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Motorcycle
Gang
Genre: Drama
Released: 1957
Directed by: Edward
L. Cahn
Starring: Steve
Terrell, Anne Neyland, John Ashley
Alfalfa portrays: "Speed",
jocular, food-crazy member of a motorcycle club.
Alfalfa's screen time: 14:18
Lines of dialogue spoken by Alfalfa: 76
"Motorcycle
Gang" and images © Golden State Productions and ©
ColumbiaTristar Home Video
Alfalfa plays "Speed", who belongs
to a motorcycle club that used to have a shady reputation, but has
been brought under control thanks to a local police lieutenant,
Joe Watson. Lieutenant Watson has been assigned by the force to
bring some rules and regulations to the club. Alfalfa and his pals
still like racing on Sunset Boulevard once in a while, but by and
large, they are now solid citizens thanks to the supervision of
Lieutenant Watson.
One former member of the club has just been
paroled after spending fifteen months in prison. His name, as he
re-introduces himself to the club, is "Rogers...Nick
Rogers". Fellow by the name of Randy, Alfalfa's main buddy
in the club, has some old business to settle with Nick—apparently
Rogers holds Randy responsible for his being thrown in the slammer,
for reasons that are never made quite clear. Rogers doesn't like
what's happened to the club while he was away. He makes Randy's
life miserable on several fronts: he keeps disrupting Randy's budding
romance with a young motorcycle hussy named Terry, plus he enjoys
goading Randy into racing "like the good old days", meaning
with no rules. Randy, eager to keep his nose clean to remain eligible
for the upcoming Regionals, continuously ignores Nick's taunts and
challenges. Until one day, when Terry (who can't seem to make up
her mind between Nick and Randy) dares Randy to accept Nick's challenge,
Randy finally caves in and decides to "take him on", as
Alfalfa characterizes it.
The last leg of the unsanctioned race with Nick is over a train
trestle bridge. Nick goes first, and knowingly leaks a trail of
oil on the tracks. So when Randy takes his turn, he slips off the
trestle and plunges about twenty feet to the ground, nearly getting
killed. This convinces Terry once and for all that Nick is nothing
but bad news, but Alfalfa and the rest of the club tell her to scram,
since she is the one responsible for Randy accepting the dangerous
challenge in the first place.
While Randy is recuperating in the hospital, Terry—who, by
the way, has been dumped off by her parents for the summer at her
elderly uncle's farm in the hills—can't sleep, and goes outside
to gaze at the stars. Her uncle comes out to see what the problem
is, and tries to cheer his niece up.
Uncle: It's a pretty night [takes
a deep breath]. Can you smell the alfalfa?
Eventually Randy
makes up with Terry. But on the day of the Regionals, Nick Rogers
and his boys go on a drunken rampage in a nearby valley and terrorize
the employees and patrons of an isolated diner. Lieutenant Watson,
supervising the race, hears about the trouble on his police band
radio—"police officer programmer-tater", as Alfalfa
calls it. Watson stops the race and, with Alfalfa's help, convinces
Randy and the other race leaders to forget about the competition
and go help him break up the Nick Rogers gang once and for all.
Watson, Randy, and Alfalfa rush to the scene and restore order.
Alfalfa is seen in a pile of hay, using his helmet to pound one
of the bad guys over the head.
 
Left:
A lean- and mean-looking Alfalfa fights one of
Nick Rogers' gang. Right: He gets a kick out of Watson's
"police officer programmer-tater". Click both to enlarge.
The final scene of the movie is
at Randy's "Victory Party". Randy, sitting with Terry,
wonders why they are having a victory party because he didn't really
"win" the race. Terry looks at him seductively and reassures
him that he's "won everything in sight". The film's final
shot is of Alfalfa getting a pie in the face for not being able
to make up his mind about which he is more interested in—the
pie or the girl holding the pie. "Frapta-gooched again!"
Alfalfa cries as he looks into the camera with pie on his face as
the film fades to black ("Frapta-
gooched"?! If anyone out there knows what the heck this
means, please let us know.)
Conclusion
of "Motorcycle Gang", with our hero all pied up.
"Motorcycle Gang"—along with
those of the "Gas House Kids" trilogy—is probably
the film in which Alfalfa has his most prominent grownup role. He
has just over fourteen minutes of screen time in "Motorcycle
Gang", yet has 76 lines of dialogue, much of them delivered
in rapid-fire fashion using a weird sort of hep-cat lingo that has
been adapted for the cycle crowd (by the way, most of the riders
in the film pronounce "cycle" like "sickle".)
Alfalfa's character, "Speed", has a penchant for creating
new words by putting them on top of other words; for instance, he
introduces us to "stu-ame", which means "stupid dame";
examples of other Alfalfa lingo in the film are "smip"
(small drip) and "broll" (beautiful
doll; we don't know where the "r" comes from). He is seen
eating almost constantly throughout the film as well. When he hits
up one of his many female acquaintances
for some food, he asks, "What's for vitamins, birdy?"
And when the Korean owner/short order cook of the gang's hangout
insults the somewhat zaftig girl with whom Alfalfa is dancing, he
says, "Hey, you're talkin' about the girl I love...to eat with!"
Randy,
Terry (hubba hubba)
and Speed (Alfalfa). Click
image to enlarge.
 
Above
left: Alfalfa looks on as Randy (right) confronts
Rogers...Nick Rogers. Other images: Alfalfa gets mixed
up with one of Rogers' gang. Click each image to enlarge.
Most commentators and film historians categorize
"Motorcycle Gang" as a prototypical fifties teenage exploitation
film (even though it is clear that the film's stars have been graduated
from high school for years). But despite some rear-screen projection
effects that are quite possibly the least convincing in the history
of the cinema, "Motorcycle Gang" is never so bad as to
be offensive or insulting. Dramatically, the film is fairly well-organized,
of its kind. It reminds us of an episode of "Dragnet 1967",
with its economical dialogue and the no-nonsense attitude of Lieutenant
Watson. In one of the film's early scenes, a regular meeting of
Alfalfa's club is being held (Randy, who has just become acquainted
with Terry, invites her to come; a skeptical Terry derisively refers
to the meeting as one of those "organized klatches".)
During the meeting, Lieutenant Watson begins discussing the upcoming
Regionals race, when Nick—who has been kind enough to invite
himself to the meeting for no other reason but to make trouble—starts
mouthing off about all the new rules and regulations. This burns
Watson's bacon, and he tells Nick off in front of the whole club:
Watson: He [Rogers] wants the good old days back again, when
every kid on a motorcycle was looked on as a criminal with a loaded
gun. And it was—he should know that! You know why he really
liked things as they were? Because you let him throw his weight
around, be a somebody...he's nowhere, and he knows he's nowhere
in this kind of setup!
Rogers [gets up, angry]: You and your cop psychology!
Sounds to us like a confrontation between
Joe Friday and Blueboy.
Alfalfa
clowning around in the club's hangout, as is his
wont.
As far as Alfalfa's performance: Call us a
bunch of Alfalfapologists if you like, but, as in many of his other
grownup roles, we again have to comment on our hero's high energy
level in spite of the film's obvious mediocrity and unintended humor.
Alfalfa, looking wiry and in fine physical condition, bounces around
like a rubber ball—grabbing a bite out of someone's hamburger,
stealing a few seconds worth of dancing
with a girl, sliding uninvited into a booth already containing some
of the other club members, or throwing
out a good-natured insult to one of the many "dolls" who
wish he'd just go away. In the more than thirty non-Rascals films
we have screened at the time of this writing, we have never seen
him "phone in" a performance, no matter how lacking the
script or story might have been. "Motorcycle Gang" is
no exception.
Left:
Alfalfa asks for medical help for Randy. Right: He
and Lieutenant Watson get ready to do battle with the
Nick Rogers gang. Click both images to enlarge.
"Motorcycle Gang" was directed by
Edward L. Cahn, who also was the director of two other Alfalfa films,
"Two Dollar Bettor" and "Gas
House Kids In Hollywood", joining William Wellman as three-time
director of a grownup Alfalfa (Wellman directed Alfalfa in "Island
In the Sky", "High
and the Mighty", and "Track of
the Cat", in which Alfalfa played a 100-year old Indian).
Ironically, "Motorcycle Gang" was the type of movie that
Alfalfa was desperately trying to leave behind him in the late fifties;
just prior to this film, he had a very brief non-speaking cameo
in "Between Heaven and Hell"
as a grizzled-looking war prisoner, holding a cigarette and glaring
suspiciously at Robert Wagner. And after Motorcycle Gang, he won
a part in the Oscar™-winning "The
Defiant Ones" which he had hoped would be his breakthrough
role: Angus, an odd-looking, transistor radio-addicted member of
a search party trying to find Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier. Sadly,
this hoped-for career revitalization was not to be: Alfalfa was
killed in early 1959, scant months after the release of "The
Defiant Ones".
Opening
credits for
"Motorcycle Gang".
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