Devil’s Angels (1967)

Cody: I’ve decided we’re gonna split this pad. We’re gonna pick up our old ladies and whatever little we have, we’re gonna put on our colors, and we’re gonna roll! And neither man nor beast is gonna stop us until we find a place we can blow our own peace, and we’re gonna love each other.
[pause….confused looks from the gang]
Cody: I love ya, Leroy
Leroy: Cody, I love you

The Skulls, a no good rebel rousing biker gang led by Cody (John Cassavetes) have a run in with the law after Gage “stubs a square” on the highway. The gang strips down Gage’s bike and split town to avoid the murder rap. Cody take them on a hunt for a “hole in the wall”, a place without cops and hassle, where the gang can chill out (a sort of hard rock candy mountain if you will) where they can “flake out”.

On the way, they head over to see Rocky (a nutty, speed freak, beret wearing biker), who’s been thrown in jail for painting dirty pictures on the town hall. They spring him out by tying their bikes to the window bars with rope and hitting the throttle.

Mayor: “They’re adult delinquents…They steal things…They smell bad Charlie!

With Rocky and his old lady in tow, they crash a local carnival and scared the squares. The local sheriff tries to keep things from getting out of hand by letting the gang sleep on the beach (away from the town locals). The mayor thinks he’s being too easy on them and is ready to throw them all in jail. Cody assures the sheriff that they’re just passing through and will be on good behavior and the gang rides off to the beach to spend the night drinking. A curious local girl heads out with them…

Town girl: Is this all you guys do? Cruise around and raise hell?

Skull: Pretty much. Except when we’re quail hunting

In town, the Mayor and some locals, not believing they’ll behave themselves, plot to take down the gang. Before they get organized, the local girl comes running back from the beach scared and roughed up. The Mayor tears off down to the beach yelling bloody rape, even though the girl said that they’d just teased and chased her around a bit.

“We hop on our sickles and the man’s on our tale…”

Cody get’s thrown in jail and the gang is kicked out of town. Released pretty quick on the bogus charge he meets back up with the gang at the county line, but not before they’ve plotted to join forces with a rival gang, The Stompers who are 200 strong, to take over the town of Brookville for some “Razzle Dazzle”. To show the towns folk what a hooligan gang is really like….Mayhem quickly ensues, to a slow, instrumental surf track.

“Riot is their reason for living. Lust is the law they live by”

Cody, an ex fighter pilot who’s never seemed as reckless as the others, just a disenfranchised guy looking for his hole in the wall, isn’t on board with the riot, and tries to take his old lady and split. She tells him the hole in the wall doesn’t exist, laughs at him and won’t leave the fun…

He walks away from the mayhem. throws down his colors, kicks his bike and rides away…..passing narrowly on his way out of town, a caravan of coppers en route to Brookville.

Produced by Roger Corman, Devil’s Angels is the follow up to the popular The Wild Angels from a year before, also by Roger Corman.

The title track “Devil’s Angels” written by Mike Curb and performed by Jerry & The Portraits. Additional music by Davie Allen & The Arrows