"What’re you rebelling against, Johnny?" says dancing party girl Mildred to the moody, leather-clad biker boy memorably played by a young Marlon Brando. His famous answer? "Whaddya got?"
Such an insouciant toss-off may seem tame by today’s standards, but in director Laslo Benedek’s 1953 The Wild One (produced by Stanley Kramer), that type of reckless rebellion (without a cause) pre-Elvis, was a big deal. A very big deal. Indeed, the entire picture had enormous impact. The movie, based on a Harper’s Magazine story that itself was loosely based on a real-life incident involving a gang of bikers invading a small California town on a Fourth of July weekend, was viewed as so incendiary that the picture was banned in Great Britain until 1968. (Think how today mainstream news easily discusses the murder of San Francisco chapter Hell Angels president Mark "Papa" Guardado). Given how forced some of this movie feels today, it seems rather silly, but I love this picture -- from its slinky Leith Stevens score, to its dual versions of the alpha male black leather bad boy -- a stoic Brando and a boisterous Lee Marvin -- two cinematic geniuses stomping out the weaklings and marking their territory with inspired appetites (for destruction). 
Concerned citizens were frightened not only of its unresolved message but of its reckless, glamorous appeal. Long before the 1960s made biker movies a standard and sometimes silly subgenre of counterculture cinema, The Wild One -- with its wild hogs, swingin’ jazz score, "Go, Daddy-o" slang and slick black leather style (encased in the fuller body of a gorgeous, somewhat camp Brando, whose look remains timeless) -- was the biker movie. A precursor to the social upheavals that would occur a decade later in the tumultuous 1960s, The Wild One as occasionally goof-ball and somewhat preachy as it plays today, was a blast in the face to regular "square" society, revealing that the kids were not alright. Particularly the older (and boy do they look older), more experienced "kids" -- those scary, wild boys of the road roaring into your sleepy little town on two big powerful wheels. (Can you imagine that tall glass of menace Marvin plopping your little teenage daughter on the back of his hog? Jesus. Why didn't he roar into my town?)
In The Wild One, that town is the milquetoasty Wrightsville, in which Johnny Strabler (Brando), gang leader of the Black Rebels Motorcycle Club (so on the nose and so great...), decides to raise some hell after his gang steals a trophy from the motorcycle competition it was kicked out of. The townspeople are terrified (and, of course, titillated -- especially pretty Kathie Bleeker, played by Mary Murphy) and even the sheriff is unable to contain the problems. The situation escalates when a rival gang (The Beatles -- reportedly inspiring a name for that other famous group) led by Chino (a brilliant Marvin -- who comes off as the real deal here, laughing face, live-wire energy, striped shirt and all) drops into town, causing a fight with Johnny and his crew. Leather, rage, animalistic sexual urges -- "shiny, shiny, boots of leather, whiplash girl child in the dark..." -- oh, if only the movie could have gone that far.
And yet, it almost does go that far -- subverted underneath its cautionary tale simmered an infectious blast of souped up romanticism and erotic sado-masochism. Face it: these filmmakers knew their picture was a turn-on. The thugged-up gang may clash with the establishment, but who really wants the boring, scared squares to win? Brando, all disaffected bad-boy sexiness, does border on the unlikable side (though he is sympathetic) but the cops aren’t anyone we’d really side with either; in fact, the town’s sheriff is given such little respect, we wonder if the picture is criticizing the watered down suburban man (where's one-armed bad ass Bad Day at Black Rock's Spencer Tracy when you need him?).
So … who’s the "hero" here? Well, obviously Brando and Marvin are stealing the show (and many a viewer’s heart), they are the heroes -- they are the brutal, beautiful manifestation of all that specific, suburban unrest so many young people felt at the time. They're also visions of grubby glamour -- compelling kids to find kicks, danger, the open road and some hot leather jackets before such gear became like today's tattoos -- boring symbols of "rebellion." (You have to know what to wear to the revolution). As the movie proclaimed: "After a while you got to have fun. And if someone gets hurt -- that's just tough!"
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