). Their acting is great but it can't help the horrendous script. A curio at best.

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Woodyanders

Architect Paul Collier (an incredibly insipid performance by Cameron Mitchell) stops off at a small Arizona desert town to visit his headstrong pregnant girlfriend Karen (a sound and sympathetic portrayal by Diane Ladd). Paul bumps into old high school buddy J.J. Weston (the always solid Bruce Dern), who's now the amiable and laid-back leader of a gang of rowdy bikers. Naturally, J.J.'s scruffy chopper chums take an unsavory interest in Karen. Sound exciting? Well, alas it ain't. Martin B. Cohen's bland direction, working from a drab and talky script which he co-wrote with Michael Kars and Abe Polsky, relates the meandering narrative at a draggy pace, fails to bring any real tension or vitality to the proceedings, and gets further bogged down in a sappy love story between Mitchell and Ladd. The cast do their best with the sub-par material: Dern and Ladd contribute respectable work, Jack Nicholson sports an amazing pair of gloriously ghastly striped pants and makes the most out of his regrettably minor role as volatile rotten apple Harley hound Bunny, and Harry Dean Stanton is a hoot as flaky hipster Randolph Halverson. Both Laszlo Kovacs' fairly polished cinematography and William Loose's groovy jammin' score are above average. While the movie occasionally bursts to life with some decent fisticuffs and motorcycle races, it's overall not gritty or energetic enough to qualify as anything more than a strictly passable time-waster.

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lost-in-limbo

This late carefree, but crudely gruff low-cost b-grade biker exploitation (that was shelved for a couple of years before being released because of the fascinating performance of Nicholson in the 1969's biker flick 'Easy Rider') is nothing more than a minor curious piece for its well oiled cast, who would go onto better things. Namely Jack Nicholson and Harry Dean Stanton. Really they only have support parts. Stanton who engages with his little screen time (one of the rowdy bikers who are far from threatening with their clown-like appearances), looks totally out of place though. However there's something oddly captivating (strange in stupidly oddball and ditsy sense) about this feature, even though it's overly talky and demonstrates plenty of posing about to stall out the time. Watch as there's conflicting confrontations, trivial exchanges, more conflicting confrontations…. Again the usual conflicting confrontation rears its ugly head. Boy how exciting (well it would've been if there was some fiery interest inserted) and sometimes it just goes on for too long. Many of the dialogues are awkward, stiff (although a spirited Bruce Dern admirably tries his best to infuse life) with the padded nature only making the short running time meander even more. A sombre Cameron Mitchell could be mistaken for a wooden plank and Diane Ladd is there too look all worried. Nicholson (in some eye-boggling pants) laps it up as the low-brow, cruel biker, but his performance is pretty much on the fringe. An unhinged, funky-dory score hits its cues with force and there's a few striking scenic views. The story is quite sparse and scratchily old-hat. A couple is terrorised by bikers and the town's folk want nothing to do with it when the husband escapes looking for help. In the couple of action sequences, the scrappy direction is laughably staged when it does happen and it's the mugging filler that takes the spotlight. Maybe worth a geeze for the names, but the glaring problems are hard to digest.

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angelsunchained

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.

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