Hells Angels on Wheels

The biker movie needed a Nicholson entry and here it is, two years before Easy Rider borrowed the entire apparatus. He plays a gas-station kid who falls in with a chapter of real Hells Angels, Sonny Barger and company playing themselves, and learns what the club actually costs. Richard Rush directs and László Kovács shoots it, which is why it looks like a real film instead of the usual AIP quickie: dawn light, long lenses, actual composition.

The story is thin. The texture is the best in the cycle.