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#380 Easy Rider

Watched: February 21 2026

Director: Dennis Hopper

Starring: Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson, Toni Basil, Karen Black

Year: 1969

Runtime: 1h 35min

So, our plan was to post this very quickly after Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, as the two are a natural double feature. Then suddenly Easter was upon us, and if you know anything about Norwegian Easter you know that we were bound by centuries old oaths to leave civilization, huddle up in a cabin somewhere with no electricity or wifi, and eat our weight in pølse and kvikk lunsj while reading crime novels. In other words, writing a post was out of the questions unless we wanted to carve it into a tree or rock in rune format. Which we did. But have no proof of since we had no electricity and thus our phones died before our masterpiece was done. Alas! Still, we shall attempt to reproduce our musings in digital form here.

Let’s ride!

Billy (Hopper) and Wyatt (Fonda) are born to be wild. And free. They are fond of drugs and less so of helmets. After a successful drug deal they take their now large amount of cash and ride their motorcycles towards New Orleans, destined for Mardi Gras. Along the way, they encounter characters and adventures aplenty!

It’s not that they don’t own helmets. Protective accessories just kind of mess up their vibe, you know.

Among their adventures are a mysterious hitchhiker who brings them to a hippie commune. After that, they are arrested for parading without a permit, which seems like a rule made up solely to suck all the fun out of the world. Still, their stint in the local jail is not for naught – they hit it off with fellow inmate George Hanson (Nicholson), an alcoholic lawyer well known to local law inforcement. After they are all released, Hanson tags along towards Mardi Gras.

He’s just happy to be included, bless him!

While the travellers encounter helpful and kind people, such as the hippies and the cowboys that lend them tools and a place to fix their choppers, not everyone takes kindly to hairy, freewheeling strangers passing through their towns. Because this America is not the land of the free so much as the land of the easily threatened and viciously cruel…

Is this rude? Sure. Was it justified? Absolutely. Was the retaliation in proportion to the offense? Not even adjacent to the same realm.

The similarities between Easy Rider and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are many, though their stories are set a century apart. We have our two bffs, rootless outlaws with free spirits and even freer idea of laws, rules and boundries. They also very much enjoy doing acrobatics on bikes, which is a bit more niche than the other similarities. Motorcycles are the new horses and their riders are the new Western heroes – even their names connote their Western roots. Easy Rider is the darker one of the two movies though, both in its general tone and because it is portraying its contemporary America with all the violence and prejudice that is rampant. And yes, we say “is” even though this is set in 1969…

We’re not mad at it, we’re just surprised it happened twice in the same year…

We loved the soundtrack, the people helping people, the night out in New Orleans and the general tension we felt throughout. While parts of the movie felt slightly dated, it is a classic for a reason and definitely one to watch. If nothing else, the soundtrack alone makes it a must-see.

Now, you may think that we should have varied the imagery a bit more in this post, but to that we say: you try searching for pictures from this movie and see how much variation you can find! We’re happy to have found pics both with and without helmets. That’s about as much variety as we could hope for.

Yeah, we think this is more or less what we carved into that massive rock outside out cabin, give or take a word or two.

What we learned: It’s real hard to be free when you’re bought and sold in the marketplace.

MVP: The vibes, man!

Next time: Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969)

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#353 Head

Watched: January 21 2023

Director: Bob Rafelson

Starring: The Monkees

Year: 1968

Runtime: 1h 26min

So. Head. It’s really… something. Now, we’ll be the first to admit we went into this knowing next to nothing about The Monkees, except that they were the One Direction of their time and that they started as a sitcom rather than a band. And there our knowledge ended. Now, after watching Head we know…very little more.

Somehow, this image captures all of our reactions to this movie. Shock, confusion, scepticism, indifference and a hint of “what are we doing with our lives?”

Any plot in the movie is hard to find, but that’s ok – we’re not usually too bothered with plot. There are music and dance numbers, silly sketches and all manners of absurdity, which is more than enough. And to be fair – we would probably have loved to have seen something like this from a favourite band/group in our teens. However, without a relationship with The Monkees it’s a bit of a curious phenomenon.

Can’t fault the fashion though!

So, let’s do the positives first: we enjoyed the self-deprecating humour (“God’s gift to 8-year-olds” is pretty spot on!), the silliness and absurdity, the desert war bits, the walking through sets, Toni Basil, the style and the concept. However, we weren’t entirely sold on the execution of it.

“Did someone say ‘execution’?”

Maybe we’re too spoiled having grown up in a world where Monty Python had already set the standard for absurd, silly and hilarious weirdness decades before we watched this? Maybe we just didn’t get it? While we far from disliked this, we were left with the impression that the viewing experience might have been vastly improved by either being fans of The Monkees, watching this when it was first released, or being very, very high. Licorice tea just didn’t do the trick…

We get you. We also think coke (in any form) would have made us enjoy this more.

What we learned: We don’t do enough drugs.

Next time: If…. (1968)