Movie Review - Easy Rider

A few things about this before the actual review. I don't think Peter Fonda is a very experienced rider at all. He wobbles & jerks a lot on the chopper. He looks like he could have done with a lot more practice riding it. Hopper looks the more natural biker of the two. I didn't fancy staying up to watch this so I taped it. And as is always the way the damn thing started early so I missed a little of the start, Fonda & Hopper were already in the junkyard doing their drug deal, so I don't exactly know about the what's and why's of the start.

The film is a very psychedelic look at late 60's America, It's almost like someone read some Jack Kerouac and decided to make it into a film. The film makes a very definite statement from the moment Fonda drops his watch before they set out on the road. They have no need to measure time or to know anything exact. They trip happily along having small things happen, A flat tire, picking up a hike-hiker (I almost thought he'd stolen their money when he said the gasoline had been taken care of), Taking him to the commune (that is one weird series of scenes) and then being arrested by the police for crashing a parade.

Finally here they meet Jack Nicolson as a strange southern lawyer who has been arrested and gets them free. They finally wear helmets on their bikes (I assume they are riding through states and counties that have helmet laws) and Nicolson is wearing a Football helmet of all things. Though I guess it would protect him as well in a crash. During the camp fire discussion about Venusians, I totally got where Robin Williams' Mork got his ideas for "The Friends Of Venus" because he totally sounds like Nicolson. I also noticed later he was doing the whole braces over a t-shirt thing like Mork too.

The scene in the café was heavily laced with bigotry, I'm amazed to think people could have ever been so narrow minded. Even towards people of their own color and very much so to how they spoke about the US flag. It makes me wonder how many people in America still don't seem to realize how long the civil war has been over. I assume the southern rednecks attacked the riders during the night (even though it seemed like a dream sequence) and they killed Nicolson even though he was most southern and respectable looking of the 3 men.

The visit to the brothel is very quiet, subdued. The scenes play out very quietly like they are hard to perform until they go out onto the streets into the Mardi Gras. For those scenes the film takes on a very amateur film look, not well focused and color looking washed out. In the graveyard you get another one of the many "Cut-together" shots and very rapidly cut to and from various points of view which is difficult to watch and even harder to pay attention to.

The characters are tripping, some on very bad trips but this quickly cuts to Fonda & Hopper having another fireside scene which seems to make no sense at all and then are back on the road again to somewhere else. The man who shoots Hopper has no reason, likewise when Fonda is killed. They are just 2 men on motorcycle's who the 2 rednecks take a dislike to and decide to scare them and end up killing them both. The film seems to simply have run out of ideas so they kill the remaining 2 main characters. The whole idea that they were going somewhere with their money to do something is suddenly lost.

I totally didn't notice Toni Basil (yes, the same one of 80's fame who sang Mickey!) as the dark haired hooker Mary. Mind you I did notice Dan Haggerty AKA Grizzly Adams who it turns out built the bikes featured in the film.