MartinHafer Sam Farragut (Andy Griffith) is a rich jerk who fully realizes how powerful this makes him. Instead of just allowing the advertising agency to handle his company, he controls them--insisting the three execs working for him MUST go on a long, long motorbike ride across Baja...or no contract. Once on the trip, Sam turns out to be a real piece of work...an amoral guy who drinks, brawls and womanizes-- acting nothing like the Andy Griffith we've all grown to love. He's a lot like Satan on a cycle!Among the three execs are Warren (William Shatner), Paul (Robert Reed) and Terry (Marjoe Gortner). All three are extremely flawed men and only Terry seems excited about making this trip. Paul is hiding a secret but Warren's is the darkest of all...he knows he's being terminated from his job and is showing hints that he might use this trip as a way to kill himself! What does come of all this? This is certainly one of the strangest made for TV movies of its era. That's saying a lot since "The ABC Movie of the Week" often featured weird plots--such as women impregnated by aliens, monsters living in the chimney and reincarnated witches! But this strange is because the folks play so against type...especially Griffith! But is this strangeness any good? Well, yes. Despite the plot being extremely difficult to believe and the actors playing so against type, the basic issues going on in the film are compelling-- especially when Griffith's character does some very horrible things. The only BIG bad thing about all this is the ending with Shatner in the surf--not THAT is amazingly stupid! All in all, well worth seeing just because of its novelty.By the way, if you are curious who Marjoe Gortner is, read him IMDb biography. This guy was VERY prolific on TV in the 70s but his life before this is really, really interesting. He's not particularly good in this film, however. Also, I think it is very likely NOT unintentional that the four men all sport shirts that look almost exactly like "Star Trek" shirts--red, blue and yellow! You really notice their Trekkiness in the cantina scene...complete with the black collars! Apart from missing the Enterprise emblem, they are almost dead ringers!

Teresa Are you a Marjoe fan? A Brady on a Silver Platter? A Cracker Eater? A Shatnerologist? Look no further! There's "Pray for the Wildcats": A cheesy TV movie where Marjoe, Robert "Brady Bunch dad, later 'Pat' the sex-change doctor on Medical Center" Reed, Andy "Cracker Boy" Griffith and William the "One True" Shatner (OTS) play four yuppies who take a motorcycle ride down Baja. Kind of like "Deliverance" on dirt-bikes.This film is dominated by a superlatively bad performance by Mr. Griffith. No doubt trying to overcome his wholesome (good cracker! GOOD cracker!) image, he administers a real Deep Hurting in a non-stunning role-reversal of "Deliverance". He tries to score with a traveling hippie's main squeeze in a cantina, but fails miserably. After a few minor brawls and scuffles, he resorts to bribery after catching up with them outside of town ("I'm sort of a hippie myself! A hippie with MONEY!!"). Failing again, he trashes their vehicle in the middle of the desert, condemning the poor young couple to a slow death by starvation and dehydration.From there the plot goes downhill, literally. The toupeed one (Shatner) naturally saves the day by running Mr Ritz, er Griffith, off of a cliff (from which he drops in ever-so-slow-motion to his fiery demise on the rocky beach below. Oh the pain!!) Shatner then runs his own dirt-bike into the ocean, and follows with his usual over-acted agony dance around the burning wreckage. The end.....or IS it!?!?! It's probably out of print. Find it if you can!!!

fdextro ABC hyped the premiere of this pop culture mind bender as "the television event of the decade". They may have been right. Written by Hack, I mean Jack Turley, it's a heavy-handed quilt of morality clichés as we follow three advertising execs (Shatner, Reed and Gortner) willing to do anything to land a big account. They make Darrin Stephens and Larry Tate look like models of integrity. This time, they agree to go on a motorcycle road trip to Mexico with a crazy rich (or is that Ritz?) cracker played by Griffith in an image-shattering performance. He forces them to wear matching leather jackets emblazoned with a "Baja Wildcats" logo, while underneath sporting what look exactly like extra-large long-sleeved Star Trek t-shirts. With a set-up like this, how can you go wrong? Well, for one thing, trying to jam in a bunch of soap opera backstory before the big ride.Shatner, wearing one of his funniest toupees (with sideburns to match), is having a serious midlife crisis. His job is in jeopardy, he's cheating on his wife, and, worst of all, the boss tells him to get some new suits with wider lapels (this is the 70s, after all). He takes out a life insurance policy and contemplates suicide for much of the movie. In a reversal of Griffith's performance, Shatner actually underplays his role but does it so turgidly; he still comes off as a pompous ham.Then we have Reed, still decked out in a full-Brady afro. He's married to Dickinson and things aren't going so well for them either. (In fact, she's the one having an affair with Shatner.) It's impossible to watch today and not read gay subtexts into Reed's dialogue, especially when he tells Dickinson, "The man you married lived in an apartment with only one closet." Delicious.Meanwhile, Gortner plays a proto-yuppie prick, willing to sell-out and sacrifice anything and anyone for the sake of his career. He can't even give his girlfriend a committed answer when she tells him she's pregnant. Willing to abort it if he says so, Gortner can't be bothered right now with making a decision. He's got a road trip to run. The women gather together to say goodbye and the Wildcats begin their fateful odyssey. That's too bad for us watching because we now have to squirm through what seems like an hour (it isn't, though) of random motorcycle mania. Worse than the similar biker bores in THE ACID EATERS, try not to fall asleep because you'll miss some of the most incredible made-for-TV moments ever devised.The first takes place in a cantina. Griffith has been tossing back tequila boilermakers and makes a drooling play for some poor hippie girl dancing her little hips off. The expected fight breaks out and our trio now have to face the fact that Griffith may be a total psycho. Gortner gets drunk and tries not to care. However, Reed and Shatner have a real heart-to-heart talk about responsibility and whether all this is worth some advertising job. The scene ends with another classic Reed-subtext line as he asks a heavily buzzed Shatner, "I'm going' back to the hotel. You wanna tag along?" Shatner declines the invite with a warm and knowing smile.The other key scene involves Griffith's confrontation with a hippie couple swimming nude on a beach. He and Gortner ride in and the bad vibes start almost immediately. Griffith shows an interest in the girl and offers the boyfriend a hundred dollars for her, flaunting the whole hippie free love ethic. The boyfriend tells him to get lost, but Griffith loses it in a completely different way. He grabs a hatchet and starts taunting, "C'mon hippie, let's go! C'mon freak!" Instead of bodies, Griffith butchers the hippies' van, pretty much dooming them to slow death because of the distance they would have to walk to reach help. Of course, Gortner plays the quivering toady.Back in Mexico, Shatner finally shakes off his suicidal bent with the realization that he's a better man than Griffith. Referring to the head Wildcat, Shatner says, "He's like acid. He makes people do anything." Reed remains ambivalent and Gortner continues as a self-denying scumbag.I won't reveal the ending, but I'm sure most of you have a good idea who won't survive. As I said, it's a morality play, but holds little weight as such. The value of this movie relies purely on 60s/70s pop culture appreciation. It's a predictably scripted, flatly directed late-period biker film, led by three attempts at a stereotype breakout. It's also a fun failure and well worth seeking out.

Mike Orth I thought Andy Griffith was unbelievably funny in this movie when he made an indecent proposal with a $20.00 Bill to a young couple thinking that they would actually agree to take him up on his offer!! It was amazing to me to see Andy Griffith act like such a twisted, dirty minded deviate who displayed violent sour grapes when he did not get his way.This movie was so funny and enjoyable because it was incredibly ridiculous with all its funky chemistry of Actors,Characters and the plot all combined to make a movie that me and my friends have been poking fun at for many years now. I often recommend this movie to people just because I want to see the look on thier faces and laugh when they see such a odd mixture of Actors and the Characters that they played in this flick.