Chrome and Hot Leather (USA, 1971) 91 min color DIR-DOP: Lee Frost. PROD: Wes Bishop. SCR: Michael Haynes, David Neibel, Don Tait. MUSIC: Porter Jordan. CAST: William Smith, Tony Young, Michael Haynes, Peter Brown, Marvin Gaye, Michael Stearns, Larry Bishop, Kathrine Baumann, Herb Jeffries, Bobby Pickett, Dan Haggerty, Robert Ridgely. (American International Pictures)
William Smith was the perfect candidate for king of the biker film in the early 1970s. With his muscular build and dry-voiced delivery, he was an imposing villain, or a strong hero in such minor masterpieces as The Losers and Run Angel Run. In this enjoyable romp, he is TJ, the leader of a bike gang who must answer for his member’s stupidity. The loose cannon Casey (Michael Haynes) terrorizes two girls (including a young Cheryl Ladd!) in a car- their efforts to escape result in a fatal crash.
A carelessly left chain at the crash site is the clue to find the bike gang upon which to exact retribution. This biker revenge story slightly differs from others in that one of the dead girls has a fiancé who teaches war maneuvers! The film opens in what we perceive to be Vietnam, as we see Asian soldiers running around between the bushes about to do battle with some American GIs. It’s a neat twist, as we find out that this was simply a module to whip some new recruits into shape. The “Vietnam” backdrop is actually a meadow in middle America! At first, this opening may seem overlong and irrelevant, but it introduces us to the hero Mitch (Tony Young) and his buddies (one of them played by Marvin Gaye!), and suggests that life is a ongoing battlefield for these men. Once this quartet decides to avenge the girl’s death, they certainly use their military expertise, and strive to beat the bikers at their own game.
Yet, rather than follow the patterns of a war film, Chrome and Hot Leather actually mirrors the conventions of a western (as do many biker films, once you consider they are 20th Century outlaws on hogs instead of horses). In this surreal playground, everyone lives and dies by a chopper instead of a gun. In a humourous sequence, the army guys have to learn to ride motorcycles!
They identify the gang by the leftover chain (instead of a spur), and by asking around among the other jean-jacketed varmints who hang around fleabag restaurants in the American Southwest. Then, Mitch performs the tradition of infiltrating the outlaw gang. First off, he sleeps with Casey’s “old lady”. Alas, his cover is blown, and his motives are discovered. Will his army buddies (representing the cavalry) come and rescue him in time?
If you think about it, Chrome and Hot Leather is really an interesting morality play. (Perhaps my own morals should be questioned because I had watched this as a VHS rental while my wife was in the other room watching the Pope’s visit.) In hindsight the soldiers (“the heroes”) battle the biker dudes (“the outlaws”) with such precision and more firepower than this fun-loving chopper gang could ever compete with, that were it not for the fact that two girls died at their hands, we would actually feel sorry for them!
Star William Smith actually plays a secondary character– the primary conflict in this film is between Mitch and Casey. His character, TJ, is just trying to hold the gang together. With the exception of Casey’s heinous acts, TJ and his buddies really don’t do anything wrong, other than ride their choppers after drinking a lot of beer. (It isn’t Canadian beer, so they probably don’t have much of a buzz going in the first place.) Nonetheless, TJ is a colourful anti-hero who has to pay for the mistakes of his ostracized gang member.
Despite some horribly underexposed nighttime scenes, this flick was made with some genuine care. It is another offering from the director-producer team of (respectively) Lee Frost and Wes Bishop, who began making roughies in the 1960s, and then released more commercial drive-in fare in the 1970s, including such delights as Chain Gang Women and (sigh) The Thing with Two Heads. The action scenes are well-shot and crisply edited, despite the minuscule budget at hand. Also, this movie has a disarming sense of humour– I love the guy who keeps on playing pinball, oblivious to his biker buddies getting in a fight at their favourite hangout.
For a 99 cent rental or a slow Saturday night, you can’t go wrong with Chrome and Hot Leather. It is a genuinely engaging little epic. I had originally viewed this as VHS rental on Trylon (a subsidiary of Thorn EMI, who had licensed several AIP films for distribution), but it is also available on one of MGM’s awesome Midnite Movies Double Feature DVDs, sharing a bill with another biker film, The Mini-Skirt Mob. (Trivia note: William Smith and Peter Brown had also worked together on the TV series Laredo and the 1972 adventure thriller Piranha (not to be confused with Joe Dante’s 1978 classic).
Updated from a review originally published in ESR #6, 2002.