Knightriders (1981)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1981
	Director: George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead, Land of the Dead)
	Actors: Ed Harris (A History of Violence, The Truman Show, The Abyss), Gary Lahti, Tom Savini (From Dusk Till Dawn), Ken Foree (The Devil's Rejects)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Drama, Action
	Conditions of visioning: 15.10.2014, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: The daily routine of a troupe of renaissance fair and motorcycle jousting led by Billy (Harris).
Review: I had actually never seen a movie by Romero which is not a zombie one, although The Crazies has been in my Amazon basket for a while now, and I am always looking for a Blu-ray edition of Martin. Thus I couldn't really guess if he could do well anything else than showing people eating each other and speaking out against our society of mass consuming like he brilliantly did in Dawn of the Dead in particular. Now I know that he can. The British edition by Arrow (with the newly created poster shown below) is exemplar in many aspects: the image quality that looks very poor in the first minutes actually stabilizes to a pretty good level, the sound is muffled but I guess due to the original poor recording techniques, you get a Blu-ray and DVD version, a commentary by the director, recent interviews by three main actors and to top it an informative booklet thick with original movie still pictures. The story is intriguing: this guy Billy (first major role for Ed Harris, magnificent) is the true king of a troupe that have in common that they want to live by the honor rules of  medieval times, which sets them apart from other renaissance fairs and motorbike stunt groups. The juxtaposition is also striking: renaissance fair (which I learned are popular in the USA and not only in Germany, like the renowned Kaltenberger Ritterturnier near Munich) and guys in costumes fighting for honor...but riding motorbikes instead of horses! I wondered for a while if Romero didn't use horses for logistic reasons (it is easier to handle bikes) but in the end I think he did it on purpose, to show the troupe under another light than the usual hippy one. What starts like a B-movie with cheap costumes (reminding of the worst of the Italian post-nuke of the 80's, like 2019 After the Fall of New York) slowly reveals complex characters that fight for their ideas. And the cheap aspect of the bikes tuning is fully justified by the practicality of their use as both stunt AND show instruments. Still you have to be in the right state of mind to watch Knightriders, and 2h30 could feel very long for this kind of movie, but is not, thanks to the great ability by Romero to tell an interesting story played by convincing actors. Ed Harris really seems invested by his character and delivers towards the end a performance better than anything I have seen him do, actually an actor performance as I rarely see in any movie. The interviews on the Blu-ray, especially the one of Patricia Tallman who plays Julie, shed a light on the profound meaning of the movie, very personal for George Romero: the conflict between the Art you wish to do / values you want to convey, and the job you have to keep to pay your bills. This is very well summarized in the speech by the character Bagman: "You see, the way I see it is this: You got two separate fights. The one for truth and justice and the American way of life and all that. That's gotta take a backseat to the one for staying alive. You gotta stay alive! Man, you can have the most beautiful ideals in the whole world, but if you die, your ideals are gonna die with you! The important thing is we gotta stay together, we gotta keep the troupe together. And if keeping the troupe going means that we have to take some of this promoter's money, then I say let's take it and get some sleep!". It is known that Romero has always fought against the studios to be able to have artistic freedom, and that he had to deliver commercial products like Land of the Dead to be then able to produce movies of his own, like Diary of the Dead. Unfortunately because of those conflicts, he is having a hard time producing personal movies in the vein of Knightriders, and that is a big loss for Cinema as an Art. I was tempted to rate it 9/10, but I found the bike stunts too confused to grant the movie this mark.
Rating: 8 /10