**Some Spoilers** One of the many biker films coming out of the AIP studios during the 1960's and 70's "The Savage Seven" is also one of the most entertaining. The fact that were supposed to accept without question white blond and blue eyed Robert Walker Jr as American Indian Johnnie Blue Eyes is worth the price of admission alone.In the movie it's the bikers who at first are the bad guys in their rampaging through an Indian shanty town as they go on their way to bigger and better things. Like getting themselves stoned and drunk on pot and beer between raping the local Indian, young and old, women population. It's when the leader of the pack of bikers Kisum, Adam Roarke, tries to get a bit too friendly with local Indian Johnny Blue Eyes' sister Marcia, Joanna Frank, that the Indians, who at first avoided violence, started to get restless. We have a number of confrontations between Johnny and his Indian friends with Kisum's crew of drunk and rowdy motorcyclists that the local owner of the bar and convenience store Filmore, Mel Berger, tries to use to his advantage.Fillmore has been trying for some time to drive the pesky Indians off their land and turn it into a resort and shopping mall that would make him millions. Now with Kisum & Co. running amok and terrifying the Indians in town Fillmore plans to pay off Kisum to burn the Indians out of their homes at at the same time, by calling the state troopers, have him and his gang arrested for arson and murder. That's the proverbial knocking off two birds with one stone on Fillmore's part! ***SPOILERS*** It's when the bikers and Indians, seeing a common cause, become allied against Fillmore that he goes into overdrive in having a local Indian woman raped and murdered by his #1 henchman karate black belt Taggert, Charles Bail, and making it look like one of the bikers did it! When things still don't turn out the way he wanted them to, with the bikers and Indians not going for each other throats, Fillmore has Taggert & Co. murder Kisum's good friend Bull, Richard Anders, to get things, a war between the bikers & Indians, started. The stoned out of his skull, on pot uppers and downers, Bull is both murdered and then crucified by Fillmore's men having it made to look like the Indians did it; In revenge for the raped and murdered Indian woman.With both the bikers and Indians now at war with each other Fillmore & Co. just sits back, in being "innocent bystanders" in all the carnage, and wait for the inevitable results: The two sides wiping each other out with Fillmore and his boys, being non-combatants, picking up all the pieces. :The valuable Indian land! Since both the Bikers and Indians, in killing off each other, won't have any use for it anyway! That's until a battered and beaten Taggert, who had the truth beat out of him by Kisum, confessed to what he and his boss Fillmore did! It's now up to Kisum to get the truth out to both his bikers and Johnnie Blue Eyes' Indians to unite against their real enemy-Fillmore-before they both end up slaughtering each other!

In fact I would have gave it higher a rating but for the genre '8' will do. If you've'e seen some truly awful murdersickle gang movies and you want to be entertained and amused this is the one for you. Not that it has a morally life changing ending. In fact the ending is a little sad, with the bikers hired to do away with the Reservation only to find out the rednecks who hired them are working both ends against the middle.To me the best tagline is when the redneck drops into a karate stance and yells, "hai, KARATE", and the biker scoops up a barstool and yells, "Hai, CHAIR!!" and clobbers the redneck...Put the kiddies to bed, whip out some popcorn, and set back to be entertained...

About the uneasy alliance between a gang of bikers and dirt poor Native Americans with the establishment, naturally, as their common foe. Directed by Richard Rush, who would go on to make the brilliant "The Stunt Man", the film delivers on all the action and stunts you'd expect from this genre while also injecting some obvious but effective social commentary. (The powers-that-be pit the bikers and Indians against each other to dissolve their strength and perpetuate their fringe status.)The lead biker, Adam Roarke, is commanding and charismatic - he's not the meathead you'd expect from this sort of film. In fact, there is a gravity and depth to his performance that catches you off guard at first. He's a bewildering but fascinating mix of aggression and sensitivity, someone grappling with the scrambled values of the era. I liked Robert Walker Jr. too as the hot-headed, blue-eyed Indian. Often too boyish and elf-like, he's edgier and more natural here.The movie has style to burn and stands up as an unusually well-mounted (and richly photographed) biker flick, with some brains behind the chains. Rush doesn't seem inhibited by the common-ness of the material - he builds the characters and moves his camera (it glides and whirls like a gymnast) in typically startling fashion. The whole exercise seems to center around Roarke's memorable line "If I'm going to be a bear, it might as well be a Grizzly."

Biker movies have never been my can of beer. Fortunately, THE SAVAGE SEVEN is better than what I discovered so far. What it has for a basic plotline makes up for the perfect setting ever devised in the genre, an Indian resort. Pretty hilarious at times, and wait for the finale where the whole place goes up in smoke! Listen for the film's signature line: "Hey man, you just barfed on my broad!". Penny Marshall makes a very early screen appearance here. If you like classic drive-in movies, then this will be a whole lot of fun.