This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

A Disappointing Continuation

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

After a rumble with another motorcycle gang one of the bikers named "Angel" (Don Stroud) decides it's time to leave and make it on his own. So he gives up his colors and drives off down the highway. It's at this time that he rides into a small town and while filling up at the local gas station comes upon two hippies who are subsequently denied service by some redneck cowboys who inhabit the area. He helps them out and to express their gratitude they invite him to stay at their nearby commune. Since he has nowhere else to go he takes them up on their offer. Unfortunately, after only a few days the rednecks come and destroy the crops that the hippies had worked all summer on after which the cowboys give them an ultimatum to leave or they will return in a week. So in desperation the leader of the commune who goes by the name of "Jonathan Tremaine" (Luke Askew) pleads with Angel to bring his old gang to help them out. Although he explicitly warns them about the potential danger these bikers could create they continue to insist so he then rides out to ask them. The bikers accept the invitation and all kinds of mayhem follows not long afterward. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was an okay "biker film" which could have been better if it had flowed a bit more smoothly from one scene to another. In any case, I found it to be an adequate movie for the most part and I have rated it accordingly. Average.

Angel unchained is a movie about a biker (named angel) who leaves his gang to get his head together, he ends up in a hippie commune that is being harassed by the locals. when things get ugly Agel is asked to recruit his old gang to help fend of harassing rednecks.The movie is tame for what you see today, no nudity, language, or extreme violence. There are a few implied rape and drug use but the drugs are early seen and aren't named. i don't mind the lack of violence and sex, but the movie could have changed a few things that would have made the movie a little better. This part is a spoiler but no names are given: near the end the biker say there leaving before the rednecks come to attack the commune but wont leave without some drugs, but they stay when the locals show up and decide to fight anyway. the fight is more like a backyard brawl then a real fight but could be worse. The part i hated was how weak the ending was, once the fight gets heated and somebody gets killed (im not saying who) the fight stops and everybody goes home without even giving an idea on whats going to happen to the hippies, bikers, or rednecks, The movie just ends...just like that. its a watchable movie but that's as far as it goes.

Angel Unchained has the ingredients of your basic AIP picture- bikers, 'cowboys' (rednecks), hippies, and lots of action. Unfortunately, it isn't entirely synthesized. Perhaps I could've known this by seeing it had been re-rated a PG-13 by the MPAA, but I also thought 'hosh-posh, it still probably has that real violent, grungy feel of dueling off between the forces of hicks and bikers'. Turns out the cooler elements of the film, some of which are some of the more amusing and awesomely bad moments from AIP biker movies, are juxtaposed against a core of a story that's kind of tame, even soft. It's actually got a Seven Samurai-style story to it, with the roles of the bandits and samurai reversed here- this time it's the so-called bandits (bikers) fighting off against the good-old boys (cowboys). This starts off some interest even as knock-off material.The acting as well is not that terrible, at least for what's required on such an ultra-low budget. Regulars like Don Stroud and Luke Askew are dependable (more so Askew who the year before had a memorable role in Easy Rider), though Tyne Daly, a strange early part for her before The Enforcer and later Judging Amy, keeps the love story a little too mellow for its own good. Angel (Stroud) wants to get away just for a little while from his old gang, so he hooks up with Daly's character and starts working at a commune/farm, complete with dazed bearded help and a token Native American with a special 'mix' of cookies. But as they get terrorized by cowboys on go-carts (yes, go-carts, one of the real highlights of the movie), Angel enlists the help of his biker gang, with some consequences that unfold. All of this is tricky material, and the co-writer/director Lee Madden isn't totally able to balance out the scenes and moments (and just visual sights like with Bill McKinney's retro glasses) with the sappier parts. The latter of which also includes a soundtrack that borders on soft-rock, the specifically wrong tone that suddenly makes the material quite dated.So, if you're looking for lots of carnage, immoral action, and the stomping out of almost everything in sight, you might be disappointed. Even as there is a neat B-movie style climax involving go-carts vs. bikers that does garner up excitement and laughs, the very end adds a point to what ends up being the lesser qualities of the film. It's intentions are swell, but it gets confused as whether it should be more hippie or biker style, with the poor Injun (yes, that's his character name) caught in the middle. Worth watching once, especially for genre fans, but not top-shelf AIP material.

What really struck me about this film was its accuracy in depicting two of the most frequently exploited subcultures of the American 1960's. The Hippies are young middle-class idealists, with no evident skills or systematic approach to philosophy. The bikers are violent degenerates, but not over-the-top barbarians who kill at a moment's notice. Their behavior was so similar to stories and books I've read that I wonder if some of the scenes were actually reminiscences of some former Hell's Angel the writer knew. Unfortunately, I never could make out the name of the motorcycle club on the backs of their jackets. It looked like "Exiles Nomads", but what kind of a name is that? Overall, the movie is satisfying, if nothing particularly new. Fits well into the "Born Losers" category of film, but definitely in a class apart from "Satan's Sadists" or "Wild Angel."