MovieChat Forums > The Wild One Discussion > Shocking?

Shocking?

posted 12 years ago by mikekrit62
2 replies | jump to latest

I think the idea that this movie was "shocking" to the American public is Hollywood hyperbole. The country was less than a decade removed from WWII, and millions of Americans had witnessed the inhumanity of war. They had also grown up watching gangster movies, reading about real-life gangsters like Dillinger and Capone, and watching westerns with bad guys that made the bikers in this movie look like boy scouts. Americans were not unfamiliar with bad behavior, and the concept of gangs terrorizing people was hardly ground breaking.

This was really just a western where the gangs rode motorcycles instead of horses. The big difference was that there was no real hero in this movie that saves the day. It was a rather amoral tale, and I think that fact probably annoyed more people than it actually "shocked".

[–] briebo1 11 years ago

I think you are probably right as to people in big cities like Chicago and NY, people there understood and dealt with organized crime and "gang violence." But the time of "westerns" was long past and small town America was scared of the motorcycle gang I guarantee. I lived in Missoula, MT in 2000 and the Hell's Angels came to town and it was a virtual showcase of paranoia. We had police everywhere and it turned bad when SWAT came on the streets and hosed down old hippies who wouldn't move aside with pepper spray - it was a local police brutality story that made the news where I lived, but it all came about due to fear of a biker gang coming into our happy community for a few days. I never understood the fear and all the hype, but if the idea of a biker gang caused that kind of fear and commotion in 2000 I can't imagine the fears that were indulged in the 1950's. Sure the public knew about crime gangs of sorts in movies, but the biker gang posed a threat to small town America so to speak which was isolated from the crime they heard about in Chicago for example. In seeing what happened in Missoula in 2000 I can certainly believe that this film fueled a lot of paranoia about the dangers and the community disruption of the "biker gang" which I can attest is still in small town America strangely to this day.

[–] spookyrat1 10 years ago

It was a rather amoral tale ...

I agree with you. This movie's reputation is really overblown IMO. There are no heroes on either side, with even Kathie acting at times in a rather dopey sort of way. Granted it's over 60 years old, but some of the dialogue just gives you the giggles. I find it just about unbelievable that it was banned for 15 years in the UK.🐭