Motorcycle films race for title of greatest

American moviegoers have had a long love affair with the motorcycle. There is something about the adrenaline rush of a motorbike that has fascinated audiences for more than 50 years. Films responsible for popularizing bikes in America include a slew of drive-in movies from the 1960s and '70s and recent big-budget blockbusters.

10. Satan's Sadists (1969)

There were dozens of B-level biker flicks that were made in the 1960s and '70s, and the schlocky "Satan's Sadists" was one of the best of them.However, by no means is "Satan's Sadists" a great film. It has poor sound, little artistic value, a paper-thin story, offensive dialogue and exploitive violence. But it somehow rises to the level of being so bad it's good and is held in high regard by bikers and lovers of non-mainstream movies worldwide.

9. Hell's Angels on Wheels (1967)

"Hell's Angels on Wheels" is another B flick but has a superior production value and is more in the vein of harmless fun than "Satan's Sadists," which had four brutal murders in its first 30 minutes compared to the four fistfights in "Hell's Angels."The biggest reason the film stands out from other biker flicks of the era is that it starred Jack Nicholson, who would be launched into superstardom several years later by another biker movie.

8. The Mad Max Trilogy (1979-1985)

The "Mad Max" films are perhaps cinema's greatest love letter to automotive transportation and feature some of the most aggressive and high-octane chase sequences ever recorded on film.

The first film has the best biker action, as Max (played by Mel Gibson) battles it out with an outlaw motorcycle gang in a junk-filled, desolate, post-apocalyptic world that has been copied by many other films since.

7. On Any Sunday (1971)

There have been many great documentaries made about motorcycle racing, but "On Any Sunday" is perhaps the best.Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary, the film captures the dangerous and thrilling world of professional motorcycle racing and the lifestyles of the racers who risk life and limb for the sport.

6. The World's Fastest Indian (2005)

Motorcycle lovers around the world know the name Burt Monro, and "The World's Fastest Indian" does its best to make sure the rest of the world knows it, too.

The film chronicles the true-life adventures of Monro, who, while in his late 60s, used a jerry-rigged 1920 Indian motorcycle that he customized himself to set a class land-speed world record at the Utah Bonneville Salt Flats in 1967.Jeff Strickler of the Minneapolis Star Tribune wrote, "It should be mandatory viewing for anyone that ever said, 'I'm getting too old for this.'"

5. Electra Glide in Blue (1973)

"Electra Glide in Blue," stars Robert Blake as an Arizona motorcycle cop who likes to use a poster of "Easy Rider" for target practice, which is one reason the film was booed at the Cannes Film Festival and labeled as fascist.

But that is a knee-jerk reaction that fails to looker deeper into a highly stylized and complex film that challenges the audience's notions of heroes and villains.Variety wrote at the time of its release: "(Director James William Guercio) at one time played with the rock group of Frank Zappa and brings that ballad-like, terse feel of rock to this extremely well-played and mounted pic."

4. Mask (1985)

Biker flicks like "Satan's Sadists" and many others helped create the image of bikers as drug addicts, outlaws, rapists and murderers."Mask," which is about a severely deformed boy being raised by a single mother (Cher) who runs with a biker gang, does away with all those stereotypes.The main character, Rocky, has a hard time everywhere he goes because of his shocking appearance, but is fully accepted by his mother's biker gang, perhaps because they are outcasts in the world as well. The biker gang becomes Rocky's surrogate family and even shows up at his high school graduation to cheer him on."Mask" features an unforgettable performance by Cher and has a heart-wrenching ending that is sure to leave even the toughest of bikers wiping tears from their eyes.

3. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

While not exactly a biker film, "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" features some of the craziest motorcycle stunts in the history of cinema.

One of the most memorable stunts was Robert Patrick launching his police motorcycle off the top floor of an office complex, breaking though a window and crashing into a hovering helicopter before morphing into metallic liquid, entering the helicopter and telling the pilot, "Get out."

2. The Wild One (1953)

By today's standards, "The Wild One" does not seem scandalous or shocking, but in its day the film about two rival biker gangs that invade a small California town was considered such a threat to decent society that it was banned in the United Kingdom.The film made a star out of Marlon Brando. It also popularized the idea of youth rebellion before it even really existed and was the first to show Hollywood the unlimited potential of the teen market. It helped create the motorcycle as an image of rebellion and primed America's youth for rock and roll, which had not yet swept the nation -- the bikers listen to jazz in the film -- but was right around the corner. Sales of black leather jackets and motorcycles reportedly skyrocketed after the film's release.

1. Easy Rider (1969)

"Easy Rider" is the story of two pacifists who set out on their Harley-Davidsons looking for America but can't find it anywhere.

It was shot for around $350,000, and the film's financiers were expecting just another B-level biker flick from stars Peter Fonda, who also produced the film, and Dennis Hopper, who directed. What they got was a cultural phenomenon that grossed 10 times its budget and, like "The Wild One," became a rite of passage for America's youth. Along with "Bonnie and Clyde" and "The Graduate," "Easy Rider" is credited with opening up the Hollywood studios to giving over creative control to young auteur filmmakers, which paved the way for many directors that dominated the 1970s such as Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Martin Scorsese. "Easy Rider" is sometimes misidentified as a "hippie" film, but it lacked any of the idealism that was the foundation of the hippie movement and gave no clear answers to America's societal problems. The alienated Billy and Wyatt no more fit in at the hippie commune they visited than they did with the rural town folk that harassed them at a café. It's a bleak, downbeat story with a shocking ending that in many ways predicted the failure and dismemberment of the '60s counter culture. It's as if Hopper and Fonda, like Hunter S. Thompson two years later during a long weekend in Las Vegas, could see the wave breaking and rolling back. But the image of Hopper, Fonda and Jack Nicholson riding on Harleys across open landscape will always represent freedom and rebellion to the American moviegoer.

Here are 60 other notable films that feature motorcycles:

• No Limit (1935)
• Motorcycle Gang (1957)
• Motor Psycho (1965)
• The Wild Angels (1966)
• The Born Losers (1967)
• The Losers (1968)
• She Devils on Wheels (1968)
• Girl on a Motorcycle (aka Naked Under Leather) (1968)
• The Glory Stompers (1968)
• Savages From Hell (1968)
• The Angry Breed (1968)
• The Savage Seven (1968)
• Sisters In Leather (1969)
• The Cycle Savages (1969)
• Five the Hard Way (aka Sidehackers) (1969)
• Naked Angels (1969)
• Run Angel Run (1969)
• The Rebel Rousers (1970)
• Little Fauss and Big Halsy (1970)
• C.C. and Company (1970)
• Hell's Belles (1970)
• Angels Die Hard (1970)
• Hells Angels 69 (1970)
• Angel Unchained (1970)
• The Black Angels (aka Black Bikers From Hell) (1970)
• The Hard Ride (1971)
• Angels Hard As They Come (1971)
• Evel Knievel (1971)
• The Jesus Trip (aka Under Hot Leather) (1971)
• Billy Jack (1971)
• Chrome and Hot Leather (1971)
• Angels' Wild Women (aka Rough Riders) (1972)
• Bury Me An Angel (1972)
• Psychomania (1973)
• The Northfield Cemetery Massacre (1976)
• Hollywood Man (1976)
• Viva Kenivel (1977)
• Any Which Way But Loose (1978)
• Quadrophenia (1979)
• Knightriders (1981)
• The Loveless (1982)
• Hells Angels Forever (1983)
• Silver Dream Racer (1983)
• Hell Riders (1984)
• Black Rain (1989)
• I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle (1990)
• Masters of Menace (1990)
• Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man (1991)
• Chopper Chicks in Zombietown (1991)
• Stone Cold (1991)
• Beyond the Law (1992)
• Roadside Prophets (1992)
• Harley-Davidson: The American Motorcycle (1993)
• Running Cool (1993)
• Biker Dreams (1998)
• Me and Will (1999)
• The Motorcycle Diaries (2004)
• Faster (2003)
• Ghost Rider (2007)
• Wild Hogs (2007)