Hells Angels sue Disney over film plans for 'Wild Hogs'

There is only one's Hells Angels.

So at any rate believes the legendary California-based motorcycle club, which is suing Walt Disney for using the group's logo and trademarked name in a film which has not even started production.

The movie in question is Wild Hogs, starring John Travolta and Tim Allen, whose filming is due to start this autumn, for release sometime in 2007.

Disney describes it as a story about a group of budding motorcyclists who set out on a road trip, on which they run into a chapter of the Hells Angels.

The real Hells Angels however say that characters in the film are specifically identified as its members, wearing the organisation's famous death's head logo.

They have accused Disney of not providing them with a copy of the Wild Hogs screenplay.

A Disney spokesman yesterday responded by dismissing the legal action as "without merit." The Hells Angels Motorcycle Corporation (HAMC) was founded in Fontana, California 1948, billing itself as "a motorcycle enthusiasts' club," and now has chapters all over the world.

The origins of the name are debatable.

It first appeared in a 1930 movie of that name, directed by Howard Hughes, and starring Jean Harlow.

Others however contend that it was set up by former members of the 'Hells' Angels' B-17 bomber group of World War II, anxious to find new excitement once the fighting had ended.

Today, the Angels are an indelible symbol of a biker counterculture, existing within, yet at the same time apart from, American society, its riders and their ferocious-looking machines part of the legend of the American road.

The dust-up with Disney is only the latest of many cases where the Hells Angels have crossed paths with the US entertainment industry.

The most notorious occasion of course was the 1969 Altamont concert starring the Rolling Stones and Jefferson Airplane, where the Angels had been hired for crowd security.

A scuffle developed while the Stones were playing 'Under my thumb' and in the melee a spectator was stabbed to death by an Angel called Alan Passaro.

He was acquitted on the grounds of self defence, and the Angels later said that the violence only began when elements in the crowd began to vandalise their bikes.

Less controversially, the Angels have featured in several Hollywood movies.

Among the better known of them is 'Hells Angels on Wheels,' made in 1967 with Jack Nicholson and members of the Oakland chapter of HAMC.

At about that time, Hunter Thompson - who died last year - travelled with the Angels and recounted his adventures in the book 'Hells Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, that made his name as the marquee counterculture journalist of his era.

The Angels also were closely identified with the Grateful Dead, an association chronicled by Tom Wolfe in 'The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.' But there has always been a darker side to the organisation.

In the US and Canada in particular, it has been linked with crime and racketeering - most recently in the production and distribution of methamphetamine, the drug that is now the scourge of rural and small town America.

HAMC rejects such charges, saying that any such activities are the work of individual members, not the group as a whole.

In the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario however, the Angels have been accused of widespread involvement in organised crime.

- INDEPENDENT