Motorcycle Gang Reviews

This second-hand action flick, one of Showtime's Drive-In Classics remakes of old American International exploitation films, is a flat and pointless rehash. Neither teenaged Leann (Carla Gugino) nor her trampy mom, Jean (Elan Oberon) — who has a handsome, married lover in town — is happy about daddy Cal's (Gerald McRaney) plans to move the family to California This being the fifties, Cal thinks he knows best and the family pulls up stakes. En route, Leann catches sight of a motorcycle gang led by rebellious Jake (Jake Busey), and in her eyes the biker bums cut a powerfully romantic figure. One of Jake's gang tries to pressure him into another drug run, so Jake dismisses kills him with a switchblade and heads for Mexico. Along the way he picks up a pretty store clerk who dies from a heroin overdose, leaving him in need of an new old lady. While staying at a motel, Cal hears disturbing rumors about the rebels on wheels; that night, Jake tampers with Cal's car, which subsequently breaks down in the middle of nowhere. When Cal goes off for help, Jake shows up and pretends to save Leann from two of his buddies. Then he whisks her across the border, plies her with booze and has his way witht he reckless schoolgirl. The highway patrol informs Cal that they have no jurisdiction in Mexico, forcing Cal and Jean to become vigilantes in hopes of retrieving their daughter, who's now "damaged goods." Is this All-American family a match for Jake and his band of juvenile delinquents? Removed from their Eisenhower-era context, rebel teen movies like this lack raison-d'etre: The once forbidden thrill of necking at drive-ins can't be effectively evoked by a pea-brained revamp that's as authentic as TV's Happy Days.