Knightriders

Billy (a young Ed Harris) is the “king” of a motorcyclist/cosplayer troupe who put on traveling jousting shows, performed on motorcycles, at the local Renaissance Fairs. As their popularity grows, the siren call of money creates rifts in the tightly knit group, and envious eyes turn towards Billy’s crown…

Knightriders is an often overlooked entry in George Romero’s oeuvre, somewhat understandably too, and not just because Romero is generally more well-known for zombies movies, but also because Knightriders just isn’t that good. It’s a noble failure, interesting, ambitious, and definitely has something to say, but still… it’s not that good.

This is partially the poster’s fault, which gives a “Medieval Mad Max” expectation before you even sit down to watch, only for the film’s story to turn out to be more like: “The Mountainous Molehills of Renn Faire Drama.”

Set in the olden times of isolation, long before the internet and cable linked us all, as the dog-eared days of the 70s slump over into the beginnings of the 80s, a time when a gaggle of smelly weirdos—dirty feet Hippie dregs turned slat-ribbed Carnies—could roll into a small town, put on a parade of nothing but theatre kids, shitty somersaults, and beat-up trucks, inviting everyone to some half-ass circus on the far edge of town, and people would go, because… what else are they going to do?

Weirdly feeling like a cross between the films The Blood of Heroes and Darkon, Knightriders is about how all things have a season. It’s also a denial of the Flower Children’s ignoble end, a rejection of how their little revolution was revealed to be nothing but a self-indulgent fantasy tossed aside for the 80’s naked greed and neon-soaked promise of wealth and excess. It’s an examination of the difficulties brought on by the need to create something outside the status quo, a plea to remember the noble aspirations of the Artist, the belief that the act of creation alone is worth sacrificing all, to bleed yourself dry if need be, even if no one cares or notices.

Is this a somewhat privileged and naive idea?

Oh yeah.

The fact that, in the end, a bloody stranger shows up to an elementary school to wordlessly give a kid a sword, a child he doesn’t even really know, and it’s portrayed as an inspirational ‘passing of the torch’ moment, is a good microcosm of how generally out of date this forty year old film is.

Mostly though, Knightriders is about how art and commerce are uneasy bedfellows, and that’s pretty timeless. No matter how much more money may make an artist’s life easier, at least in theory, no amount will ever change the fact that juggling your artistic passion, your vision, and your ambition against the expectations and demands of a capitalistic society is a sisyphean effort, something Romero has struggled with his whole career.

Ultimately, despite being a general failure, Knightriders is a reminder to all that, for artists, the imaginary worlds they create are very much real, not in a Narnia sense (at least… not always), as in something real that can be found at the end of a passage at the back of your closet, but in the sense that the pursuit itself is a life-giving force, the raison d'etre, and that it can be hard to give that shit up, even when you might need to in order to save your own life.

For some… it’s impossible.

All that having been said, regardless of anything else, the fact that this film basically ends with a cop getting the shit kicked out of him, all while a crowd of people cheer, automatically makes it a great movie.