Absolutely Fantastic

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

1969 Mitch(6th SFG), Tom, Lowel (both in the 82nd) forced all the biker gangs in Fayetteville to go underground. We put over 17 gang members in the hospital over a one month span. For almost a year you could not find a male gang member in a bar. It was Lowel's girl friend that had been gang raped by a motorcycle gang in Mississippi. Lowel never found the gang, he left home and joined the service. He had been a starting guard for Ole Miss and walked away from college and football. He was one of the biggest guys I had ever seen but was gentle as a kitten until one night in early spring at the Cellar (sight of the Airborne Museum) in 1969 when he had an altercation with a motorcycle gang, this started the war. We decided the next day to see if we could clear Fayetteville of motorcycle gangs and spent the summer working toward that goal.I would love to know who created this story.Mitch, Sgt 6th SFG

One thing I hardly thought I'd think about a biker film is that it was dull, but oddly enough, that's how I felt about "Chrome and Hot Leather". This is because although the plot sure sounds exciting, the film is very tepid--far more so that you'd ever expect.The film begins with a biker gang, the Wizards, out having fun. One of the gang members goes too far and ends up killing a couple innocent girls. One of the dead girls was the fiancée of a Sergeant and when this military man finds out, he and his friends vow to find those responsible and punish them. So far, all this sounds pretty exciting. However, the next half hour or so of the film is very slow and nothing happens apart from a stupid montage (complete with BAD music) showing the soldiers learning to ride motorcycles as well as them asking folks a lot of questions about the killing. Eventually, something does happen--but by then my attention began to wane because I kept waiting for action and it was so slow in coming and the biker gang sure turned out to be a bunch of wimps! What EVENTUALLY comes is not very satisfying and not enough to merit spending all this time watching the movie. About the only interesting thing is seeing Marvin Gaye (yes, THAT Marvin Gaye) playing one of the soldiers. That, and the line where William Smith (the leader of the baddies) tells Gabriel "...can't you see I am trying to menace someone?!" That was pretty funny. Otherwise, you could do better--even with another biker film.By the way....some of the soldiers needed haircuts and NEVER would have been allowed to sport such hairdos! And, you'd think with Marvin Gaye in the film that there'd be good music, but instead the producer got some talentless folks to provide crappy music.

The saddest thing about "Chrome and Hot Leather" (1971) is that it could have been a fairly decent film; at least by American International biker film standards. They seem to have had a large budget; at least enough to cast in quantity if not quality; and to outfit their biker gang (Wizards) with Harley's-something that was often beyond the budget of these things.They had William Smith, the best movie baddie of the day, for their gang leader T.J. and Michael Haynes for the chain-throwing mama slapping Casey. In fact the whole biker thing is handled pretty well by the standards of the early 1970's.Then they had an extremely young Cheryl Ladd (she looks about 16 although she was 18) and former Miss Ohio and Miss America Runner-Up Kathy Baumann (note the John Havlicek Basketball Camp t-shirt she is wearing). In high school she dated someone I knew and she also looks about the same in this film as she did then. Unfortunately neither actress gets to show much in the way of acting skills or exploitable assets. .This is one of those movies the Army and Air Force Exchange Service saw fit to show us GI's at posts and bases around with world back in the early 1970's. To us at the time virtually everything military related was unintentionally hilarious, from Peter Brown's non-GI haircut (if it was a paying role couldn't he at least have cut it enough so you could see a portion of his ears) to the moronic combat training. It got laughs from us for months whenever someone brought up the topic. On the other hand what was supposed to be the film's comic relief, sequences of Peter Brown and Company learning to ride motorcycles is funny only to those amused by things totally lame and stupid.In retrospect the film never had a chance given its director Lee "The Man With Two Heads" Frost and its star, the aging Tony Young. When you look bad in comparison to a non-actor (Marvin Gaye plays Tony's pal) it is time to find another line of work. Young lined up the financing for this baby and hired Frost on the condition he be given the lead. You won't find a more wooden actor than Young, whose character looks like an extremely dour 55 year-old man and is supposed to be the love interest for the two teen actresses.Several times they appear headed in the self-parody direction (if that is what they had emphasized the film would be a classic) and Smith lets you know that he is playing this thing for laughs. But this tiny attempt at real humor is dwarfed by the unintentional hilarity and the giggles you will get from the many continuity errors that occur throughout the movie.Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

In the beginning there was "The Wild One", and it was good. The great Hollywood attraction to 2 wheel action extended to Steve McQueen jumping the fence on a Triumph in "The Great Escape", The murderous, Moto Guzzi-riding traffic cops in "Magnum Force", and, who can EVER listen to "Born To Be Wild" without thinking of Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper heading east on their Harley choppers. "Chrome and Hot Leather" is to these great movies what "Plan 9 From Outerspace" is to "Psycho".Synopsis: Bad guys on choppers vs. ex-GI good guys on dirt bikes. What this film lacks in story line it makes up for with weak acting. Good lord -- what a stinker!I first saw this as a double feature Saturday Matinee with an equally horrible film called "The Hard Ride," which starred Robert Fuller of "Emergency!" fame. At least "The Hard Ride" was partially redeemed by the presence of an incredible Harley chopper called "Baby" which was second in beauty ONLY to Peter Fonda's "Captain America".The only reason I even remember "Chrome and Hot Leather" is because on that Saturday in 1971, The Florida Theater in Starke Florida raised it's youth matinee ticket price to .40 cents, and I was determined to enjoy the show in spite of my pubesecent outrage.There is one memorable scene involving an arm-wrestling match. Two huge, ugly Scorpions were lashed to the very spot where the arm of the loser would fall...Oooooo! Now THAT'S what I call EVIL!