LOCKDOWN CHALLENGE: Hold a Motorcycle Movie Festival

Like many motorcyclists grounded by COVID-19, I find myself with the opportunity for guilt-free escapism by hosting our own front-room, biker-movie festival. I started making a list of worthy films to rent or buy over the weeks of lockdown ahead. Which motorcycling oriented feature films are currently available, given that all the shops are shut, and which are worth watching? After several weeks of lockdown, the list had grown to over 400 movies.

What qualifies a film to be included in a list of biker movies? Is it enough that the main protagonist is lured to a biker bar, like the vampire feeding haunt ‘La Tetilla del Diablo’ in ‘From Dusk till Dawn’ (1996)? What if the only riding to be seen in the movie is a short, 250cc-charged chase; the opening sequence for ‘Skyfall’ (2012) or the fight scene in ‘Gemini Man’ (2019)?

Even avoiding TV episodes, focusing on the big screen, the list of festival contenders had soon grown to over 400 titles.

The following is based on a ‘snapshot’ taken in April 2020, during the peak of the COVID-19 lockdown in the United Kingdom.

Ranking motorcycle movies

Movie ratings

Is it possible (or desirable) to produce a prioritised viewing and shopping list based on movie ratings that can be found on sites like the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)   , Rotten Tomatoes   or Amazon   ? Perhaps IMDb and Amazon ratings together would give consensus about which films are worth watching. However, for the 400 plus biker movies identified, there are very significant differences in the distributions of average ratings.

• Amazon voters tend to give a significantly higher rating than would be expected if the same group of people were voting on both sites.
• Average ratings on Amazon are centered around a high score of 4.5. The same films show a much greater spread in popularity according to IMDb.

It seems as though there are two distinct populations of film enthusiasts voting on the different platforms. We can only speculate why that might be the case. Perhaps voters on Amazon had recently bought the films themselves and are therefore pre-disposed towards giving their latest purchases higher votes compared to someone who may be recalling an earlier screening.

There is some agreement amongst the mainstream titles, which receive the highest number of votes on both platforms, and ‘Motocross Zombies from Hell’ is the lowest rated film on both IMDb and Amazon.

There are many discrepancies, however, with high-scoring films on one site receiving a low rating on the other. The two motorcycle films with the highest average rating, according to IMDb, are ‘Girl Gone Bad’ (2000) and ‘Redline America’ (2008). Both films scored 9 out of 10, out-gunning ‘The Great Escape’ (1963), ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ (2015) and ‘Akira’ (1988). Is this justified?

Number of votes

When comparing ratings, it is important to consider the absolute number of votes a film receives. Motorcycle films which receive the highest number of votes according to IMDb are dominated by mainstream, action movies. A notable exception is the 1988 benchmark Manga animation ‘Akira’ set in post-world war III Neo-Tokyo. If over 150 thousand people have, on average, given ‘Akira’ a rating of 8.5/10 then we can be pretty certain that this is a ‘good’ movie. (Of course, that isn’t to say that specific GS or Harley riders have the same values and would therefore agree with rating given by the population of IMDb users. After having watched it, I still struggle to explain what it is about.)

By comparison, the highly rated ‘Girl Gone Bad’ (2000) and ‘Redline America’ (2008) received only 21 and 9 votes respectively. Can we be sure that they would retain such high average ratings if these films were reviewed another five or ten thousand bikers (or IMDb site users)?

Weighted average

Intuitively, we should be cautious trusting ratings, good or bad, for films which have received few votes. Each new vote has the potential to move the average rating significantly upwards or downwards. The rating for a given movie may well fluctuate wildly until such time that it has received a ’large enough’ number of votes for it to settle and approach its ’true value’. Until then it is probably more reliable to consider that a movie is ‘average’ until enough votes have been gathered to prove otherwise. Average in this case would mean the average of all ratings for all motorcycle movies on our list. As more votes are added, we can give more weight to a films individual rating and allow it to move away from the safe, group average towards its own average score.

This is the idea behind the Bayesian weighted average   which is often used to rank movies, beers and other items based on on-line ratings. To calculate the weighted average, we define a threshold number of votes (m) that would start to give us confidence that the rating is believable. As the number of votes increases beyond m, more weight is given to the films individual rating.

The charts below show the average weights vs. number of votes for m = 0 and m = 200. At m = 0 (i.e. no threshold is applied and even small numbers of votes are allowed to influence rank), there is a cluster of films including ‘The Proud Rider’ (1971) which have a higher than average score. The IMDb average rating for our list of motorcycle movies is 5.65.

Let us suppose that, for our ranking purposes, every member of NAM would need to have voted for the score to have been considered significant and set m = 200. When the number of votes is below 200, the weighted average score collapses to the group mean. As the number of votes pass 200, the weighted averages spread out as we start to trust each film’s average score.

Now we have been able to prioritise movies, we need to know which are available for lockdown viewing.

Availability of motorcycle movies

Streaming services

At the time of writing, 150 motorcycle movies are available to buy or rent instantly on Amazon Prime, Apple TV or YouTube (Google Play) or watch with a subscription to Netflix and NowTV. There is a big difference in the number of biker movies found on each platform, however. If lockdown lasts many months, Amazon Prime and AppleTV are best placed to keep us served with a new biker movie every week. Netflix and NowTV each have only six of our titles available.

When it comes to buying or renting, median prices are competitive across all streaming services whether downloading in standard- or high-definition. There are a few exceptions (as indicated by the black circles in the boxplot   below). Expect to pay a little more for a recent title or a blockbuster.

DVDs

As of April 2020, 152 titles were listed as available to buy new on Amazon UK and the range of prices found shown below. The two most expensive films listed, ‘Call the Mesquiteers’ (1938) and ‘Killer Biker Chicks’ (2009), are priced at over £100!

Motorcycle movies - the list

The following table lists all of the motorcycle movies identified. In some cases, films may only feature riding or bikes for a few minutes. Weighted ratings, derived from IMDb scores, are provided for guidance and interest only. They do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of any individual motorcyclist or Northumbria Advanced Motorcyclists.

We have tried to present as comprehensive a list of biker movies as possible, without censorship. Some films reflect outdated attitudes and do not represent the values and diversity of Northumbria Advanced Motorcyclists.

The breakdown of films by genre is shown below. (Films may be assigned to multiple genres.)

Movie reel and Cinebox

Looking beyond the big screen, British Pathé   and British Film Institute   have preserved historic news reels and amateur cinefilm from Britain and abroad. There are numerous, fascinating motorcycle clips available to view free of charge including:

• St. Andrews Motors’ (Gallowgate, Newcastle upon Tyne) 1955 commission showing the Arthur Emerson Memorial Trial   from Wearhead
• Musical motorcycles   (Italy, 1961)
• Ice-track motorcycle racing   (Sweden, 1963)
• Motorcycle Ski Racing   (Austria, 1963)

In 1948, director Carl Theodor Dreyer made the cautionary ‘De nåede færgen’ (They Caught The Ferry).