Nancy Sinatra in The Wild Angels - Episode 123

Pop Screen

Get your motor running, head out on the highway... wait, it's not that Peter Fonda-starring 1960s biker movie. No, The Wild Angels came a few years before Easy Rider, and it centres around a noticeably less idealistic group of bikers. Director Roger Corman hired several real Hell's Angels to serve as extras in his film, and if you're thinking there's probably stories from that set, you're right.

Let Ben and Graham tell you them: from Corman's sociological reasons for having Bruce Dern's character work at an oil refinery to the unexpected trouble he had involving a coffin and the letter "Z". And, because this is Pop Screen, we also talk about the film's musical legacy - Primal Scream are certainly fans - and its female lead Nancy Sinatra. whose career teaches us many valuable lessons. Here's one: if you're accused of being a nepo baby, why not get together with an incredibly rum country singer and release a series of duets that are so unwholesome as to sound actively diseased? All this and Frank Sinatra's prog album, discussed herein!

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