9/14/07: The Peace Killers (1971)Our friends often ask when we’re going to get around to reviewing
Massacre at Central High. Actually, they ask if we’ve gotten around to reviewing
Massacre at Central High. It would be nice if we knew anyone who ever bothered to read this site. Anyway, our response to these clearly fictitious friends is that we won’t bother with
Massacre at Central High until we’ve reviewed
The Peace Killers—so here goes that excuse.
The film opens with a peace symbol superimposed over a beautiful morning view. Then a twanging banjo cracks up the graphic and we see the full title:
The Peace Killers. The banjo also wakes up three bikers who look more like Jethro Tull’s road crew. They’re sleeping out in the wonderful wilderness where filmmakers don’t have to build sets. As the opening credits play, we see the trio joining their fellow Death Row gang members in outrunning the local cops. It’s a merry chase that ends with the clever dropping of a smoke bomb.
Then we see a clean-cut longhair getting out of a van at one of those desert gas stations that you always find in biker films. There must’ve been a chain of them back in the ’70s. Jeff—played by Michael Ontkean, one of the few leads in the film who didn’t go on to become a soap star—is out with his sister Kristy to pick up some supplies. They live in a commune about an hour away. The old storeowner pleasantly kids the two about “all those orgies” they must have out there.
Those original three bikers pull up to the store for gas, and Jeff freaks out and tells the storeowner to hide Kristy. Our first thought is that Jeff is just plain intolerant. As it turns out, though, he recognizes the trio as Death Row bikers, and Kristy is hiding out from their evil leader Rebel. That’s the guy who dropped the smoke bomb. His bike is adorned with the Confederate flag. We thought that was another sign of tolerance, but now we’re sorting out our heroes and villains.
Jeff isn’t so heroic that he doesn’t try sneaking his sister out within plain view of the bikers. The siblings get away, and the old storekeeper won’t tell the bikers where Kristy is staying. They strangle the old man for a while, but then decide to check in with Rebel before killing anyone.
Meanwhile, Kristy is telling Jeff how terrified she is that Rebel is going to come after her for fleeing the Death Row gang. This sets up a voyeuristic flashback of a woman being raped while Kristy hugs Rebel and drinks a Coors. She feels bad about all that stuff now. The van pulls up to the commune, where everyone is celebrating their freedom by sitting around in the nude. That old
storekeeper may have been on to something when he was joking about those orgies. The hippies are gathered around their leader. He’s named Alex, but sure looks a lot like Jesus Christ—especially in his nice white robe.
Alex is telling his followers that “words distort so much.” See, that’s a good time to start doubting whatever your guru is about to say. The speech is typical free-love boilerplate, with Alex dismissing how “all of us have been taught to seek the love of one person.” Alex is preaching the Gospel of
Brad Pitt.
Rebel’s got Death Row on the move and after Kristy. For some reason, the gang’s lost about 15 of its members between now and the opening credits. They’ve gained a soundtrack, though, with a lady singing about a bad man who doesn’t know love and has been out in the sun so long that he’s gone quite mad. We’re pretty sure she’s singing about Rebel, but we wouldn’t argue if Alex made a claim there.
Rebel tortures the old storekeeper with a No. 2 pencil, and then has to use a flare. That’s why you’re always supposed to bring two of those pencils. There’s a neat cut between the flare to Alex working with a blowtorch in his metal shop. He’s changed out of his white robe and into a heavy work shirt. Alex is more intelligent than we thought.
Kristy—who seems to be his girlfriend, for whatever that’s worth in a commune—comes in and tells Alex that some violent bikers will probably come visiting real soon. He calls a meeting where he assures everyone that the bikers “aren’t savages” and that the hippies can “reason with them.”
“When they see the changes that Kristy has gone through here,” Alex adds, “they’re going to see that she belongs here, and they’ll leave.”
Jeff disagrees, and instantly wins the conversation as Rebel comes crashing into the room on his motorcycle. Jeff tells Kristy to go hide in the barn. That’s a smart move, especially since Kristy’s first instinct was to help Rebel after he fell off his bike. The entire Death Row gang starts beating on the hippies. The only one who fights back is this one tough hippie chick. Alex walks around the room like he’s above all the commotion. This catches Rebel’s attention, and he calms things down so he and Alex can have a conversation:
“I think you better leave,” says Alex.
“I think you better shut up!”
Rebel goes on for a while about the gang’s evil plans for Kristy. Meanwhile, this nerdy biker named Gadget pulls out a gun and threatens to rape the one tough hippie chick. She stands up to the creep, which gives Jeff the opportunity to get a knife and start sneaking up on Gadget. Then that idiot Alex shouts out a warning to Gadget, and Jeff gets shot in the arm.
“We can’t let ourselves be like them,” says Alex. For example, Jeff has been badly wounded. Gadget is just fine.
“You goddamn hippies make me sick,” says Rebel. “You’re not peaceful. You’re just yellow.” The next shot is Alex being mounted to the big metal peace symbol that hangs over the entrance to the commune. “Maybe he’s got some hammer and nails we can borrow,” says a biker who doesn’t want things to get too subtle.
The gang members start stoning Alex. That’s obviously more fun than looking around the commune for Kristy, who simply has no idea how to make a discreet getaway. She goes charging out of the barn on a horse, which leads to a chase so boring that Kristy even stops to lay down for a while. The bikers finally catch her and take off to commence their evil plans.
Meanwhile, back at the commune, the tough hippie gal is complaining that she’s called the cops, and here’s their response: “We don’t give a goddamn about you longhaired freaks. If you wipe each other out, you’ll be doing us a favor.”
Okay, so that’s also where a large part of the entertainment value is for us. If we were the local cops, we’d get more involved. We’d at least remember how we chased the gang around back during the opening credits.
Alex is still convinced that Kristy will be just fine. He tells Jeff not to play the biker’s game. “I can’t,” replies Jeff. “As long as you’re the referee, I have to lose, don’t I?” Alex doesn’t have a smart reply to that.
Now it’s night, and the members of Death Row have stopped at a bar. They’re busy taunting Gadget for not being able to crush a beer can. This allows Kristy to crawl away and get picked up by another biker gang. “Faaar out,” says the Amazonian black babe dolled up in blacker leather. “You know what we found ourselves? A real live member of Death Row, all tied up and left here for us.”
No, Kristy hasn’t been found by the She-Devils on Wheels. It’s the sexually and racially diverse members of the Screaming Banshees. Their leader is the Black Widow, and she’s still pissed about this scar on her face that Rebel and his gang gave her. Actually, the scar’s kind of cute, but it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to mention that to her as an opening line.
“Take her or leave her,” say a male Banshee, “but let’s split.” The token Asian biker chick decides that Kristy needs help. Unfortunately, they can’t think of any better idea than bringing Kristy back to the commune. Alex reassures Kristy that he’s still prepared to reason with Rebel. The Black Widow explains that they need to kill those mad dogs. Jeff convinces the Banshees to hang around, even though Alex and Kristy think it’s a bad idea. The only hippie who supports Jeff is that one tough gal. “I’ve got a lot of things I want to do,” she says. We should’ve really taken note of her name.
This, incidentally, is a good time to ask whose smart idea it was to cut Alex down from the peace symbol.
As it turns out, Jeff’s fellow hippies finally decide to prepare for war. There’s a nice montage as they sharpen up the pitchforks and assemble a few spears. That blacksmith shack gets turned into an armory. There’s also a great shot of a longhaired guy at the grindstone sharpening the edges of a small metal peace symbol.
Alex goes for a walk while that lady comes back on the soundtrack. Now she’s singing about how there’s a white dove circling overhead, and if some fool tries to shoot it dead, should you try and grab the gun? Is it time for defending, or should you walk away?
This is where we learn the difference between a commune and a kibbutz.
Alex keeps walking. He sees the Death Row gang roaring toward the commune, but doesn’t warn anyone. The bikers find Kristy alone in a field. At this point, Kristy is losing our sympathy—but it turns out that she’s offered herself as bait, and the hippies have rigged up some netting to knock the bikers off their motorcycles. That’s a good twist.
Rebel follows Kristy, and tries that trick again where he rides his bike into a building. This time, the hippies are all waiting to beat him into the dirt. Gadget gets panicky, pulls his gun, and shoots some guy. Then he shoots the Black Widow in the face. She’s dead, and it’s just as well. There’s no way that scar was going to look cute.
The mayhem continues, and it takes a while before the hippies accept that they have to become homicidal. Until then, the action’s more like when the bikers invade the mall in the original
Dawn of the Dead. Gadget gets a pitchfork to the gut, and a
nice blonde gal uses that sharpened peace symbol on a biker’s head. Things start to look good for the hippies.
Alex, of course, has been busy sitting under a tree. Then he sees Kristy running by with Rebel in hot pursuit. Alex starts to run after them. Is he racing to rap with Rebel? No, it seems Alex has decided to defend that white dove and give Rebel a beating. Alex is very fortunate that several of his close friends have already been rapping Rebel in the head with large objects. This allows the hippie to get the upper hand and nearly strangle Rebel to death—but Kristy intervenes before anything can happen that’s conclusive.
We cut to a later time when the cops have taken an interest and come out to clean up the mess. A detective is strolling around with a smug smile. He sees the sharpened peace symbol and tosses it to Alex. Sadly, the peace symbol doesn’t sever Alex’s fingers like that boomerang did to that Arte Johnson-looking weasel in
The Road Warrior. Alex has to squeeze the peace symbol really tight to finally get some dramatic blood on his hands. You’d think he’d already have some of Rebel’s blood on his hands, but Alex hits like a hippie.
The End, and you know the best thing about
The Peace Killers? It’s timeless, as proven this week by the fine
Zombietime site. Let’s close with a freshly iconic image from
Zombie’s coverage of the 9/11 Truth March in San Francisco:
As the site’s caption explains, “Please don’t hurt Peace. Because Peace is sad.”
Make it your own: The Peace Killers used to be available on VHS, but it’s pretty tough to find now. It’s not on DVD, either. Why else would we have gone over the entire plot? We don’t even want to know the word count on this one.
