Welcome to Friday Fudge. If it’s weird, funny, or strange motorcycle news, or it just plain won’t fit anywhere else on the site – you’ll find it here.
It’s Halloween – if that’s news to you, then you’d better go and grab some last-minute treats to hand out, or your house might get egged.
For those of you who get excited about Oct. 31, here’s a special look at the motorcycle’s long association with horror films. We’re sure we missed a few (feel free to mention them in the comments below), but here are a few highlights.
I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle
We’ve mentioned this film before in Friday Fudge, and some CMG readers have actually admitted to seeing it. We haven’t, and we don’t plan to. It’s generally regarded to be one of the worst films ever, and the trailer seems to back that up.
Editor’s note – actually I watched it when it came out in the UK. Bad film. Very bad.
Chopper Chicks in Zombietown
This ‘orrible film apparently features Billy Bob Thornton in an early role. Again, we’ll take the reviewers’ word for that. This flick takes eight chopper-borne gals from a gang called the Cycle Sluts and places them in a zombie-infested town. As far as we know, things get worse from there.
Dawn of the Dead
There are no bikers in the 2004 remake, but the original 1978 film had a biker gang that was arguably more scary than the zombie hordes the film was known for. They didn’t show up until the end of the film, but boy, they sure screwed the protagonists when they appeared. Until, of course, they were horribly ripped apart, limb from limb, by scores of ravenous monsters. Let that be a lesson to all you wannabe one-percenters out there.
Mad Max
Of course, what could be more scary than motorcycles themselves? At least, that’s what plenty of parents think around the world, when little Johnny or Susie announces their intentions to buy a two-wheeler.
Movie makers have been exploiting the sheeple’s fear of motorcycles ever since The Wild One came out, starring Marlon Brando in a film about a cycle gang wreaking havoc in a quiet town. By the 1960s and 1970s, bikesploitation films were a big thing, with films like Hells Angels On Wheels bringing in lots of money for B-movie kings like Roger Corman.
If you want to see scary bikers, though, the best film is arguably one that didn’t even come from the homeland of one percenter culture – the bikies in the original made-in-Australia Mad Max film are psychotic terrors of the open road, modern-day pirates mounted on Kawasaki muscle bikes. The over-the-top acting actually came from real-life Australian bike gang members, and inspired a whole subculture of survival bikes.
The Walking Dead
OK, it’s technically a TV show, not a movie, but crossbow-wielding Daryl Dixon’s chopper features prominently in the show’s early seasons. Sure, they’re trying to be quiet and avoid detection by unfriendly survivors and zombie hordes, but they’re riding this open-piped rattletrap? Sounds legit!
At least Dixon rides around on the thing without a jacket or helmet, showing he’s taking advantage of the collapse of government to do what he wants, regardless of consequences. Alas, it’s hard to stick it to The Man if The Man is no longer around to stick it to.
Naw its a Triumph.
It always irks me to see Darryl on that thing, I keep thinking to myself a DR200 or a KLX/KLR250 are the obvious choices for quite, rage, and mileage.
quiet, not quite