The Wild One

A dated and unintentional hilarious relic from the 1950s, The Wild One features a Marlon Brando who still gave a damn about acting and oozed sexuality, and not much else. The plot is a campy thing about hysteria involving a biker gang in a quiet small-town that is more Americana movie studio than believable hamlet. And for a film which is supposedly to have signaled the generational divide between the rebellious Beat Generation and their Depression-era survivor parents, the film is against them from the start. It even comes complete with a typically 50s scare-tactic warning about how bikers will come to your town, rape your women, hypnotize your youth, and generally be against the wholesome All-American goodness of small-town America. Just remember, even the smallest and most mundane rebellions will lead to all-out anarchy before descending into a barren wasteland of death, sexual abandon, violence and lawlessness. So we must always obey the rules and keep our laws in perfect order. Well, that’s the message I got from the film anyway. It’s a pity then that the ‘bad boys’ (who don’t do much to really qualify as such) are so visually appealing. Brando’s moody anti-hero, resting against his bicycle, a toothpick dangling from his full lips, hat slightly askew is more than enough for me to take up with the bikers. Overwrought, clichéd, badly acted, poorly written and incompetent on several levels, The Wild One is a classic undeserving of the term. But it’s great as campy "entertainment."