Hollywood really seems to have gotten the zeitgeist of the automobile’s place in our modern day imagination. Whether it’s film about racing in which the contest is captured in wheel to wheel action, or a road picture where the car can play as important a role as the stars, the automobile has found its place.
The same can’t really be said for motorcycles, however. There have been a small number of motorcycle racing movies, but mostly two wheel transport has been relegated to the rebel role. That of course is only one aspect of the biking experience, but one that seems to have been perhaps overly documented. The others are less common, but often just as compelling. Considering the few films in which bikes have played a central role, which do you think is history’s greatest.
Image: YouTube
Hooniverse Asks: What's the Greatest Motorcycle Movie of All Time?
By Robert Emslie
Jan 24, 2017
Jeff Glucker
http://www.brucebrownfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/14353.jpg
The World’s Fastest Indian is the correct answer, but I’m going with a movie that’s actually been roundly panned on this very site – BUT I LOVED IT! Silver Dream Racer. Sure David Essex is somehow an even worse actor than he is a singer, and the plot will never, ever leave you guessing, but there’s just something about this movie. Maybe because I was just a lad when it came it out, and have a tendency to use my rose colored glasses more than I should. Don’t care, still my favorite motorcycle movie.
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I have the theme, “Silver Dream Machine,” in my iTunes library. And it’s not even the David Essex version; it’s the Top-Of-The-Pops knockoff cover. Because I inexplicably prefer it to the original.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GybhT0QRGL4
Gentlemen: There is only one possible answer: The Vincent Black Shadow
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That’s a clip from Peter Starr’s Take It To The Limit. Which is a pretty damn good nomination.
http://i0.wp.com/hooniverse.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/takeittothelimit.jpg
Wildly stretching the definition of “movie”, though it does have an actual narrative and isn’t a racing game, Lucasarts 1995 point and click masterpiece:
http://www.myabandonware.com/media/screenshots/f/full-throttle-33c/full-throttle_1.gif
Mike Nesmith’s Time Rider.
PJ O’Rourke talked about it in Driving Like Crazy.
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Worlds Fastest Indian https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a5de9cef3badee493698f8141186f5fdca5b1b7ab60887776fac24e619ef22b2.jpg
And it’s celebrated every year with a motorcycle race week on a beach, the street, race circuits and off-road.
The Burt Monroe Challenge, the largest motorcycle event in the Southern Hemisphere.
http://www.burtmunrochallenge.co.nz/
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I have two favorites:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368721/
and
http://www.longwayround.com/
I am shocked, gentlemen, shocked, that this bike hasn’t been mentioned yet.
Could it be that I am getting old, and the heros of my youth forgotten?
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I think you misread the question. It’s not “what’s the greatest movie motorcycle,” it’s what’s the greatest motorcycle MOVIE.
A strong case could be made for Easy Rider as the greatest motorcycle movie ever. I immediately thought of it when I read the question, but I posted my other low hanging fruit answer instead, because when it comes to hooning, McQueen > Fonda+Hopper (until Hopper dynamited himself, anyway, but McQueen was already dead by then).
Anyway, I had a couple of other films in mind, too, but none of them have made appearances here yet, either.
Easy Rider might be the most famous or iconic, but it’s a horribly bad film.
You’re entitled to your opinion, of course, though apparently it diverges from what people at Cannes, the Academy Awards, and the American Film Institute thought.
The all-time greatest Oscar winner is James Cameron’s Titanic. I have no problem diversion from what the Academy thinks.
. .
It’s probably an “important” movie, in that it opened the door for a lot of independent film makers and that whole wave of 70s counter culture/anti-hero films (and George Lucas), and was probably pretty “out there” for 1969 in terms of portrayal of drugs, but that’s not the same as being a good, solid, well paced, well edited watchable movie, which it just isn’t. It’s a mess..you’d swear everyone was on LSD making it or something 😀
The greatest motorcycle movie ever would have to be a dramatization of the epic battle between Spencer and Roberts in the 1983 500 Grand Prix Championship. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been filmed yet.
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The greatest motorcycle movie ever would have to a dramatization of the epic, season-long battle between Roberts and Spencer in the 1983 500cc World Championship. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been filmed yet, which is a huge indictment of human civilization.
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Easy Rider of course !!!
” We blew it”
https://youtu.be/d1mhFa7eHY8
i’m going to go with the 10″ (wheeled) answer and say Quadrophenia, loads of very cool scooters, loads of cool café racers and a great soundtrack (some laughable acting it might be said but also the springboard for a whole generation of british actors of that era)
how is this not here – it got an Oscar nomination!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoEKHkvJIkQ
Because naked.
Because leather.
Try – The Girl On A Motorcycle (1968)
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Lawrence of Arabia. The opening with credits is a high shot of Peter O’Toole going through the Druidic ritual of starting the Brough Superior. That scene got me hooked on motorcycles as surely as Toad on automobiles. While, as a teenager, I was watching the screen I keep saying to myself “I’ve got to have one of those things”.
While my immediate reaction was On Any Sunday, I’ll throw in an honorable mention for V-Four Victory, recounting Honda’s 1983 750 F1 season and culminating in an on bike camera lap of the Isle of Man TT circuit narrated by Joey Dunlop.