After THE BRADY BUNCH and before BAYWATCH, THE PEACE KILLERS "ride to love" and "ride to kill!" on Blu-ray from Scorpion Releasing.

The Death Row biker gang – lead by Confederate regalia-wearing Reb (ONE LIFE TO LIVE's Clint Richie) and including scrawny gun-toting Gadget (stuntman Gary Morgan, LOGAN'S RUN), ornery Cowboy (John Raymond Taylor, ANGELS HARD AS THEY COME), hulking Whitey (Jon Hill, MODEL SHOP), and bra-stealing horndog Snatch (Nino Candido) – rolls into the Arizona hills and by chance a general store where they spot Reb's old lady Kristen (THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS' Jess Walton) who fled the gang and joined up with her brother Jeff (TWIN PEAKS' Michael Ontkean) and a peace-loving hippie commune run by guru Alex (Paul Prokop, DREAM NO EVIL). Having seen what the gang has done to other women who have tried to run out on them, Kristen is afraid of the same fate. Alex truly believes they can have a peaceful confrontation with the gang, but you know the film's title… After a siege on the farm where Alex is crucified on a giant peace sign and Kristy kidnapped and dosed with LSD, Jeff takes off on his own to find her. Kristy is rescued, however, by the rival gang of butch Black Widow (Lavelle Roby, BLOOD BEACH) but she may be a pawn in the score the scarred leader has to settle with Reb, and Jeff must convince Alex's hippie brethren to set aside peace and defend themselves against an even more violent onslaught.

Coming at a time when the biker film was en vogue – the film was started in 1969 but not released until 1971 – THE PEACE KILLERS is not the most grueling effort but it packs a punch, more so because it does seem sincerely conflicted about peaceful existence and opposition in the face of violence (if Prokop's Alex looks a fool in his passivity for much of the film it seems more a failure of the writing than a cynical stance since Walton's Kristy more believably makes the case without much dialogue). Walton and Ontkean are more sympathetic, along with Kres Mersky (THE UNHOLY ROLLERS) as Jeff's love interest, while Richie and Roby chew the scenery along with MAGNUM FORCE's Albert Popwell as one of Black Widow's anything but peace-loving brood. A pair of Ruthann Friedmann songs – particularly the recurring single "White Dove" – drive the emotion of the film more so than the funkier biker underscoring. Director Douglas Schwartz and writer Michael Berk – nephews of THE BRADY BUNCH's Sherwood Schwartz – toiled in television for the next two decades before hitting upon BAYWATCH and its spinoffs in the 1990s. Producer Joel B. Michaels soon hooked up with Andrew Vajda and Mario Kassar's Carolco in the eighties with hits ranging from THE CHANGELING to STARGATE and the TERMINATOR sequels. Schwartz photographed the film himself, assisted by Stephen Katz who moved up from films like MESSIAH OF EVIL to THE BLUES BROTHERS, and some of Bill Condon's works like SISTER, SISTER and GODS AND MONSTERS. Future production designer Jack Fisk (PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE) served as gaffer as one of Schwartz's film school friends hired for the film.

Released theatrically through Transvue Pictures and on video by New World, THE PEACE KILLERS eventually wound up with MGM (possibly through their Orion acquisition) and was released on DVD-R as part of their "Limited Edition Collection" in 2015. Scorpion Releasing's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray probably comes from the same master. The shallow focus and high grain of the first part of the opening credits gives way to a more crisp and colorful image with rich Deluxe colors evidence in the more saturated credits and some elements of costume and set decoration while some early prosthetic make-up by William Munns (RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD) does not fare so well with the heightened resolution. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track cleanly delivers the dialogue and more boldly the score (including the song cues). Optional English SDH subtitles are also provided.