1970’s Rebel Rousers tell the story of what happens when Paul Collier (Cameron Mitchell) arrives in a small desert town, searching for his girlfriend, Karen (Diane Ladd). Karen ran away when she discovered she was pregnant because she was scared that Paul would attempt to force her to get an abortion. While Paul talks to Karen in a cheap motel, a motorcycle gang rides into town. The members of the gang include Randolph (Harry Dean Stanton) and Bunny (Jack Nicholson), who wears striped prison pants and a stocking hat. The leader of the gang is J.J. Weston (Bruce Dern), who went to high school with Paul. They even played on the same football team but their lives have since followed differing paths. (How exactly 30ish Bruce Dern and 50ish Cameron Mitchell could have been in the same high school class is not an issue that the film chooses to explore.)
Paul reunites with Karen and swears his love for her. However, when Paul and Karen run into the motorcycle gang, Karen is kidnapped. Bunny wants to force himself on Karen but J.J. wants to set her free. J.J. challenges Bunny to a series of motorcycle games on the beach. The winner decides what happens to Karen. Meanwhile, Paul heads back to the town in search of help but discovers that almost everyone is too much of a coward to help him out. Only Miguel (Robert Dix), the leader of a rival gang is willing to step up and save the community from the Rebels!
Rebel Rousers was filmed in 1967 but was considered to be so bad that it was put on a shelf and forgotten about until Jack Nicholson suddenly became a star in Easy Rider. Rebel Rousers was released on the drive-in circuit as a Jack Nicholson movie, even though Nicholson is barely in the film and he gives a pretty one-note performance as Bunny. The movie’s star is Cameron Mitchell, who usually played villains and doesn’t seem to be too invested in this film. (Mitchell has such a naturally sinister screen presence that I was actually worried about Paul finding Karen. Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd are the sole members of the cast who really stand out, with Dern taking on the type of cool rebel role that was usually played by Peter Fonda while Ladd (pregnant at the time with Laura Dern) actually manages to bring some real emotional depth to her character. The movie itself was obviously made for next to nothing and it seems like it was shot in a hurry. Everything feels like a first take or, even worse, like a rehearsal that was deemed “good enough.” The competition between Bunny and J.J. ultimately feels mostly like filler than anything else.
Rebel Rousers is one of the more obscure entries in Jack Nicholson’s filmography. If not for the success of Easy Rider, it never would have been released at all. By the time Rebel Rousers did come out, Jack Nicholson was too busy establishing himself as one of the best leading men of the 70s to spend too much time looking back. Today, watching this film can make it easier to understand why Nicholson was considering dropping out of Hollywood all together before he was cast in Easy Rider. That said, the film today serves as a reminder that everyone started somewhere and sometimes, the somewhere is the second feature at the grindhouse.
Through the Shattered Lens 