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The leader of a biker gang is sure that he can kill himself and come back from the other side. All he needs is a little help from "a frog-worshipping cult and his seance-conducting mother." He also aims to get the rest of his gang to join him as part of the living dead. 1971, 90 minutes, Widescreen DVD
Common sense would dictate that I loath this movie because it failed to make any sense, nothing much happened in it, and it starred tons of ugly British people with really bad haircuts. But despite this having all the elements of a dingy effort where the movie was thought up after the really cool title (which has nothing to do with anything), I sat there transfixed in rapt attention for most its way too short ninety minutes. Was this because it was scripted by the duo that also penned the decent Horror Express or because director Don Sharp competently handled things as he did in Rasputin: The Mad Monk? Or was it because the movie featured a gang of outlaw bikers intent on terrorizing as many squares and townies as they could while outwitting the fuzz at every turn?
As soon as this movie began with a three minute long opening credit sequence that featured lots of slow motion shots of our biker gang riding around while this ultra-cool progressive rock electric guitar music played ominously in the background, I knew I was in for one of those flicks where guys would have names like Hatchet, Gash, and Chopped Meat and these names would be stitched onto their motorcycle leathers so they wouldn't accidentally pick up the wrong one when they headed out of their clubhouse for a raid or rumble. I knew that these guys and the girls (I was a bit disappointed that their ladies were never referred to as their "mamas" since all us in the biker culture know that when your old lady rides the wind with you, she's no lady, but a mama.) lived only for the next cheap thrill, for the next crazy gig, for that last high that's a total gas, man! It's like the bumper sticker on my Maverick says: Live to ride. Ride to live.
And sure, a movie about bikers is going to get you a passing grade as soon as I see a dude in his colors straddling his chrome horse and eating up blacktop while the pigs are sucking his fumes, but what if this was a biker gang of zombies? What if this biker gang had found some way to take that last ride...and come back? And come back with invincibility? But with their same petty goals of rampant destruction and hooliganism? And what if it starred Oscar winning film legend George Sanders? I know exactly what you'd say: looks we finally solved the mystery of why Oscar winning film legend George Sanders committed suicide right after making this movie.
Those of you with religious convictions that prevent you from "crossing over" as this movie puts it should cut George some slack. I would submit that after appearing in this film, he became convinced that his suicide would simply be a good career move and allow him to work his way back up to movies where he wasn't forced to wear a ring with a frog insignia on it. You see, all this zombie and coming back from the dead stuff revolves around the revolutionary idea that if you kill yourself, you can return to life (except that you can't be hurt since you're already dead) if you just believe that you'll return to life hard enough. I know, I know. You're exactly right. That's so simple, it just might work! Well, George probably thought so to, but may have botched it up at the last minute like one of the bikers does in this movie. Either that, or that bitchy suicide note he left (see Village Of The Damned for more details) was on the level.
Once the credits get done, it's down to business as we meet local hood Tom. Tom is the leader of a biker outfit who go by the name of The Living Dead (at least that's what the back of their jackets all say). That turns out to be one of those pleasant coincidences once they all turn into zombies. We immediately recognize Tom as not just your regular run of the mill biker leader when he interrupts a make out session with his old lady (Abby) at the local cemetery so that he can catch this really big frog. Though you make think that Tom must have been about eight years old, I assure you that he wasn't and that he actually had a very good reason to catch this big frog.
I never did catch on to what his good reason for catching that big frog was, but as soon as he brought it back to his mom's house, his mom's butler Shadwell (Sanders) seemed duly impressed. In fact, Shadwell really had a thing for frogs (or at least jewelry featuring them since he sported that ring and was handing out frog medallions to help out dead people and stuff) and this big frog was kept under one of those glass containers you put cake or pie in until the end of the movie when he ended up sitting on a chair, presumably mocking me for being dullwitted enough to have been taken in by all this frog-reincarnation-cult-biker nonsense.
Tom's mother is something of a medium and is just wrapping up a seance when Tom comes motoring back home with The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. Tom's intentions that night are to get some answers to some of his longstanding questions. He rattles these off to Shadwell while wolfing down a good-sized sub sandwich in the kitchen after putting his pet toad in his mom's best glassware. Among these questions is what's in the locked room in the house and what's the secret to life after death. Even though the room has been locked up for 18 years (even since Tom's dad died), Shadwell and Mom realize that Tom will not be denied, so Mom reaches into her blouse, pulls out the key to the room, and hands it to Tom. (If I was Tom, I would probably just have had her unlock it for me after that.) 
What happens in that room can only be described as, umm, muddled. Tom finds his dad's eyeglasses and has a vision of the past. He sees his mom out at the local strange rock formation known as the Seven Witches and she has this baby there (must be Tom) and she's signing some contract with a mysterious guy with a frog ring (must be Shadwell). Tom also sees a giant frog starring at him. Tom finally succumbs to these heinous apparitions and freaks out. Outside the room, he hears Shadwell and his mom babbling about how Tom's died when he tried to cross over because he just didn't believe in life after death hard enough. Tom instantly recognizes this as that vital bit of info he needed to carry out his plan and it isn't long before he drives his bike off a bridge into the river below to his apparent death.
Tom's death leads to a funeral highlighted by one of the Living Dead singing a protest rock song called "Riding Free" as well as Tom being buried upright and seated on his bike. It looked a little silly when they were doing it, but there was no way you could argue that it didn't look super cool when he was busting out of his grave on his cycle, dirt flying in every direction! Tom's first hours back in the world of the living are interesting ones. He runs over a guy taking a shortcut through the Seven Witches where Tom was buried. It's explained that the strange rocks are really witches that were turned to stone as punishment for breaking some agreement they had - I think we were supposed to assume that Tom's mom was in the same boat. He gases up his bike (that trip to Hell and back must be quite a haul), gets into a fight with the attendant, heads off to a bar where he calls his mom to let him know he's okay (awwww!), then gets into a squabble with a trollop that wants a ride on his bike, leading to Tom having to kill about five people from the bar who go out to see what all the ruckus is about. Whew! You'd have to be an invincible zombie to get all that done in one evening!
Tom spends the rest of the movie attempting to convince the rest of his crew to kill themselves so that they too could live forever without ever being hurt. This leads to one of the stranger montages you're likely to see as gang members kill themselves in a variety of ways. You've got a guy jumping out of a multi-story building. There's guy who loads himself up with chains and flops into the river where he drowns. Another guy takes a swan dive off a highway over pass into the path of an oncoming truck. And then there's the dude that sky dives out of an airplane without ever opening his parachute. It's like they turned the act of suicide into something you'd find on Fear Factor. At least Abby was just trying to overdose. Of course she fails because she wants to live. What kind of girlfriend is that?
With his mostly zombie team of biker pals, Tom begins to execute his master plan. So they all head to the local grocery store and drive around knocking over boxes of cereal, displays of canned goods and plowing into baby carriages. Tom and the gang head back to his place where Tom tells Abby they should each drive through a brick wall. Tom does this, but Abby fails to do so and Tom realizes that their relationship is in trouble. She confesses that she is actually alive and Tom is understandably miffed at this complete lack of support of his undead lifestyle. It's off to the Seven Witches where Tom tells her that she either kill herself or the gang will do it for her.
The fact that this is when the big wrap up to everything takes place kind of shows you how little went on in the movie. It's basically the "boy meets girl, boy kills self, boy comes back from dead, boy wants girl to kill self" plot we've all seen before, but you know, with bikers. And frogs. And Oscar-winning film legend George Sanders. The ending probably only made sense if the beginning made any sense to you. I never understood Shadwell, his frogs, his bargains, or how any of this related to coming back from the dead simply because you wished for it to happen. But then again, I didn't need to since I had a bunch of grubby bikers peeling around the English countryside crashing semis and outrunning the fuzz. I mean, these guys wore helmets with skulls painted on the front, complimented with big white goggles. So what if there were some amphibians and washed up actors milling around in the background? This one even had a biker named Hinky.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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