Chrome and Hot Leather (1971)

A great title but, sadly, a somewhat disappointing biker flick.  Despite the presence of William Smith - one of exploitation cinema's greatest villains (and occasional hero)  - as the leader of a biker gang and the promise of vigilante Green  Berets taking on vicious bikers, the film never really ignites.  A large part of the problem lies with the casting of Tony Young in the lead - he makes for a bland hero who, despite supposedly being Hell-bent on vengeance after his fiancee's murder by a biker, barely seems to vary his facial expression.  Moreover, despite spending a lot of time sat astride their Harleys, sporting lots of black leather and facial hair, the biker gang - the Wizards - never really seem that menacing.  They spend a lot of time in scuzzy bars, waving broken bottles at interlopers, but never seem to do anything really bad.  Even the death of Young's fiancee is the result of the precipitate actions of a single hot headed gang member, who doesn't have his leader's approval and consequently spends part of the film ostracised by the rest of the gang.

Young gathers together three of his Green Beret buddies to hunt down the biker gang and bring them to justice.  They do this by posing as bikers themselves.  Except that they ride off-road bikes rather than the Harleys and Choppers which would help them really blend into the scene.  Mystifyingly, the film then makes nothing of their Special Forces skills or combat experience in the hunt.  These only come into play in a surprisingly lame climax, in which the four Green Berets, having 'borrowed' some military equipment, convince the bikers that they have been surrounded and are under attack from a whole army.  The film ends with the gang meekly allowing themselves to be rounded up by the four guys and herded off to face justice.  Apart from these climactic sequences, the film lacks any real action of the kind one might expect from a soldiers vs bikers film: no swinging bike chains, flick knives, spanners used as clubs or gun fights, for instance.  

The film was directed by the ubiquitous Lee Frost, who had also knocked out a number of underwhelming Mondo movies in the sixties, as well as several sexploitation films. Before Chrome and Hot Leather he had dabbled in other exploitation genres including westerns and Nazisploitation.  His direction here is smooth but bland, never making the most of opportunities for exploitation and ultimately failing to deliver in the action stakes.  The film also has a very uneven tone, with the revenge storyline suddenly punctuated by a lengthy comedic montage of the soldiers trying to learn to ride their bikes. Points of interest include the casting of singer Marvin Gaye as one of the Green Berets and a very young Cheryl Ladd in a small role and another dominant performance from William Smith.  Also, there is some attempt to portray the gang and particularly its leader, Smith, sympathetically.  But this is ultimately abandoned.  The trailer, incidentally, is misleading in its implication that the film will include footage of the Green Berets in action in Vietnam - the 'combat' footage it uses actually comes from an early sequence which turns out to be a training exercise.  Which rather sums up the film as a whole: it never really delivers the 'real thing' in terms of biker action.