Belgian poster or Helld Angels on Wheels  (U.S. Films, 1967)

The roaring boxoffice success of The Wild Angels churned up a lot of things in its wake, including a lawsuit from the real-life Hell’s Angels claiming that not one actual member of their club appeared in the movie, despite massive publicity to the contrary. The Angels sued for a million and settled for ten thousand, but some of them still weren’t happy about what they perceived as an out-and-out besmirching of their name. One of the unhappiest was Sonny Barger, president of the Oakland Hell’s Angels, one of the earliest and best-known Hell’s Angels chapters. And, being a man of action, he did something about it...
Biker Group: The Hells Angels
Leader: Buddy (Adam Roarke

“They kept saying they were us, and they weren’t,” he told us in 2000, referring to others who were making motorcycle pictures. “So we said, `Let’s do one ourselves.’ That’s basically why we did it. We ran into this guy Joe Solomon -- it’s sort of funny, but he was the first guy that ever approached us. All those other guys made movies and said it was us, but nobody had ever asked us to do it.”



Solomon -- whose later outfit, The Fanfare Corporation, is fondly remembered by schlock-film fans -- was a canny, longtime figure in the exploitation-movie business. It didn’t matter what kind of a film he had to sell; Solomon would find the best way to sell it, even if he had to cheat a little. In 1991, the great cheap-film figure David F. Friedman recalled for us a time in the early 1950s when he and Solomon were working with the king of exploitation, Kroger Babb, on selling a picture called Prince of Peace, the filmed version of an annual Easter pageant held in Lawton, Oklahoma.


Buddy (Adam Roarke) leads his Hell's Angels pals (top) into new adventures and gets into a fight (bottom) with Poet (Jack Nicholson).


“Joe went in and booked the Criterion Theater on Broadway for Prince of Peace,” recalled Friedman with his trademark chuckle. “Now, to play a Jesus picture in New York, which has the biggest Jewish population in the United States, took a lot of guts.

“So, Joe puts up a sign in front of the theater, and it says, `The only picture about Jesus Christ approved by Catholics, Protestants, and Jews.’ Like all roadshowmen, we’d always be standing outside the theater. And so this little old Jewish lady comes by, and she says, `What’s this? Who said that Jews approved this?’ “And Joe says, `Well, I’m Jewish, and I approved it.’”


Poet (Jack Nicholson) finds himself overmatched by sailors at an amusement park.


Buddy (Adam Roarke) confronts one of Poet's assailants.

A guy with a natural exploitation bent like that could certainly see the publicity value in having real Hell’s Angels and their most famous officer put their imprimatur on one of his movies, so they struck a deal. The result was Hells Angels on Wheels -- which, like the insignia patches of the real Hell’s Angels -- foregoes the usual apostrophe in “Hells.” It was released through the independent U.S. Films; the money it made helped Solomon start The Fanfare Corporation. And, while the male stars of the picture are Adam Roarke, who’d go on to be a major player in the biker films, and Jack Nicholson, Solomon made sure that audiences knew Sonny and the boys had a major part in things -- “with the HELLS ANGELS of Northern California, their Gals, their Choppers, and SONNY BARGER, their Leader,” trumpeted the newspaper ads and posters for the picture.



The story has to do with Barger and his club joining up with a smaller biker group, headed by Buddy (Roarke), where they all end up harassing customers at a small-town gas station. The bikers befriend a guy named Poet (Nicholson), who ankles his job at the station and eventually hooks back up with the Angels, just in time for a gang fight. Later, at an amusement park, Poet gets his face rearranged by four sailors, and when retaliation ensues, one of the sailors gets croaked.

Back at the apartment of a motorcycle mama named Shill (Sabrina Scharf), everyone gets deeply involved in a big wild party, broken up when Buddy finds out the cops are trying to nail him on a murder rap. So they all take off for the weekend to Nevada, where Gypsy (James Oliver) and Abigale (Jana Taylor) are married. Then there’s more fighting, ending in justice of a sort for Buddy.


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The Hells Angels of Northern California dive and kick their way into the action (1 -4)


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Wilderness abounds at a party thrown by Shill (Sabrina Scharf).


“Adam [Roarke] was a nice guy, but Jack just stole the movie,” Barger recalled. “Even when he was a kid, he was a good actor. People from other clubs working in the movie thought he was a Hell’s Angel from a different charter. The way he walked around and acted in a crowd . . . the people who didn’t know him, didn’t know he was an actor, thought he was a Hell’s Angel.”

The cast and crew of Hells Angels on Wheels is studded with other names that would become famous, or at least familiar. Director Richard Rush, for instance, just beginning his career, would go on to receive a 1980 Academy Award nomination for The Stunt Man. According to the Hells Angels on Wheels pressbook, “Rush gladly accepted the challenge [of Hells Angels on Wheels] with the actual Hells Angels, since many people in Hollywood had great fears and many trepidations with regard to using this group. Rush’s young, calm attitude was just the right touch in the method of handling this unruly group and no real incidents occurred during the shooting of this film.”

As the party grows wilder, Shill (Sabrina Scharf) hooks up with Buddy (Adam Roarke):













Director of Photography Lazlo Kovacs (here billed as Leslie Kovacs), enlivened all sorts of low-budget movies with his inventive work before scoring big in the early to mid-’70s with filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich (What’s Up Doc, Paper Moon) and others -- he even reunited with director Rush during that time for the 1974 big-budget comedy-melodrama, Freebie and the Bean. Then, of course, there was Nicholson, who was just a few years away.

FROM THE PRESSBOOK:

JACK NICHOLSON, who plays the part of Poet in “HELLS ANGELS ON WHEELS” is one of Hollywood’s most talented young men. Coming to Los Angeles in 1957 his first job was a play at the Matinee Theater. Nicholson has many credits to his name including “Too Soon to Love,” “Ensign Pulver,” “The Raven,” “Back Door to Hell” and plays one of the leads in a picture soon to be released titled “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” for Twentieth Century Fox. Jack Nicholson was selected to play the part of Poet because of his sensitive attitude and face which was desirable for this particular role in the film, and it is predicted that this film will advance his career considerably. It is also worth mentioning that Nicholson is a fine screen play writer and has just completed “The Trip,” the next Roger Corman production.

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