Motorcycle Gang (1994)
* 1/2 (out of 4)
Poor entry in the Rebel Highway series has a father (Gerald McRaney) moving his alcoholic wife and teenager daughter (Carla Gugino) from Houston to California and along the way they encounter a psychopath motorcycle gang led by heroin pusher Jake (Jake Busey). Like most films in the Showtime series, this one here really doesn't have any connection to the 1957 film, which is a real shame because this "re-imagined" version is a complete mess from the word go. Director John Milius delivers a pretty sloppy film that's all over the place, out of focus and not for a second did it seem to know what it's trying to do. As with others in the series, the setting is the 1950s but the entire motorcycle gang seems to be something from a 1980s exploitation flick. This made the film rather uneven because you have 1950s cars, settings and times yet this gang is clearly something different and they're more EASY RIDER than THE WILD ONE, which would have been the trend during this era. Another major problem is that this thing runs just 84-minutes yet it seems twice as long as that because there's just never anything going on. The family drives, stops at a motel, drives in the morning, stops at another motel and so on. The entire character development of the family is all rather boring and follows one cliché after another. It also doesn't help that the motorcycle gang is so uninteresting as none of the characters really stand out. I thought McRaney did as much as he could with the role but there's simply not too much there. Gugino is cute enough in her part but Busey is a complete bore as the psychopath biker. MOTORCYCLE GANG is a pretty worthless film and with so many other biker movies out there, it's best you check one of them out.
