“This is going to be the upper to end all uppers.”

Drake’s rating: Just my luck, I escaped from the ‘70s and ran smack-dab into this flick

Drake’s review: In 1997, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck won an Academy Award for writing the screenplay for Good Will Hunting, a film in which the young actors played the leads and which launched both young actors into movie stardom. Nearly thirty years earlier, actors Tom Stern and Jerry Slate followed a similar path and wrote their own movie script. Except their flick featured 100% more Hells Angels* and won 100% fewer Academy Awards than did Good Will Hunting. And, needless to say, Hell’s Angels ‘69 made neither Slate nor Stern into movie stars.

Which is understandable, since the movie is pretty bad. One might even say it’s a bummer.

WARNING: Slang zone ahead. Please proceed with caution.

Chuck and Wes are a pair of brothers living a playboy lifestyle. They hit the swingin’ parties because that’s just their scene, man. But beneath those sharp exteriors are a pair of hip cats who just love to get their kicks by sticking it to the Man. They don’t need the bread, but they think crime is a gas! And who has a lot of bread just lying around, waiting for a couple of cool dudes to make it their bag? Why, those casinos in Las Vegas, of course! They’re stuffed to the gills with the green, and Chuck and Wes have a plan to grab some fat stacks and beat feet before the fuzz get wise.

Slang zone ending. Your normal review will now resume.

And that’s basically the plot. Chuck and Wes have a plan to rob Caesar’s Palace, but they need a diversion to keep the police busy while they do. Somehow, the best idea they could come up with is, “Hey, let’s befriend the local Hells Angels and fool them into keeping the cops busy while we rip off the casino! Nothing can possibly go wrong with that plan, right?”

Granted, they do rob the casino, but they also draw the attention of a police detective (G. D. Spradlin, Ed Wood) who takes maybe a minute to consider his options, and then goes to the Hells Angels to let them know that Chuck and Wes basically used them as cover to commit a crime. Unsurprisingly, the outlaw bikers do not take this news well.

Hell’s Angels ‘69 was one in a long list of biker movies being churned out in the late ‘60s, and is novel primarily due to the fact that the real Oakland chapter of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club were featured in the film. But that gimmick has limited appeal, and wears thin quickly as the members of the HAMC have far too much dialogue, and their deliveries range from wooden as an oak tree to barely decipherable.

And then there’s their Nazi paraphernalia, which is prominently displayed in at least one scene. Personally, I only want to see a Nazi flag is when it’s burning. Or in a historical context, but even then I’m still expecting it to catch on fire at some point.

The casino robbery angle is a decent enough idea, but this isn’t a heist film, and any scenes of planning, execution and escape are glossed over in favor of biker antics, the requisite bar fight, and endless scenes of the brothers and/or the bikers riding through the desert. Seriously, this might be the riding-est movie ever made, and that includes On Any Sunday which is literally a documentary about riding motorcycles!

Honestly? This is a pretty bad flick all around, with the sole saving grace being the cinematography by Paul Lohmann, who would go on to work with Mel Brooks and Paul Bartel, among others. His work is the only thing that stands out as being of any quality, with the rest of Hell’s Angels ‘69 being a cinematic slog that makes a 90-minute viewing feel like a week-long trek through the desert.

What I’m trying to say is, this flick is the pits.

*Although often listed as “Hell’s Angels,” the non-apostrophe “Hells Angels” is actually the correct spelling. Many reasons have been put forth for this, but suffice to say that a simple failure to grasp correct punctuation is the most likely culprit.

Intermission!

• The credits include Skip, Tiny and Magoo. I didn’t know this was a cartoon!
• There are a few familiar stuntmen names as well, including Buddy Joe Hooker (listed here as Joe Hooker). And there are a few decent stunts in this flick, in between long sequences of non-stunt things happening.
• To be fair, lead actors Jeremy Slate and Tom Stern did have a lengthy careers in Hollywood, much of it on TV and, in Slate’s case, on a daytime soap opera.
• The most familiar face here might belong to Steve Sandor, who plays Apache. Sandor guest-starred in numerous television shows (including the Star Trek episode “The Gamsesters of Triskelion”), and also provided the voice for Darkwolf in the Frank Frazetta/Ralph Bakshi animated feature Fire and Ice.