Unsolicited Recommendation: Knightriders (1981)
I was listening to a recent episode of The Ringer Fantasy Football Show1 that concluded with a riff about “motorcycle jousting” and the untold riches the hosts would make with this highly novel, sure-to-be lucrative business idea. It was then I was activated Manchurian Candidate-style not as an assassin, but as a guy who gave Knightriders the full five stars on Letterboxd. Not everyone knows the deep lore.
Director George Romero is best known for his seminal zombie movies, but my favourite of his is this one, the shaggy, dorky, sincere seventies-hangover epic about rival factions of motorcycle jousters in a travelling Ren Faire. It stars Ed Harris (!) and Tom Savini (!!!), and is chiefly concerned with the power of kayfabe and the ethics of selling out. This movie fucking rocks, and someone should put it back in print in North America (Arrow UK has a nice-looking Blu if that’s the kind of thing you’re into). For now, it’s streaming in a few of the usual places and also just fully on YouTube.
1 It’s a testament to to quality of the show and the chemistry between the hosts that I, a football-agnostic Canadian who has never been in a serious fantasy league in his life, enjoy it so much.