Special Features for this film include an insightful and revealing commentary track by Corman about filmmaking and his drug experiences. “Tune In, Trip Out” is a cool making-of short featuring Corman, Dern, and cinematographer Alan Daviau from 2003. The cinematography is fantastic. There is a great use of lights, effects, and lenses to create trippy visuals, which the editing enhances. The work gets highlighted by Daviau during “Psychedelic Film Effects,” by an article from American Cinematographer March 1968 by Bob Beck, and by “Psychedelic Light Box” which provides six minutes of visuals that look great although the music doesn’t always fit.
Disc 2 is a vehicular double feature. The Young Racers (1963) is a very bad melodrama set amongst the European racing circuit. Joe Machin is a champion racer; Stephen Children is a writer, and former driver, looking to cover him and the sport; and Joe’s brother Robert, played by the film’s screenwriter R. Wright Campbell, is in love with his Joe’s wife.
There is some decent racing footage, which makes me think Corman got his hands on that and then found a way to wrap a story around it. The only notable aspect of the film is that an uncredited William Shatner looped all of Mark Damon’s dialogue, thereby making the film an answer to a tough trivia question for Star Trek fans since William Campbell later played two roles in the series. Coppola was the second unit director and had a brief cameo.
The Wild Angels (1966) is Corman’s take on the Hells Angels. Peter Fonda stars as Heavenly Blues, the leader of the Venice Beach Hells Angels with Nancy Sinatra as his girl and real-life couple Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd. The story is rather odd. The gang goes to recover Loser’s (Dern) stolen motorcycle from a Mexican gang. During the melee, the cops show up. Inexplicably, Loser takes off on a cop’s bike. He gets shot in the back for his troubles and is taken to the hospital under police custody. The gang busts him out, but they have no way to take care of him, so he dies. His funeral turns into an orgy.
Corman’s audience was young people, and this film certainly must have appealed to them in the late ‘60s, and still might today. There is a romanticism to the outlaw who determines his own path, and there are a lot of great shots of riding the open road, but it’s hard to comprehend what Corman’s view of these people is because he presents different sides. They seem like a loyal bunch, but most of the characters come off like idiotic animals. When a nurse discovers Loser’s breakout, not only does a biker subdue her, but he gets as close as probably was allowed to have been shown to raping her.
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