Viking Night: Knightriders
By Bruce Hall
July 20, 2017
BoxOfficeProphets.com
So...I won’t.
The Zombie craze has come around at least twice in my lifetime, and I haven’t been able to get into it on either occasion. Zombies just never did it for me. Maybe it’s because they’re usually presented as a metaphor rather than the primary threat, and I’m happy to consider almost any metaphor as long as I don’t have to think about cannibalism, too. It’s distracting. That’s not to say I haven’t seen Night of the Living Dead, Day of the Dead, and Everything Else of the Dead - I have. I get it. It’s just...not for me.
What IS for me is the kickass one-sheet for Knightriders, with the one and only Ed Harris swinging a mace from the back of a flaming motorcycle. I’ve seen it a million times, and Harris is one of my favorite actors, but for some reason I never pulled the trigger, despite my love of spiked weapons AND flaming motorcycles. Knightriders doesn’t get a lot of press, being sandwiched between Dawn of the Dead and Creepshow in the Romeroverse. When you’re considered one of the founding fathers of modern horror, a two and a half hour film about geeks playing dress up might seem like something you’d want to overlook.
I’d advise against that. You may not be aware of this, but there are groups of people in the world who make a living dressing up in period costumes and hitting each other with fake swords. I have personally watched a couple of coworkers bring their armor to work and lumber around one another like crippled dinosaurs to the point of heatstroke. I was less impressed with them than they were with themselves, so I guess the synopsis for Knightriders always kind of turned me away. The film revolves around a traveling troupe of Medieval performers who joust, yes, and fight with swords, yes, but they do it on motorcycles.
Hmmm. I’ve seen modern day amateurs try to fight with Medieval weapons on foot and come away looking like chrome plated manatees on Valium. The only benefit to seeing this on a motorcycle would be if you enjoy watching people suffer from road rash. Also, for the opening minutes of Knightriders, I couldn’t get my mind away from how logistically implausible it IS to effectively joust on a bike, let alone while wearing armor. And, for the first few minutes of the film, this is obvious. I’m fairly certain what ended up in the film may have been Ed Harris nearly laying down his bike with a girl on the back.
Here’s how.
Bill Davis (Ed Harris) is the leader of that troupe of performers I told you about. In fact, he’s more than that, he’s literally the “king,” and his girlfriend Linet (Amy Ingersoll) is the “queen.” The group lives by the ancient code of knightly chivalry, and Billy is so serious about it that he flagellates himself in the river every morning. I know that sounds like I’m saying “he farts in the water” but no - it means he whips himself in the back with a tree branch to keep his edge. You could say that Billy is a little intense, and that Linet is more than a bit put off by this. It becomes kind of funny in light of the fact that after his morning ritual of self-whipping and getting the stink eye from his queen, Billy puts on a suit of armor - including a gigantic foam rubber helmet, and hops on his bike.
If I ever meet Mr. Harris, I’m only going to ask about this scene, and whether I am right when I bet someone a hundred bucks he couldn’t see shit in that thing. Ed, did you really almost drop it but manage to keep it together for the take (because he would allow me to call him “Ed”)?
And he would say yes, and I would win some money.
Or maybe not, because the first time we see the art of motorcycle jousting, it’s actually a little scary. And by that I mean I feared for the actors’ lives. There is no way that is safe, smart or advisable, and the less-well shot scenes of combat are a little challenging to watch. Nonetheless, we learn that Billy’s troupe of fighters is under financial strain, the local police are trying to interfere with one of their shows, and everyone is a little weirded out by Billy’s “martyr king” act. He even says he’s had visions of a Black Bird, and cavalierly assumes it’s a portent of his own doom.
A violent run-in with the law splits the troupe into factions, with Billy’s nemesis Morgan (longtime Romero collaborator Tom Savini) wanting to split off on his own. The group has been offered a lucrative entertainment offer that Billy continues to turn down, due to his hyper-intense belief that the “lifestyle,” and not the money, is the point of what they do. Billy’s zeal is perhaps even a step beyond “evangelical,” and Harris is required to take the story on his back for most of the film. But a strong supporting cast and a pair of deceptively relevant subplots make for much more of a movie than I was expecting.
Before the end of the film, the quality of the bike combat improves, which is good. At the end of the day, this is a movie about people who swing axes at each other on motorbikes. There’s an expectation that comes with that, and I can’t accuse Knightriders of not delivering. I don’t know if there IS a such thing as too much motorcycle combat, but if that’s what you came for, you will leave fat and happy.
But this is also a movie about a patriarch at a crossroads, who takes on the burdens of his family without their necessarily understanding this. This is a movie about figuring out who you are, what your purpose is in life, and whether or not you’ll be worthy of it when you find it. There is nothing campy about Knightriders, unless you count the corny rubber suits. This is a straight up domestic drama that just happens to also be Nerds on Bikes. I found myself pretty well immersed in it to the point that I became fine with the costumes (that would again change by the third act - you’ll know it when you see it) and entirely focused on trying to figure out whether Billy was crazy, or crazy smart.
Knightriders is by no means Romero’s best known film, but it’s certainly one of his best. Not only is it a rare detour from horror, but it’s surprisingly satisfying in unexpected ways - despite being a bit overlong. But, on the upside, that allows time for a number of characters to complete some curiously compelling arcs. There’s a lot of good stuff here, which reminds me - watch for novelist Stephen King.
Yes, THAT Stephen King. He’s in there somewhere, eating a sandwich. As one does.