Pink Angels

Trailer—Pink Angels

source: Pink Angels

'Pink Angels' are a mob of questionable characters who stray too far from San Francisco and venture into LA. Don't know what the opening scene by the poolside was all about as nobody hardly talked. Second scene don't make much sense either as no one said anything. Third scene is the same as the screenwriter failed to show up for this project. Cut to the credits. What a start to a movie. No one's explaining anything. The writer's gone AWOL. It's like a movie designed for mime clowns only. No one's saying anything! It's plainly obvious whoever was responsible suffered from a major case of writer's block as all they're doing is playing lame hippy music over the actor's actions to substitute for a lack of creativity. The head biker even gesticulates with an index finger motion to take out the hitchhiker they just picked up but nobody acts on this command. The movie's so inept they just filmed some random bystanders, who were gawking at proceedings, and included that in the movie. It's 'Manos: The Hands of Fate' stuff. They have no lines for the actors to perform so they fall back on a childish food fight scene. This is 7th grader stuff. "Who threw chocolate on me?" Probably Jeffrey Dahmer. It's like someone's home video all sliced up with these horrible songs thrown in to compensate for the screenwriter's inaction. Is it a tale of how The Village People were formed and came to be? Why do I even own this DVD? There's no plot to report of as they lost me at the start with their silent movie theatrics. Is it trying to be a comedy? If anyone took credit as a writer for this movie, they need to stand trial. There's an unfunny shopping scene that serves no purpose or direction. (I'm actually rewinding this shopping scene to see if what I saw the first time is to be believed.) In this shopping scene they actually conduct a survey, with some random real-life customer, who's asked silly voice-over questions. A subplot, from an entirely different movie, sees a Dennis Leary lookalike acting maniacal and dressed in military attire. His assistant receptionist, Miss Ellen, looks like she stuck wire in an outlet and got zapped then had her hair vacuumed by a hoover with bonus super glue run through her hair. There's a scene where they're all making love... with their clothes on! An opposing motorcycle gang show up, led by Clarence Boddicker, and the Pink Angels give them makeovers which irks them into revenge. The tortured hair receptionist keeps bobbing up and she has to be hooked up to a sparkplug and drip-fed lacquer to slick back her bangs like that. You could springboard into a pool off her plane wing hair. This movie escaped from a closet in a mental institution. The receptionist, with the exploded grenade hair, looks like it's stringed in the fashion of a marionette. It's worse than bed hair! I don't know in what category you'd file this movie under? I had to rewind the ending a second time as my eyes seem to be playing tricks on me again. Did that really just happen? The Pink Angels wind-up on the wrong end of a noose and hang from a great big half dead tree by the neck till they're all dead. If you have annoying people who come over to your house uninvited, then just pop this movie on and you watch those cowards run from that propellent. I bet orangutans would find this movie funny, I didn't.

After having just watched Pink Angels, I went online to find some commentary on the movie. Most of what I have read seems to be the same. I think I can offer a slightly different take on this film. From a cinematic standpoint, the movie makes little to no sense. We are introduced in an opening scene that seems to not be related to anything else, even though there is a point in the movie where you may, like I did, have an "a-ha" moment thinking that the movie has returned to the moment it opened. You couldn't be more wrong. There are clips interspersed throughout to introduce The General as well. What fascinates me most about this movie is mostly the volumes that are spoken about our society and the writers through the film. On the surface, it's about a group of cross dressing bikers out to attend a gala in L.A. The movie seems to follow their journey while also introducing us to The General in a completely different setting. During their trip they encounter a hitchhiker, overbearing cops, and a gang of straight bikers. If you watch the movie and observe the characters, a few interesting traits show up. Amongst themselves, the bikers act like absolute queens. When in public, they make a point of putting up a "butch" front to hide their presumed homosexuality. Given when this was made, that made sense. You didn't celebrate being gay, you hid it. I think someone involved in the film relied on a lot of arcane stereotypes when putting this together. Like a lot of things in this film, even their sexual orientation can be questioned. In a scene in which hookers are brought out to party, they engage in a weird comical sexual romp with some of the girls along with the straight bikers. Some of them do, anyway. Was this intentional, or just a slip by the movie makers? The combination of cross dressing and homosexuality struck me as particularly interesting because there is not necessarily a correlation between the two. You can enjoy dressing up in women's clothing (Ed Wood) and be perfectly straight. So if you want to enjoy a nonsensical romp with one of the strangest endings in any movie, this is a great choice. If you have read other reviews, you've already read about the ending. When you watch this movie, there is no way you can see this coming. Random? Possibly. It's hard to tell if the ending was patched together at the last minute or planned. I do think there is a chance, given how the characters are portrayed in the film, that it's also meant as a statement about how they felt about the gay lifestyle, for lack of a better phrase.

I liked this a lot. I've looked at other reviewers' comments on site and agree with most. I can't agree with comments like, 'worst movie ever made' but somehow can take both, 'hilarious' and 'not funny'. Certainly I didn't sit laughing, indeed can't think of anything I found particularly funny, but it was amusing and more importantly, endearing. I think that as with some of the 70s Warhol product, particularly, Women in Revolt, I am attracted and absorbed not because of any narrative or genre attraction but simply by the utterly convincing way the parts are grabbed by the scruff of the neck and enjoyed by those we are watching on screen. So, yes it is virtually plot-less and not hilarious but still most watchable. Even if I can't properly explain why, I would happily sit down and watch it again any time. Weird eh? Me and the film then, I reckon.

The drive-in movies of the 1970s didn't concern themselves with political correctness, so there's really not much point getting worked up over the stereotypes on display in "Pink Angels." This movie isn't meant to appeal to gay men anyway, a point driven home by all the bare breasts. But you'd think there would've been some attempt to at least make this movie funny, it being a comedy and all. You would also think there would be some attempt to make this movie coherent, and the filmmakers don't bother with that, either. Instead, this gay biker movie — the concept is meant to be a punchline in and of itself — is like a bunch of random scenes haphazardly edited into a vague narrative about our heroes riding their ugly purple-gray bikes, complete with sidecars, to L.A. for a drag ball, because, as everyone knows, all gay men live to wear women's clothing. While our bikers are picking up clueless hitchhikers ("You're all a bunch of f-gs!"), having condiment fights ("Look! I'm a hot dog!"), buying soup (?), recoiling from a group of cackling hookers, tangling with a group of straight bikers, and dress shopping, there are scenes of a bumbling General (George T. Marshall) who spends most of his time barking at his big-haired secretary and pointing to a map. The two independent "storylines" (for lack of a better term) come together in the movie's climactic moments when our gay bikers, now in drag, are picked up by the "straight"—and evidently blind—bikers and taken to the General's mansion/headquarters for a shocking finale that would've offended me if I weren't so busy pondering questions like: Are we to assume the straight bikers were working for the General? Was the General hosting the drag ball? This ties in with the prologue how, exactly? So, yeah, "Pink Angels" is a big, swishy mess, and I suspect director Larry G. Brown knew it given that his screen credit is several point sizes smaller than everyone else's. A Margaret McPherson is blamed for the script, though many of the scenes play like they were improvised. Not surprisingly, "Angels" marked the end of Brown's and McPherson's respective movie careers, at least according to their IMDb credits. Exploitation movie veteran John Alderman, as the leader of the gay bikers, manages to maintain his dignity for most of the movie (that is, until he dresses in drag), and Tom Basham, as the clumsiest of the gay bikers, has a few genuinely amusing moments in spite of the material. But ultimately this movie's only redeeming quality is a pre-"Grizzly Adams" Dan Haggerty as one of the straight bikers, looking his most f---able. He doesn't do much beyond ride a chopper and wrestle around with one of those hookers, but he makes a favorable impression all the same, especially if you're into muscle bears.

I hope when I am on my death bed I do not remember the 81 minutes I spent watching this utter disaster of a movie. I didn't laugh once. If you want to see a movie about over the top gays and laugh at societies' reaction to them, I suppose Bruno might be a better option. This film just isn't funny, or sexy, or intelligent. I could go on (apparently I have to in order to leave a comment on IMDb!) O.k., the acting is atrocious. The biker costumes are awful. The military costumes aren't. They are sorta green hunting jackets from a sporting goods store. The soldier in the film has bushy side burns (apparently he didn't think the script was worth shaving for). He calls his general when he sees the bikers...by opening a mail box (with the house number clearly visible) to grab a white phone and start talking (prop department? What prop department?) Oh, and the music is beyond amateurish and doesn't even fit the scenes. If you think a cow "mooo" sound effect is funny when a woman's breasts are shown, by all means, see this movie. Then shoot yourself and do your part to advance the human gene pool.

So much of this movie is great comedic material. It spoofs (perhaps unintentionally) exploitation movie genres - biker films, gaysploitation, sexploitation, etc. The characters are outlandish and the casting is rather odd (for example, the over-the-hill prostitute who's considered to be more desirable than the younger, attractive ones). It makes me wonder if some of the cast was selected as personal favors or nepotism. Major plot points seems hard to believe, but may make the audience chuckle. Supporting characters generally believe that the Angels are a rough-and-tumble biker gang, even though they obviously talk and move like sissies. People can't seem to notice the obvious 5 o'clock shadows of the transvestites and mistake them for women. It's not clear if so much of this movie is intentional (an in-joke shared between the movie makers and the audience) or unintentional (just really poorly made). Either way, I laughed from the beginning to (almost) the end. The shocking ending of the movie hits you unexpectedly. If the creators of this movie had gone with a more upbeat ending, I would have given this an '8'. In fact, I would love to see this movie remade with modern comedians and a feel-good ending.

I own and love this movie. I feel it's a must-have next to "Easy Rider" and "Roadside Prophets". It is an 'independent' film, and that comes through quite clearly. Personally, I'm a biker who doesn't take himself too seriously, as well as being a Monty Python fan. I find this movie to be very similar in humor as early Python. It's not to everyone's taste, but the juxtaposition of opposites as well as a cool soundtrack is what make this movie 'special'. One has come to associate biker gangs with stereotypical cold, mean, macho attitude. So the viewer is left more or less like the cops that stop the gang en route, and are baffled when they don't conform with the typical badass biker attitude they expect to find. For sure there are some signs of this film easily being classified as a 'video nasty' by some, for example the General, who is supposed to be something like the Nazi Party representative in the "Blues Brothers", becomes somewhat tiresome at length, but there are lots of scenes from their road trips and interaction with others to make up for that. Perhaps a thirst for MORE biker movies excuses this movie's shortcomings, but there aren't that many biker movies to choose from, let alone biker movies that are humorous without just being an obvious parody of the biker stereotype (like "Masters of Menace"). I watch this movie once every two years and afterwards I find myself singing the theme song about going out and looking for America. Sounds like I'll have to go watch it again now, I've forgotten the words to the song! Time for a reviewing!

I've got nothing against movies that are a bit offbeat, weird, or even bizarre – in fact, the obscure usually attracts me. And Pink Angels is certainly one offbeat, weird, and even bizarre movie. The plot (or what there is of it) involves a group of gay bikers headed to Los Angeles who run afoul of a band of Hell's Angels types and a straight-laced military type. Unfortunately, Pink Angels is also one incredibly bad movie. Just because something is different doesn't make it good. Nothing about this movie is least bit entertaining. It's supposed to be a comedy, but I didn't so much as smile – let alone laugh. Some might say it's a product of it's time, but I can't imagine anyone with a pulse in any decade finding this stinker worth watching. The over-the-top gay stereotypes aren't funny. For example, there's a whole sequence involving candelabras and champagne at a picnic with grubby bikers. Funny? Not at all. And the subplot involving the General is just plain old stupid. Weak production values, bad acting, and one pointless scene after the next only add to the misery. I've given Pink Angels an extra point for curiosity value, but that's the only reason. My recommendation – don't waste your time.