Main Cast: Harland Sanders, John Gabriel, Kent Taylor
Release Year: 1970
Country: US
Run Time: 92 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
Plot
Bikers, Nazis, Mafiosi, and the FBI all clash in this wild and wooly exploitation picture from director Al Adamson. Mark Adams (John Gabriel) is an FBI agent who has been assigned to infiltrate an organized crime ring that has obtained a set of printing plates that will allow them to produce nearly perfect counterfeit 20-dollar bills. The plates were made in Germany during World War II, and were discovered by a radical right-wing group hoping to restore the Nazi Party to power. The American gangsters are in cahoots with a group of wealthy American neo-Nazis sympathetic to the new German cause, led by fugitive war criminal Count von Delberg (Kent Taylor); the count has in turn recruited a vicious motorcycle gang, the Bloody Devils, to do his dirty work. Also featuring Broderick Crawford, John Carradine, and Col. Harland Sanders (the latter in a shameless plug for Kentucky Fried Chicken), Hell's Bloody Devils was produced under the titles The Fakers and Operation M as a straightforward espionage thriller; when distributors balked at the finished product, Al Adamson and producer Samuel M. Sherman added the biker subplot, and gave the product a more exploitive title. Shorn of the motorcycle gang footage, the film was also released as Smashing the Crime Syndicate. Nelson Riddle co-wrote the film's theme song, and Laszlo Kovacs and Gary Graver were among the cameramen. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
Drive-in auteur Al Adamson cobbled Hell's Bloody Devils together in his usual waste not, want not spirit, and even if the result is more incoherent than his other patchwork productions, it's brawling, brainless fun nonetheless. It is easy to see how indiscriminating audiences might be fooled by the assemblage of cool spy thriller and hot-blooded biker fantasy; if one isn't paying close attention (not unusual at drive-in theaters), Adamson's ruse is nicely spliced, with team player Vicki Volante serving as a bridge between the separate stories to simulate cohesion. However, producer Samuel M. Sherman has lovingly restored the full version of Hell's Bloody Devils for DVD release after over 30 years in limbo, and modern audiences watching the film in their homes without distraction will immediately see the seams strain. Aside from Volante's character, the titular biker gang and the Nazi counterfeiters have no interaction whatsoever, and the cyclists' sleazy activities (including LSD orgies, rape, and motorist abuse) exist only to pad time and add exploitation value. That said, Adamson was a director who could always substitute energy for logic, so Hell's Bloody Devils is as vigorous as it is nonsensical, with a great music score that buzzes with fuzz guitar and spy-theme clichés. Along with Volante, the cast is classic Al Adamson stock company, with Robert Dix as a biker named "Cunk," Kent Taylor as Nazi royalty, Broderick Crawford and Scott Brady as the FBI, Greydon Clark and Gary Kent as thugs, plus John Carradine as a bird-shop owner with secret information for the hero. KFC icon Col. Harland Sanders' cameo ("Isn't that the best chicken you've ever tasted?") was exchanged for free lunches for cast and crew over the course of the shoot, proving Al Adamson to be an early pioneer in the now-pervasive art of product placement, a cinematic crime far worse than exploiting the public's taste for sex and violence. ~ Fred Beldin, All Movie Guide
Bambi Allen; Keith Andes - Bremonte; Emily Banks - FBI Agent; Scott Brady - FBI Agent; Carol Brewster; John Carradine - Merchant; Broderick Crawford - Brand; Robert Dix - Cunk; Dan Kemp - Henchman; Sid Lawrence; Leslie McRae; Anne Randall - Amanda; Gene Shane; Vicki Volante - Carol Bechtol; Jane Wald; Richard Brander; John Cardos; Greydon Clark; Gary Kent; Kent Osborne; Jack Starrett - Rocky; Erin O'Donnell - von Delberg's Daughter; William Bonner; Sheldon Lee; Harland Sanders
Credit
Al Adamson - Director, John Winfield - Editor, Nelson Riddle - Composer (Music Score), Don McGinnis - Composer (Music Score), Robert Kinoshita - Production Designer, Gary Graver - Cinematographer, Laszlo Kovacs - Cinematographer, Frank Ruttencutter - Cinematographer, Al Adamson - Producer, Jerry Evans - Screenwriter
