Sleazy Riders: Exploitation, “Otherness”, and Transgression in the 1960s Biker Movie

Abstract

The author explores the nature, history, and significance of the wave of outlaw biker movies produced in the United States during the late 1960s and early 1970s. He argues that films such as The Wild Angels (1966) gave ambivalent treatment to the outlaw biker mythology. In some respects, the marauding motorcycle gang was presented as chilling evidence of a collapsing social order. In other respects, the biker movies reveled in their antiheroes' flouting of mainstream values, with an emphasis on transgressive difference that effectively effaced the divide between commercial exploitation and avant-garde experiment.