Easy Rider

Easy Rider (1969) is Dennis Hopper's landmark road movie you can watch online on iFILM. Two bikers pull off a cocaine deal in California, stash the cash inside a fuel tank, and point their Harleys east — out to see what the country actually looks like from the saddle.

Wyatt, who rides under the name Captain America, and the jumpy, talkative Billy cross deserts, sleep around campfires, and pass through a hippie commune and a string of roadside towns. Along the way they pick up George Hanson, a hard-drinking small-town lawyer — the part that turned Jack Nicholson into a star. The deeper the three push into the rural South, the colder the welcome gets, until long hair and a free-and-easy look start to feel like a death sentence.

Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper wrote the script and played the leads; Fonda produced, and Hopper directed for the first time. Shot on a shoestring and cut to a rock soundtrack from Steppenwolf, The Byrds and Jimi Hendrix, it earned far more than anyone expected and pushed Hollywood to start backing young filmmakers. The Library of Congress later added it to the National Film Registry as a touchstone of late-sixties American cinema. Stream Easy Rider (1969) online on iFILM.