Tweet
Released by: MGM Limited Edition Collection
Released on: August 23, 2011
Director: Anthony M. Lanza
Cast: Dennis Hopper, Jody McRea, Chris Noel
Year: 1968
Purchase From Amazon
The Movie:
Directed by Anthony M. Lanza and picked up by AIP, The Glory Stompers stars a pre-Easy Rider Dennis Hopper as Chino, the tough leader of a biker gang called The Black Souls. These dastardly biker scum crash the party of a less dastardly biker gang called The Glory Stompers, lead by a surprisingly unintimidating dude named Darryl (Jody McRea) who is hosting this event in honor of his cute, clean cut girlfriend, Chris (Chris Noel). She takes him aside and tells him that she loves him but just can't commit to a lifestyle like this, and shortly thereafter Chino and his pals attack, whacking Darryl over the head with a crowbar and whisking Chris off with the intent to take her across the border into Mexico and sell her into white slavery.
Amazingly enough, Darryl isn't dead - in fact he doesn't even have a bruise on his head. He wakes up and decides, hey, time to get Chris back so he hops on his hog and hits the road. Along the way he meets up with Smiley (Jock Mahoney), an older biker who used to run a different Stompers chapter on the other side of the state. They hit it off and he decides to help him get Chris back. Time is running out, however, as tensions arise within The Black Souls when Magoo (Robert Tessier) decides he's going to give Chris a good raping while the other Black Souls, Mouth (Casey Kasem) and Monk (Lindsay Crosby), stand around and drink! This doesn't sit well with Chino's younger brother, Clean Cut (Jim Reader), who is starting to have feelings for the pretty blonde captive. It also doesn't sit well with Chino's curvy, cute dark haired old lady, Jo Ann (Sandra Bettin).
While The Glory Stompers might be pretty rudimentary as far as its plot and structure are concerned, it does make up for that with some great cinematography and some beautiful late sixties era California scenery. While there are a few too many long, drawn out stretches of nothing but dudes riding motorbikes, the widescreen format gives these fairly simple compositions some legitimately epic scope which goes a long way towards making the movie seem more impressive and artistically inclined than it was probably meant to be.
The real reason to check this one out, however, is for the performances. Not only do we get a supporting role from none other than Casey Kasem and another supporting role from Jock Mahoney, best known for playing Tarzan in a few movies and in the sixties TV series but we get a fantastic effort from a young and seemingly very crazy Dennis Hopper. Decked out in scruffy denim and leather adorned with Nazi symbols and a big BLACK SOULS back patch, Hopper gets pretty manic here, especially towards the end when it all hits the fan around him. He's not as physically imposing as some of the other guys in the movie, but he more than makes up for that by being the loudest and the craziest and his fight scene with Robert Tessier is surprisingly harsh.
So if the story won't wow you, the movie does at least move along at a good pace and feature some interesting cast members. The violence isn't as strong as it would get as the biker genre got more popular but it hits hard enough to count and if that weren't enough, the movie makes great use of a completely over the top biker party/orgy featuring some naked ladies, some beer guzzling, some brawling, and a crazy caped guy up in a tree.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The Glory Stompers starts out looking a bit rough, in its original 2.35.1 anamorphic widescreen aspect ratio, as there's some noticeably distracting print damage running up and down the picture for the first couple of minutes. Thankfully once we get past that it subsides and the transfer winds up looking pretty decent. There's plenty of grain evident throughout and some minor color fading here and there in addition to specks and small bits of print damage but none of it is nearly as distracting as what we see in the opening few minutes. Detail isn't bad and there are no problems with compression artifacts, edge enhancement or aliasing to complain about.
The English language Dolby Digital Mono audio track on the disc is well balanced and features clean, clear dialogue. The fuzzed out rock guitar score also sounds quite good, as do the various sound effects used throughout the movie. Some hiss is present as is the occasional pop, but it's nothing too serious.
There are no extras outside of a static menu.
The Final Word:
It'll always live in Easy Rider's shadow but The Glory Stompers is a pretty cool movie in its own right thanks to an interesting supporting cast and a solid lead performance from Hopper. MGM's DVD-R release looks and sounds decent enough but is barebones, which is a shame, but for those who have wanted to add this one to their collection at least it's now available.
