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1969

[BD Review] ‘Naked Angels’ is Sure to Satisfy Outlaw Biker Film Fans

Movies
Posted by David Harley on November 13, 2012 @ 6:01pm
Category: Movies / Reviews

Reviewed by Patrick Cooper

Bruce D. Clark’s Corman-produced Naked Angels was released two months after Easy Rider and I have a strong hunch they rushed through shooting and editing to cash in on the seminal hippy-biker film. Corman had set the outlaw biker bar high three years earlier with The Wild Angels and then Easy Rider successfully infused the genre with the hippy sensibilities of the time. Naked Angels takes this artsy-hippy approach and combines it with the best and worst aspects of the outlaw biker genre.

Michael Green (To Live and Die in LA) plays Mother, the anti-hero leader of the California biker gang Naked Angels. The gang’s name is misleading – none of them are all that naked and they’re certainly not angelic. They should be called the Denim Dickheads. The movie begins with Mother returning after an extended hospital stay. Their rivals the Las Vegas Hotdoggers beat Mother senseless and now that he’s out, he wants revenge. Revenge against the Hotdoggers, which has got to be the lousiest biker gang moniker ever.

The Angels mount up and head out to Vegas to skin some Hotdogs, but they can’t find them. They do manage to weed out one of their members at a bar, and he squawks about some hidden mine in the Nevada desert where the Hotdoggers are holed up. Mother and the gang head out into the desert without a clue of the mine’s whereabouts. Jealousies and concerns about Mother’s sanity begin to tear the gang up. When the gang refuses to run a train on Mother’s woman, their leader takes to the desert alone.

Like most drive-in biker movies, there’s not much plot. Long scenes of hauling ass through the desert are interspersed with sex and heaps of debauchery. There is some interesting things going on though. Still shot montages and trippy camera work (ala Easy Rider’s cemetery scene) abound and some of it is pretty damn good. There’s even an old west dream sequence. The scenes of hell-raising in Las Vegas are particularly great and capture the raunchy vibe of Sin City in the late-60s. The neon lights of the strip are contrasted nicely with the scorched earth of the endless desert.

Michael Green is one mean bastard. Some of the close-ups of his face make his eyes look the headlights of a truck, barreling right for your face. I wasn’t even sure what the hell was going on in one trippy scene, but a close-up of his face is superimposed with go-go dancing as he peels some skin off from under his eye. It’s disturbing and wonderful. The music is fantastic too, even if it seems out of place at times. It was composed and performed by Jeff Simmons, who would later join the Mothers of Invention.

Bruce D. Clark (best known for 1981’s Galaxy of Terror) only made a handful of movies and that’s a shame. He was one of the more talented hacks in Corman’s stable of filmmakers and Naked Angels has enough interesting things about it to make it stand-off in a saturated genre. The film is sure to satisfy outlaw biker fans and devotees to subversive ‘60s cinema.

A/V

Shout! Factory presents Naked Angels in full-frame, in a washed-out, muddy transfer. There are plenty of scratches and dirt. Shout! Factory doesn’t really seem to apply any restoration technology to these Corman releases, but in the case of Naked Angels, it enhances the film’s authentic, dusty biker vibe.

The mono audio is absent of hisses and the soundtrack sounds pretty good.

Special Features

NONE.

Madame Death or ‘La senora Muerte’

Posted by Bloody Disgusting Staff on December 28, 1969 @ 12:00am
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A mad scientist teams with an evil, disfigured woman to kidnap and operate on young women to make her look beautiful again.

The Mad Room

Posted by Bloody Disgusting Staff on December 01, 1969 @ 12:00am
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Remake of 1941′s “Ladies in Retirement” has psychotic Stella Stevens playing companion to wealthy, loony widow (Shelley Winters) and she soon brings her brother and sister to live with them after they are released from an asylum for brutally murdering their parents years before. Now there appear to be skeletons that Stevens has worked so hard to keep hidden, ready to tumble out of her closet.

Blue Demon contra las invasoras

Posted by Bloody Disgusting Staff on November 27, 1969 @ 12:00am
Category:

Not Listed

Enigma de muerte

Posted by Bloody Disgusting Staff on November 19, 1969 @ 12:00am
Category:

Not Listed

Heug Jang Mi-sunui minyeo

Posted by Bloody Disgusting Staff on November 12, 1969 @ 12:00am
Category:

Not Listed

The Devil and the Beauty or ‘Akmawa minyeo’

Posted by Bloody Disgusting Staff on October 29, 1969 @ 12:00am
Category:

A doctor secretly finds a way of reviving his dead wife by injecting her with large quantities of blood. However, the blood must be fresh and his wife requires frequent injections so when people start dying of mysterious blood losses, the doctor falls under suspicion.

Blood of Dracula’s Castle

Posted by Bloody Disgusting Staff on October 05, 1969 @ 12:00am
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Count Dracula and his wife capture beautiful young women and chain them in their dungeon, to be used when they need to satisfy their thirst for blood.————————-Full film below!

Naked Angels

Posted by David Harley on September 19, 1969 @ 5:45pm
Category:

Mother has just got out of prison and wants to get revenge on the biker gang that put him there. He teams up with his old gang “The Angels” and they head to the desert to get even. Soon, Mother’s obsession begins to take it’s toll on his relationship with his girlfriend, Marlene, and the respect his gang has for him quickly dwindles until he is left alone in the desert to fend for himself.

Fellini Satyricon

Posted by Bloody Disgusting Staff on September 03, 1969 @ 12:00am
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In first century Rome, two student friends, Encolpio and Ascilto, argue about ownership of the boy Gitone, divide their belongings and split up. The boy, allowed to choose who he goes with, chooses Ascilto. Only a sudden earthquake saves Encolpio from suicide. We follow Encolpio through a series of adventures, where he is eventually reunited with Ascilto, and which culminates in them helping a man kidnap a hermaphrodite demi-god from a temple. The god dies, and as punishment Encolpio becomes impotent. We then follow them in search of a cure. The film is loosely based on the book Satyricon by Gaius Petronius Arbiter, the “Arbiter of Elegance” in the court of Nero. The book has only survived in fragments, and the film reflects this by being very fragmentary itself, even stopping in mid-sentence.

What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice?

Posted by Bloody Disgusting Staff on August 29, 1969 @ 12:00am
Category:

As Aunt Alice, Ruth Gordon applies for the job of housekeeper in the Tucson, Arizona home of widow Claire Marrable in order to find out what happened to a missing widowed friend, Edna Tilsney. The crazed Page, left only a stamp album by her husband, takes money from her housekeepers, kills them, and buries the bodies in her garden. Alice is a widow too. So is neighbor Harriet Vaughn. Lots of widows here.

Venus in Furs or ‘Paroxismus’

Posted by Bloody Disgusting Staff on August 19, 1969 @ 12:00am
Category:

In Istanbul, a jazz trumpeter pulls the murdered body of a young woman from the surf. He remembers her from the night before, when he saw her at a millionaire playboy’s party and then later watched as she was assaulted by the party’s host and two of his friends. In confusion, Jimmy, the musician, leaves for Rio where he finds the sympathetic ear of Rita, a singer who invites him to live with her and helps him recover his equilibrium and his musical ability. Then, into the room walks a woman who looks like Wanda, the murder victim. Jimmy pursues her, not caring if she’s alive or dead. What’s going on?

Lady Hong

Posted by Bloody Disgusting Staff on August 08, 1969 @ 12:00am
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A man is haunted by the ghost of his murdered girlfriend who tries to tempt him into the underworld. He is also visited by the girls dead mother who is furious with him for loving her daughter.

Fangs of the Living Dead or ‘Malenka’

Posted by Bloody Disgusting Staff on August 07, 1969 @ 12:00am
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A beautiful virgin inherits a castle, but when she arrives at it, she finds that the inhabitants include a strange nobleman and a bevy of beautiful women she suspects may be vampires.

Hallucinations sadiques

Posted by Bloody Disgusting Staff on July 30, 1969 @ 12:00am
Category:

In a mysterious French castle dark meetings and apparitions happen, seasoned by nauseating erotic menages. The involvement frantically increases up to the amazing epilogue.

Santo en El tesoro de Dracula

Posted by Bloody Disgusting Staff on July 24, 1969 @ 12:00am
Category:

After the successful invention of a time machine, El Santo and his friend, Dr. Sepulveda, must prove to their colleagues that the time machine really works in Treasure of Dracula. They will attempt this by searching for Dracula’s treasure. Dr. Sepulveda’s daughter Luisa, volunteers to step into the time machine and take a trip back to the 19th century. Luisa returns with two bite marks on her neck and under Dracula’s dangerous spell. Dracula is back with a vengeance! El Santo and friends must now match wits with Dracula and fight to the death.

El Libro de piedra

Posted by Bloody Disgusting Staff on July 18, 1969 @ 12:00am
Category:

A man widower who is trying to rebuild her life, hires a governess to take care of her daughter’s education. Soon, the new coach is a witness to strange events of concern to all who live in the mansion. The alleged culprit is a friend of the girl who is called Hugo, a stone statue located inside the grounds of the hacienda.—– Considered one of the best Mexican Horror Films.

The Ice House

Posted by Bloody Disgusting Staff on July 09, 1969 @ 12:00am
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A serial killer who works in an ice house murders women, then brings their bodies back to the ice house and stores them there. He also murders his brother, who is a cop, and takes his place in the investigation.

The Haunted House of Horror

Posted by Bloody Disgusting Staff on June 30, 1969 @ 12:00am
Category:

Teenagers gathered in an old mansion are being murdered one by one. The survivors must discover who among them is the killer before he finishes off everybody.

Eye of the Cat or ‘Wylie’

Posted by Bloody Disgusting Staff on June 18, 1969 @ 12:00am
Category:

A man and his girlfriend plan to rob the mansion of the man’s eccentric but wealthy aunt. However, the aunt keeps dozens of cats in her home, and the man is deathly afraid of cats.

Las Vampiras

Posted by Bloody Disgusting Staff on June 13, 1969 @ 12:00am
Category:

A wrestler (Mil Mascaras) tries to break up a covey of vampires, led by the King of Vampires (Carradine).

The Oblong Box

Posted by Bloody Disgusting Staff on June 11, 1969 @ 12:00am
Category:

Sir Edward Markham is the victim of a voodoo curse which has caused his face to become horribly disfigured. He is kept captive in the attic of his house by his brother Julian. Sir Edward escapes, moves in with an unscrupulous doctor who hires grave robbers to steal bodies for his research, wears a red hood over his face, and kills a good number of townspeople before the surprise ending.

Satan’s Sadists

Posted by Bloody Disgusting Staff on June 01, 1969 @ 12:00am
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The “Satans” are a very cruel biker gang led by Anchor. The gang goes to a diner in the middle of nowhere in the California desert where they begin to terrorize Lew and his patrons and his waitress, Tracy. After a little killing, one of the patrons named Johnny manages to escape from the bikers into the desert. They need to reach a town before the Satans catch up to them and kill them.

The Castle of Fu Manchu

Posted by Bloody Disgusting Staff on May 30, 1969 @ 12:00am
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The evil mastermind Fu Manchu plots his latest scheme to basically freeze over the Earth’s oceans with his diabolical new device. Opposing him is his arch-nemesis, Interpol’s very British Dr. Nayland Smith.