The idea of having a troupe of performers stage King Arthur-style Renaissance Fair dramas on motorcycles is a lot less cool now than it must have seemed – to writer/director George A. Romero, at least – in 1981. Nonetheless, if one can get past the somewhat silly premise, as well as a lot of filler that helps pad the film out to an unreasonable 144 minutes, there’s some substance to Knightriders, Romero’s story about the men who follow Billy (Ed Harris), a self-styled Arthur who believes in living a fantasy life free of interference from hick cops and exploitative agents. Billy exists in his own world, sleeping nude in the woods with maid Linet (Amy Ingersoll), turning down autograph requests from little kids (so they don’t get the idea he’s some flashy celeb like Evel Knievel), and risking serious bodily harm by jousting on his steel horse with challenger-to-the-throne Morgan (Tom Savini). Romero’s story is at once too protracted and yet, in the case of Morgan’s dalliance with a greedy promoter who wants him to be the star attraction, rushed to the point of feeling tossed-off. Still, Harris embodies his character with such conviction that the character’s struggle to retain the integrity of his dream ultimately exudes a modest poignancy that’s amplified by the sense that Romero – another renegade trying to fulfill his own cinematic visions, with the help of friends, on the outskirts of the corrupting corporate mainstream – sees more than a bit of himself in Billy.
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