Bad Actors : This Bunch of Lowdown and Dirty Motorcycle Freaks Turn On Their Particular Kind of Charm for the Movies

In the instant it takes to unsheath a bowie knife, the forbidding face of the bearded tough in the red bandanna and leather vest hardened into a mask of consummate evil.

The steely eyes narrowed, the nostrils flared, and then, in a voice laced with gravel, the 240-pound biker growled: “Wanna try me, mother? You . . . with me and I’ll reach down your throat and rip your heart out.”

In another instant, the face relaxed, and its owner, Dutch Van Dalsem, sat back with a grin, pleased with his demonstration.

“That attitude you see in that look belongs in Vietnam, belongs in a prison yard or in front of a camera, no place in between. When I get through lookin’ like that, I go home and change my daughter’s diapers, just like everybody else.”

Others of Van Dalsem’s acquaintance are also familiar with the look--and the ability to turn it on and off. They are members of a unusual fraternity, an outfit known as Rent-A-Gang, whose cutthroats and killers are really just a bunch of guys--and women--who work as extras in the movies.

On a chilly Friday night not long ago, in the midst of the glitter and grime that is Hollywood Boulevard, Clown and Wino and a dozen more Van Dalsem associates are parked on the sidewalk, next to their partners--gleaming, high-powered motorcycles, Harley-Davidsons and Yamahas and Suzukis, backed up to the curb.

The bandannas and knit caps, worn leathers and tattered jeans, and the scars and tattoos prompt many of those who jam the boulevard to give wide berth to the bikers.

It is true, Van Dalsem said, that some of the men standing nearby have done hard time in prison. Some have, in the past, sworn allegiance to the country’s most notorious motorcycle gangs.

But tonight, and every weekend, when they appear at their sidewalk headquarters near Las Palmas Avenue, their role is different. If any were once Angels or Vagos or Heathens, they are now members of Van Dalsem’s club.

Tonight, Van Dalsem said, they are ambassadors-at-large to the film-going public.

“It’s more fun to go out and get along with people, make a movie, get patted on the back, than it is to ask, ‘Officer, did you have to hit me with that night stick?’ ” Van Dalsem explained. “It’s also a way to maintain your image and your life style without criminal involvement.”

Rent-A-Gang was founded in the early 1980s, after Van Dalsem, 46, retired on stress-related disability from his job as a guard at the Correctional Training Facility at Soledad.

In the jargon of corrections officials, Soledad is a place for robbers, murderers and other convicts who have exhibited “low signs of social adjustment.” A few of them now work for Van Dalsem.

Van Dalsem used some of the connections he had made working as an extra years earlier and the skills he had acquired placing job applicants for an employment agency to get his business off the ground.

Clown, a lanky, 57-year-old outlaw biker whose face would look much like Lincoln’s if it were not for the scars of an old accident, explained: “It gives some of the guys down here who are in circumstances similar to mine, unemployed or unemployable . . . it gives them a legitimate source of income.”

It also gives the film industry a ready source of tough-looking bikers--and some tough-looking bikes as well. In fact, the fee for the use of a custom chopper can range up to $100 a day, often more than its rider makes.

Among Rent-A-Gang’s credits are such big-budget movies as “Cobra,” “Over the Top,” “Into the Night,” “ Lost in America” and “Ruthless People” and such television series such as “Cagney and Lacey,” “St. Elsewhere” and “L.A. Law” plus a host of rock videos. But the bikers have worked in their share of klunkers as well: “Hamburger, the Movie” and “Hell Riders” are two they remember.

“They’ve done a hell of a lot of movies,” said Hollywood agent Ray Cavaleri, who represents Van Dalsem when he is working in Screen Actors Guild speaking parts. “He’s offering a unique service where he provides the type of character they’re looking for, but under a very controlled situation.”

Their roles as bikers, convicts, mountain men and other rough types do not always require the most subtle acting techniques. Clown explained the nuances of working in the movies: “Instead of going out and jumping on their bikes and roaring off some place, they have to wait until the director tells them to go.”

“Guys like Clown, Wino and me have a look about us,” Van Dalsem said. “What they hire us for is that look, more so than anything else. And the guys from the joint with all the tattoos, they look real, because they are real. . . . “

Not that everyone associated with Rent-A-Gang has seen the inside of a penitentiary.

George Derby, a bear of a man who wears a fur hat over his clean-shaven head, worked as an agent for the U.S. Department of Justice for more than a decade before retiring in 1975. Since then, he has kept busy as a private investigator and, for a time, as the owner of his own business: Dirtywork Unlimited.

“It’s an incredibly poor social commentary, but I got nothing better to do,” he said of hanging out in Hollywood. “It’s cheap. And it kind of makes me feel affluent . . . because if you’ve got a dollar, you’re affluent down here. . . .

“The biggest kick I get is some of the foreign tourists. They’ll come trotting up and they’ll want to know if we’ll pose with them for pictures sitting on motorcycles. Then, of course, there are the girls.”

With his flowing white beard, Vince Cameron, 55, looks a little like Santa Claus. By his account, he’s been hanging out on Hollywood Boulevard on and off for 20 years. When he’s not doing that, he runs an architectural consulting business out of his Glendale home.

“We’re as big a tourist attraction here as Mann’s Chinese Theater,” he said.

Gene Butts, 64, was a captain of detectives in the Terre Haute, Ind., Police Department before he retired and moved to California more than 10 years ago. He is one of the newer members of the gang.

“I only started last June,” he said, “and I did 29 movies last year, and I’ve done five already this year.”

Sometimes, Butts and others said, the line between illusion and reality becomes a little obscure.

“Everybody has the wrong idea about all these guys,” Butts said. “You don’t see any of them smoking pot or drinking beer around here.”

Added Derby: “It’s the safest block on the boulevard. Because we have such a poor image with the public and the police, we have to maintain a clean house. We may look a little colorful, but there’s no bad activity happens down here.”

Butts explained: “I’ll say to the wife, ‘We’re goin’ down to Kook Town to watch the kooks,’ ” referring to the passing parade on Hollywood Boulevard. “But they think we’re the kooks.”