| January 28, 2024
Cycle News Archives
COLUMN
Motorcycles & Hollywood
By Kent Taylor
Think you know motorcycle movies? We mean, do you really think you know motorcycle movies? Well then, film buff, it is for you that CN presents this short quiz! Pencils ready? These crazy movie titles are so outrageous that you should be able to spot the phony! For absolutely no monetary reward at all, which one of these movie titles is a fake?
- Hell’s Bloody Devils
- Angel Unchained
- Run, Angel, Run
- I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle
- Pray for The Wildcats
No cheating! No browsing for an answer. Give up? The correct is “F!” None of the above! Yep, Hollywood fed our insatiable appetite for bad motorcycle movies with each of the above works of celluloid classics. Apparently, they believe that every motorcyclist is on some lonesome road to eternity, heading for either the bliss of heaven, the fire of hell, or somewhere in between (vampire bikers, of course, are destined to forever roam the earth as the dreaded undead).
We’re guessing Pray for the Wildcats isn’t in your DVD collection, but On Any Sunday is.
In its January 22nd, 1974 issue, Cycle News offered up a review/preview of Pray for the Wildcats, which was an ABC television movie of the week. The cast packed some heavy 1970s star power: Andy Griffith (The Andy Griffith Show), William Shatner (Star Trek), Robert Reed (The Brady Bunch), and Angie Dickinson (Police Woman). The movie also stars Marjoe Gortner. A former child evangelist, Gortner seemingly wound up on every director’s Rolodex for roles in bad motorcycle movies. Marjoe would later star in Sidewinder One, in which he rides a Maico with cast mag wheels, and we are proud to say that is all we know about that classic flick.
In Pray For The Wildcats. Griffith portrays Sam Farragut, whose company, Farragut Industries, manufactures heavy equipment. Shatner, Reed and Gortner are all employees of an ad agency, tasked with making a winning pitch to Farragut, who apparently is trying to establish a company footprint deep into the Baja Peninsula. There are other intriguing plot twists that threaten to make this movie almost watchable, but as doomed-for-eternity cycle riders, what we all want to know is how our motorized hounds of hell make their way into this juicy script!
The haughty and arrogant Farragut decides that he will bring his business to the agency, with one caveat: he wants to take a ride into the Baja country for a site survey of the terrain—and the three ad execs will have to join him! Reluctantly, the boys accept the challenge, and off they go toward Ensenada, Griffith on a Triumph Trophy Trail sled and the three ad lackeys on two-stroke Kawasaki enduros.
At the border, each man is presented with his own Wildcat jacket, made from cool, comfortable leather, designed to help keep each rider warm when the Baja temps dip into the low 90s. The four men are barely into their excursion before they quickly realize that Farragut’s (Griffith) true motive isn’t to survey the country; instead, he seems driven to test the mettle of these Kawasaki-mounted execs. The ride begins as Farragut gushes, “This is Baja!”
“Yeah,” Farragut repeats, just in case the viewer missed it the first time, “this is Baja!”
Funny how a movie could be so…well, bad with such a heavy-hitting cast that included Andy Griffith, William Shatner, Robert Reed, Angie Dickinson and Marjoe Gortner.
To give us a break from the brilliant scriptwriting, the movie features several riding scenes throughout the desert. The sweet braap of the two-stroke sound as it emanates from all the bikes, including Farragut’s Triumph four-stroke twin, brings back fond memories, and one can almost smell the castor bean oil wafting through the heavy desert air!
Speaking of smells, the acting in this film is bad enough to make us wish for even more of the above-mentioned riding segments. Griffith’s rapscallion character certainly wouldn’t garner the favor of Sheriff Andy Taylor. In Wildcats, Griffith as Farragut is a lascivious, big business bully, displaying no self-control over either his arrogance or his libido. In an early scene, the four Wildcats visit a tiny Mexican bar, where a wispy blonde seductively dances her way around the joint. Farragut at first claps along in horny, apelike fashion before finally dropping all his inhibitions and joining the teasing waif on the dirt dance floor. “Now we’re gettin’ it on,” he says as he begins to force himself upon the protesting young woman. Her boyfriend then appears on the scene, and—you guessed it—fisticuffs ensue! Shatner’s even-tempered character, Warren Summerfield, is quick to step in between the two suitors, taking care to neither offend his ad client nor lose his own Baja-ready toupee. Cooler heads prevail, and the Wildcats are soon back on their dirt bikes and heading south.
Cycle News’ review of the film was mostly positive, which most likely means that Pray For The Wildcats wasn’t a good movie—just one that just wasn’t as bad as the rest of the Hollywood offerings, which usually depicted motorcycling as an activity only marginally more acceptable than bestiality.
The CN reviewer also pointed out that Griffith took a liking to dirt biking; at one point, filming was delayed for several hours while the crew waited for Andy to come back from a joy ride in the desert!
We won’t spoil the ending for you—er, wait! Yes, we will! Spoil alert! In the review, which actually hit print before the movie aired, CN’s unidentified movie critic reveals that “the picture has a spectacular ending with Griffith and the Triumph running off the edge of a 200-foot cliff and into the ocean.” Well, that is mostly the ending! What we don’t need to tell you is that, at impact, the poor Triumph bursts into a fireball of flames because you already knew that was going to happen!
Pray For The Wildcats had each of those conflict themes that you learned about in high school English: man vs. man, man vs. nature, and man vs. himself. The 23,000 YouTube viewers that have clicked on this one were likely engaged in a fourth theme: man vs. boredom. Ninety-two minutes of some of the best overacting one can stand likely had those viewers petitioning the Lord with their own fervent plea: “Pray…for The End!”CN
