Wild One
Right from when Marlon Brando comes roaring out in front of the opening credits on a prop bike with an obvious projection screen behind him of his “gang” following him on the road, we know that we’re in for a camp classic with several attempts over the years to give it a more “vaunted” status, despite Brando himself saying that the film had not aged well and the whole real point of disaffected youth being portrayed in a not so positive light is buried underneath a sea of biker gang antics. The biker gang phenomena (good or bad) goes as far back as The 1930s, with the next decade seeing many of the “clubs” coalesce into completely intact units whom even then were starting to dabble in organized crime. But this film when made in 1953 was not only the first of many (although all too rare as well) biker movies (of which Easy Rider was the Citizen Kane and then some), but make no mistake: this was pure exploitation back then and a laugh out loud riot in more recent times, making the play for respectability in a clownshoes manner while not using all of the tools at hand to make this truly memorable. Brando rolls his Black Rebels into a rinky dink small town in California, terrifying the locals while they take over an entire bar and grill (presumably with money to keep their tabs paid) and spend most of their waking hours there. Some of Brando’s fellow gang members clearly appear to be mildly autistic, playing indecipherable word games with uncomprehending normal people. Brando has got the itch for the cute waitress / co manager at the place (Mary Murphy), a complex virgin who develops a love / hate relationship with Brando in order to control her own intense attraction to him. One of Brando’s boys gets caught fucking around in the street and is run over by a car, breaking his leg in the process. Brando barks out that they’ll be staying until his boy gets out of surgery and then it’s back to the bar for more drinking and fiesta. This is where the movie sinks itself when given two clear choices of where to take the story. One way is to have the town rednecks form a lynch mob OR they could focus on the rivalry between Brando’s Black Rebels and an opposing motorcycle club led by Brando’s former friend Lee Marvin who just happen to call themselves The Beetles (in 1953 long before Beatlemania). In fact, Marvin’s Chino picks the movie right up by its boot heels starting with his first appearance and even has a biker brawl with Brando. In reality, Marvin was openly drunk on set, raising hell and telling Brando straight to his face that he was overrated and laughing at his overly serious approach to acting. Onscreen, he brings a burst of energy and humor to the film which quickly brings the curtain down on Brando’s brooding somber, so seriously threatening to steal the whole thing right out from under Brando that the script was hastily rewritten to have Marvin thrown in jail halfway through the film and leave him there so that Brando can’t be distracted from being the star here. This is because they chose to go with the lynch mob rednecks scenario, as since Brando’s gang has now trashed the bar and grill, the local hicks get out their pitchforks and torches and proceed to chase the very white Brando up and down the streets as if it were Emmet Till Day, and the whole point gets lost especially when the lynch mob stock footage from Frankenstein is brought into play and you’re wondering what happened to all the biker fun. The big redeeming grace in all of this is Murphy’s interaction with Brando, using her natural, sensitive feminine wiles to settle Brando down without resorting to sex, wrestling with her own insecurities about her forced repression being trapped in a small town with the local sheriff for a father (who dresses like a handyman and is the bitchslapped personal property of The Town Freemasons who put together the lynch mob to begin with) while all Brando can do is shrug and try to figure her out. Certainly, a female character from the 50s who’s both fascinating and fun to watch even as Lee Marvin remains the single best thing about the movie. That puts Brando at Number 3, not the most enviable spot certainly, and maybe the real reason he dislikes the film even as here he resembles a cross between John Belushi and Andrew Dice Clay, mumbling and brooding and watching the high level ambitions for this project go straight out the window, with the majority of the bits here being comedic including things that were considered “shocking” at the time, but now come across as being merely quaint to today’s cult audience, maintaining a steady level of cheese until Lee Marvin comes on and literally roasts Brando down to ashes in a major showdown of acting dominance…
7/10