The Wild Angels (1966, Roger Corman)

This movie is probably only a 'classic' in the sense that it drew the attention of major Hollywood studios to the flourishing counter culture, culminating, three years later, in Easy Rider, an immensely popular movie as well as a cultural milestone. 

It's often said that Easy Rider might be the better movie, but that The Wild Angels offers a more realistic view at the biker life. I don't know if that's true (I know next to nothing about biker life actually). Posters as well as the credit sequence tell us that some real-life Hells Angels appeared in the movie, but the Angels later sued the film makers for presenting a negative view of the movement. The film had at least this quality that it enraged both the Bourgois community as well as those revolting against it.

Like virtually every movie signed by Roger Corman, The Wild Angels is a cheap affair. It was made on a budget of no more than $360,000 and feels under-produced, under-written and under-directed. Instead of telling a 'story', the movie rather offers a collection of vignettes showing the everyday life of the bikers (mainly causing mayhem) and leading up to the film’s finale, the funeral of one of them. 

The Wild Angels is not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it's easy to see why it had such a great impact. Even half a century later, it is still discomforting (and those Swastikas will no doubt make some contemporary viewers frown) (*1), but it's by no means a glorification of biker life; it's a remarkably pessimistic movie, showing the bikers as outcasts, living day by day, with no special aim or project: they just want to ride around and have fun, even at the funeral of one of them; ideologically they totally depend on their leader and part-time philosopher Heavenly Blues, played by Peter Fonda, (who was established as a counterculture figure). His final conclusion - after burying his best friend, who died as a result of some unwise decisions - is significant: 

"There's no place to go."

Note:

* (1) The Hell's Angels originally used the Swastika both as a token of their freedom and independence (after all the Swastika originally was a symbol of divinity and spirituality), ànd to piss off people (which they most certainly did), but it was their leader and founding member of the Oakland chapter of the Angels, Sonny Barger, who got rid of the Swastika in the Seventies, because the symbol was too closely associated with the Nazis and WWII

1966 - Director: Roger Corman - Cast: Peter Fonda (Heavenly Blues), Nancy Sinatra (Mike), Bruce Dern (Loser), Diane Ladd (Gaysh), Buck Taylor (Dear John), Michel J. Pollard (Pigmy), Gayle Hunnicutt (Suzie) - Screenplay: Charles B. Griffith, Peter Bogdanovich (uncredited)