Plot

At first, gas station attendant Poet is happy when the Hell's Angels gang finally accepts him. But he's shocked when he learns just how brutal they are.

Poet is a San Francisco area pump jockey and motorcyclist who stands up for himself when he feels he's been wronged. Despite one of those encounters, i.e. a fight, being between Poet and one of his members, Buddy, the leader of the local chapter of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, slowly brings Poet into their fold in admiring Poet's pluck in spite of his somewhat diminutive physique. Poet, in turn, admires much about the club, including the motorcycles, the camaraderie, the drugs, and the free love, the latter as he openly enters into a relationship of sorts with Shill, who is largely regarded as Buddy's girl. As Poet becomes more deeply involved with the club and Shill, with who he is falling in love, he will discover just how much the club's ethics and and his own mesh or don't mesh.—Huggo

At first gas station attendant Poet is happy when the rockers gang "Hell's Angels" finally accepts him. But he's shocked when he learns how brutal they are - not even murder is a taboo to them. He gets himself in trouble when the leader's girlfriend falls in love with him - and he welcomes her approaches.—Tom Zoerner <Tom.Zoerner@informatik.uni-erlangen.de>

A bunch of guys on Harleys are causing trouble again in this, one of the best-remembered examples of the biker flicks of the 1960's. Poet, a very young (Jack Nicholson) is a moody gas station attendant who is looking for more excitement in his life. When a gang of bikers roars through town, Poet is intrigued, and after he pitches in to help the Hell's Angels in a bar fight (and pulls a well-timed stick up), one of the gang's higher-ups, Buddy (Adam Roarke) asks Poet to join. Soon Poet is riding with the Angels and living their lifestyle of violent debauchery, but Poet begins to tire of their rootless decadence, and Buddy is none too happy with Poet when he learns they're both in love with the same woman. Hell's Angels On Wheels won a cult following for its agressive but languid atmosphere and the fluid camerawork of cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs (at this point still billed as "Leslie Kovacs"). Richard Rush directed, and legendary Hell's Angels leader Sonny Barger appears as himself. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi