Why Halloween ghouls ride motorcycles

Motorcycle riding ghouls come out for Halloween.

 What do motorcycles have to do with creepy monsters, ghostly ghouls, flaming skeletons, and living death? Quite a lot, actually, on Halloween. 

It used to be "Halloween Night," but the celebration of doom is now so popular in the United States that October is becoming Halloween Month. 

And motorcycles are part of the fun. 

The best explanation I've read of this phenomenon is a 2016 piece by J. Joshua Placa on Motorcycle.com 

"Most motorcyclists I know have a special fondness for Halloween and all its imagery," he wrote. 

"Maybe it’s a macabre coping mechanism that helps us deal with the grim side of the road. There is just something about death that bikers like to defy. Perhaps it’s just part of our rebel spirit. We’re going to ride until we die, and maybe a couple of days after."

Dressing in studded leather adorned with skulls and cross bones, and incorporating the Grim Reaper into custom motorcycle paint jobs, certainly has meaning, Placa noted.

Intended to be menacing, the everyday "biker" leather and patches get-up is scary enough to wear by itself on any Halloween. So, Placa confides, he just goes as himself.

Asked where in Heaven's name he got his costume, he claims he replied "Heaven's got nothing to do with it."

There have been plenty of horror movies featuring evil motorcycle riders. I can't stand to watch them, but Bryan Wood listed 10 creepy ones for RideApart in 2016. Most you won't ever have heard of ("Chopper Chicks in Zombie Town").

Of the better-known "Ghost Rider" movies he writes:

"These movies don't have a lot of horror in them, but they are just like Halloween candy in that they are easy to consume, and you may regret it later."

Where did all this start? I found a suitably horrifying 1930s photo of a skull and motorcycle on the Motorcycle Timeline blog. The Northampton Pirates Motorcycle Club had it as a centerpiece on the table at its annual dinner way back then.

It stands to reason that vintage motorcycles would be better at being haunted than new motorcycles. I wrote how my retro 1999 Royal Enfield Bullet is, yes, haunted. The proof is a gearbox oil filler bolt that could not be loosened, even with brute force, that subsequently unscrewed all by itself.

I'll tell that story around the campfire sometime. Nothing like a Phantom Fastener to throw a chill up your spine.

It also seems to me that visiting ghost towns or abandoned highways would be a fine activity on a motorcycle.

Halloween is a deal at Rickety Crickett Brewing, just off historic Route 66 in Kingman, Arizona. The Halloween Costume Party is at 11 p.m. tonight, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024 at the restaurant and craft brewery at 532 Beale St.

Just look for the sign of the crazed mechanical man riding his motorcycle.

If you missed it there's no need to wait until next Halloween. He's there every day of the year.

Doomed to ride, apparently, in the wrong direction.

STOP praising motorcycles, OK?

"The Rider" is a new film with an old mission: Explain motorcycles. 

If motorcycle riding is so great, why do we need to keep saying so?

If motorcycles are so great, it ought to be self evident, right?

I'm as guilty as anybody. I love riding my old Royal Enfield, and everyone I know is tired of hearing me say it.

Maybe it's time to just let it go. It's getting a little old.

And yet, excruciatingly, there's now a NEW way of praising motorcycles:

Step One: Admit they're a terrible thing, and people are crazy to ride them.

Step Two: Argue that the fact people still adore them proves they are, despite all evidence, fantastic.

Gimmie a break.

What finally broke me down is encountering the short film "The Rider" on The Vintagent website.

You can watch it there.

The film opens with director Roberto Serrini musing that "motorcycles are the worst."

They're murderous.

"I can't think of another vehicle in which YOU are the fuselage," Serrini says.

"They're horrible, horrible machines. So...why?" he asks.

Why ride them? Why praise them?

The film's full title is "The Rider; Not WHO, but WHY?"

The film goes on to present testimony from adoring BMW riders about how superb riding is.

It's "presented by BMW," on the occasion of its 100th anniversary. The film tries to soft-pedal the brand message in favor of letting selected riders explain why they ride.

Other motorcycles are mentioned, but there is no doubt left that BMWs are special.

The specific reasons the featured riders give for riding motorcycles break little new ground. But "The Rider" is a fun, funny, gorgeously shot short film. You'll enjoy it.

One of the reasons you will enjoy it is that, having read this far, you obviously think motorcycles are marvelous.

OF COURSE they are.

"The Rider" doesn't cheat us. It answers the question "why" with one phrase: "Persuit of absolute perfection."

Yeah. It's spelled, on screen, as "persuit" instead of "pursuit." I don't know why.

Give it a watch.

Motorcycles mix with musical comedy in 1935 film

Actor/musician/comedian George Formby riding the TT course.

I can't see whether there are any Royal Enfield motorcycles in the 1935 movie "No Limit." The riding action on the Isle of Man TT course is too fast for me to tell.

But 1935 is certainly a classic year for all British motorcycles, and the Isle of Man course is the perfect setting, even if the movie's special effects are occasionally lame.

That's OK, because this is neither documentary nor drama. It's musical comedy of the silliest kind, featuring Britain's George Formby and his ukulele.

A talented musician, his tinny songs will remind Americans of Tiny Tim. It's cringe-worthy, especially the one song in "No Limit" that Formby delivers while in black face.

An appreciation by Corinna Mantlo on The Vintagent site alerted me that Formby had made a movie based on the TT races.

"An early George Formby film and probably his best," she writes.

You can watch it for free on The Vintagent's Vimeo channel.

Here's a highlights film from YouTube:

Formby would go on to strum Britons into better moods during World War II. In one film he gets to punch "Hitler" in the nose. Some have pointed out that these sort of antics would have done a lot more to raise morale than a realistic movie about how the war was going in 1943.

Queen Elizabeth is said to be a Formby fan. In general, I'm not.

It doesn't help that only the sight-gags in "No Limit" really work for me. The "jokes" are otherwise slow-paced and situations drag on too long, perhaps fortunately, since it gives me time to translate Formby's British accent in my mind.

But you've got to see "No Limit" for the motorcycle action. Yes, some is obviously fake, but that's part of the fun. You always know this is a joke; no one is really going to get killed.

So relax and try to imagine whether you could ride well enough at that speed to get through the corner. I certainly can't imagine doing it.

If you've read much about the historic TT race you'll recognize most of those corners. They're all hairy, and the crash-filled movie shows you why.

Naturally, our hero survives to get a kiss from his mother at the end of the race. He gets "the girl" too. Not giving anything away here: you always knew he would.

The movie has plenty of fans. A statue of Formby, in character wearing motorcycle goggles, is on a street in Douglas, Isle of Man.

Our hero on the Isle of Man.
(Andrew Abbott Photo)

Royal Enfields, Rockers, Leather Boys and the novelist

Royal Enfield Continental GT cafe racers lined up at the Ace Cafe London
when the then new model was introduced to the press in September, 2013.

If Royal Enfield motorcycles didn't create the phenomena of the Ace Cafe, Rockers and leather boys in 1960s Britain, they certainly played a role in how those times are remembered.

Royal Enfield was there, and on the front page, too (Suicide Club!).

Royal Enfield, today based in India, continues to celebrate that Britain of the '60s with its Continental GT cafe racer and its coming 650cc parallel-twin models.

The appearance and even the cylinder layout of the new Royal Enfield models will reflect the famous British motorcycles that propelled leather-clad youth to real (and fictional) glory in that now long-ago time.

I'm old enough to remember 1964. Acclaimed novelist Rachel Kushner — born in 1968 — is not, but she feels herself so a part of those days that she has written an essay entitled "Finding Yourself in Film" in the June 4, 2018 New Yorker.

It's the 1964 movie "The Leather Boys" that has gotten under her skin.

For Kushner (no relation to Jared Kushner), the movie suggests a "cool" image of her once beatnik parents, living in London in 1965. Her father rode a modified Vincent Black Shadow.

"This life my parents lived took place before I was born. I can't see it, but I can watch 'The Leather Boys" with them," she writes.

Opening scene from 1964 movie "The Leather Boys."

Kushner is no idle dreamer. She is a motorcyclist. Her website shows a photo of her with her vintage Ducati. She has had her crash, too, thrown from a Ninja at 130 mph on Highway 1 in Baja, according to a New Yorker profile of her by Dana Goodyear.

"I mention this history," Goodyear writes in the profile, "because it is Kushner's nightmare to be thought of as a dilettante — someone who rode on the back..."

So Kushner's love for "The Leather Boys" is genuine, and informed. And, indeed, her essay earned the applause of at least one person with a claim to know.

"I was a young leather boy who frequented the Ace and Busy Bee cafes back in the day and my fellow Rockers and I took part in some of the movie scenes," wrote Mike Ryan, now a Californian, in a letter-to-the-editor in the June 25, 2018 New Yorker.

You can watch "The Leather Boys" on YouTube and see if it matches your memories or perhaps your hopes for the lifestyle you will lead when you ride your Royal Enfield motorcycle.

Personally? For some reason I just can't make myself watch the film through. The actors are so young and vulnerable. Never mind that motorcycling is dangerous: don't these young people realize that all those cigarettes are bad for them?

Unlike Kushner, I am an admitted dilettante, satisfied to ride my Royal Enfield at a very uncool 42 mph. The bat-out-of-hell Rockers in the movie exhibit more skill than I'll ever possess.

But wait just a darn minute. The New Yorker seems to be unsure what to make of Kushner's essay. In the print magazine her article is categorized as about — what? —  "Parenting."

What is with that?

The reason becomes obvious at the end of Kushner's essay, where her father points out that his Vincent Black Shadow had one very important modification indeed.

Life, even in 1964, wasn't all about the Ton, black leather, sex and cigarettes. Check out the essay and see what I mean.

Ginger Rogers gets a ride in a motorcycle sidecar

"Ginger Learns About Love — On a Motorcycle." She's Ginger Rogers. The motorcycle rider is leading man Joel McCrea. The movie is "Primrose Path."

According to the 1940 ad I spotted in The Miami Herald, the film is "The story of a girl who didn't know a thing about men — and a mother who knew too much. But one little osculation in a motorcycle rumble seat turns her from a tomboy into a glamour girl..."

I guess it was the word "osculation" that got me. It means "kiss."

Ginger Rogers learns about
love, on a motorcycle.

One source says the motorcycle is a Harley-Davidson Model J. The "rumble seat" is actually a sidecar.

You can see the motorcycle outfit and a bit of "Primrose Path" on YouTube.

Later in the movie McCrea shows off on the motorcycle, nearly killing himself and his passenger and finally attracting the attention of the police.

"Cameron," author of The Blonde at the Film blog, provides background information on "The Primrose Path." She had access to unpublished interviews McCrea's son Peter conducted with the star.

McCrea had fun riding the motorcycle around Monterey and Carmel, where location shots were made, Cameron reports.

Despite the comedic ride on the motorcycle, "Primrose Path" is Roger's first real foray into drama. But it is probably better known as the movie she dyed her blonde hair brunette to do.

She also supposedly did the film without make-up (until she's seen to apply it in the movie). But even in the early scenes it's hard to believe anyone is naturally so pretty.

Rogers would win an Oscar for Best Actress for her next film, but there are those who think she should have gotten it for "Primrose Path."

Unfortunately there are no Royal Enfields in the film. I recommend it anyway.

Joe McCrea takes Ginger Rogers for a wild ride in a sidecar.
Photo montage from The Blonde at the Film blog.