From the far reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy, It's Retro Nerd Girl with a film review for you.
Today I'll be reviewing the movie The Wraith released in 1986.
Starring:
Charlie Sheen, Nick Cassavetes, Sherilyn Fenn
Directed by:
Mike Marvin
Genre:
Action, Horror, Romance
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Rating:
PG-13
Budget:
$2,700,000 (estimated)
Current IMDb Rating When Reviewed:
6.0
The Synopsis is:
After a young man is murdered by a road-racing gang of motor-heads in Brooks, Arizona, a mysterious fast-driving stranger enacts revenge in a Chrysler Dodge M4S Turbo Interceptor.
Originally the film was supposed to be a car action movie similar to The Road Warrior released in 1981. The concept was devised by Kim LeMasters at Disney Studios.
That didn’t work out, but Mike Marvin stepped in to write and direct it under the title Turbo Wraith Interceptor. The name was later changed.
I recently reviewed the movie Christine released in 1983 featuring yet another Chrysler car, the 1958 Plymouth Fury, which had a similar premise, where bullies were hunted down as an act of revenge. Maybe it was overkill, (no pun intended) in a movie like Christine. I mean, she was an evil sentient car after all.
However, in this film, the bullies are twisted and evil enough to murder a young man by the name of Jamie Hankins and get away with it. It all started because the leader of the gang of killers, Packard Walsh played by Nick Cassavetes, wanted Jamie's girlfriend, Keri for himself.
It has a lot in common with the Crow released in 1994 as a retribution story.
Some time later, two strangers arrive in town, a man dressed in black driving turbo interceptor and another young man on a Honda XL350R Enduro dirt bike by the name of Jake, played by Charlie Sheen. To make a long story short, it’s the same guy. Jake turns into the wraith and drives the interceptor which is a separate living entity on its own. The car has a heartbeat and everything. To make a short story even shorter, Jake is actually the young man that was killed by the gang, Jamie.
There are a lot of twisty, turny things that happen in the film and also happen off screen so it can get a little confusing. So, the movie is called The Wraith, which is an older word meaning, “a ghost or ghostlike image of someone”. Jamie or Jake fits that category.
According to Mike Marvin, Jake is not quite a ghost. He is indeed Jamie, who crossed over to a different dimension when he died but has returned to our dimension to right the wrong that was done to him and continue his life with Keri.
Four spheres of light collided together in the middle of a desert crossroad to create this groundbreaking dimensional travel.
Besides being on a revenge mission, Jake is out to make contact with Keri Johnson played by Sherilyn Finn. Keri doesn't remember the events that lead up to the murder, so she and everyone in town doesn't know that Packard and his boys are responsible for it.
However, when you look at the facts, they are the only suspects, way before we even see the flashbacks of them doing it.
Jake also makes contact with his younger brother Billy excellently played by Matthew Barry, who ironically keeps calling him, “Bro”. Matthew does a great job anytime he’s on screen. His delivery is pretty sound and there is actually is a sweet story brewing between Jake and Billy that doesn’t get enough screen time. If given enough attention, this relationship could have up-notched the film. Matthew puts a lot of heart in the few scenes he has and you don’t expect that kind of emotional beat from a teen horror flick.
Now, I use the term horror loosely, because it’s more of an action thriller and I use the term, teen even looser because, maybe these guys are possibly teenagers or maybe in their early twenties. It could be summer break. An explanation did not make it into the film. Who knows because no parents appear in the film at all and no one has to go to school. There is not even a conversation about college to give us a clue.
Now let's get into the juicy part of the film where we deal with the bad guys. I mentioned Packard Walsh before, who is pretty much the star of the film besides the interceptor car. His gang is also a lot like the bullies in Christine that are into cars that even have their own garage shack to work on cars that are highly flammable, if you catch my drift.
In the beginning of the film Packard violently blackmails a guy with a sports car into giving up his car and leaves him and his girlfriend out in the middle of the road.
You know that this is part of a routine because they are “road pirates”. When Packard is not terrorizing everyone, he's just obsessed with Keri. They aren’t technically boyfriend and girlfriend, but they are together by some kind of forced entrapment.
It's really creepy and uneasy any time the two of them are alone on screen together. You just don't know what he's gonna do because Packard is dangerous, delusional and completely emotionally unstable. Even if she runs away, he’s so obsessive and morally corrupt he’ll just chase her down.
He's a total sicko! He's suicidal, he hates everyone and he brings his switchblade to every conversation he can. There is a scene where the police interrupts him with another girl and you get the sense that maybe she’s not there because she wants to be there. She’s not resisting, but with a crazy person like Packard, it’s gross but you can guess the rest. And that gives you a sense of Packard and the effect he has on people.
At just the right time in the film to save certain characters, the Turbo Interceptor comes into play and tempts the gang into trying to pirate the car to add it to their collection. This is what attracts them into the revenge scheme of the wraith. He races them and then when it seems close, he takes off into the distance. He then doubles back and crashes into them. Each one of the murderers is connected to a brace placed on the wraith’s body, that disappears after each murder. By the end it is almost as if the wraith is free of his burdens when all the killers are gone and the braces are all gone too. He is now fully in his human form permanently.
Since the murders are all supernatural their bodies are all left intact even though they all die in fiery crashes. The only indication of a fire are the eyes, which are burnt out. I thought that was an intriguing addition although it is not fully explained in the film. I seemed to understand that, but the director also confirmed that was the purpose. I really liked that and I wished that there was more supernatural play in the film.
One cool character in the film and the only adult highlighted in the film is Sheriff Loomis, played effectively by Randy Quaid who is running for an election and desperately trying to solve these murders. He’s not on screen for very long, but Randy plays the character pretty laid back. The dialogue in the film is pretty dismal, but he had the best lines in which he knew how to pull them off brilliantly to show off his acting chops.
With Sherriff Loomis and his deputies looming around and chasing after the wraith, there was a part of the film where it felt a lot like the Dukes of Hazzard with all of the cop cars in a frenzy trying to track down the killer turbo interceptor.
Gang members Oggie and Minty are the first to die and it seems as if none of their pals liked them very much because there is no emotional recognition. They just carry on as normal. That was a huge mistake in the film, because even if someone you hate dies there is some kind of reaction, of disbelief, or something. It’s not enough to stop you from enjoying the film though. There is so much more in store for the audience.
The gang members are all interesting, but the two that stand out and together they make a comical pair, Skank brilliantly played by David Sherrill and Gutterboy also played incredibly by Jamie Bozian. Skank is actually one of the smartest characters in the film but to his detriment and everyone else, he is terrified of Packard. He wears both a mullet and a mohawk at the same time, he snorts WD40 and he loves drinking hydraulic fuel. Gutterboy is probably the saddest of the two because he is always twitching as if he's withdrawing for something, so we are not clear on if it is behavioral or chemical. That detail would change the empathy for the character.
The only gang member that makes it through alive is Rughead, played by Clint Howard, who is a tech-geek with an Eraserhead hair do, which was done on purpose to pay homage to David Lynch. He is the only one who did not participate in Jamie's murder. You get the sense he likes the tech work he does for the gang, but there is a serious level of intimidation when he talks to Packard. Clint’s performance is pure caricature, but it’s entertaining, no less. He is yet another colorful character.
The film has been heavily critiqued for it’s treatment of women in the film and I have to agree, however I do understand that the treatment of women stems from characters we are meant to hate, but also reflects the way a lot of people felt and still feel about women. I don’t feel the film is supporting the behavior, it’s just showing it to us.
On the other hand, I do like the fact that the main character arch in the film happens to Keri! In the midst of Jake’s mission as the wraith, he is trying to get Keri to stand up to Packard. After all of the bullying and abuse, she does find the courage to challenge him in spite of her fear of him. I actually loved that. Go Keri!
I only wished there was a little more detail about Keri like what are her dreams for the future, how did she end up at her job, does she have any girlfriends, does she have any family, and how did she feel about Jamie (she only tells us what happened to Jamie). Even just a 30 second scene of her with a tear looking at a picture, or news clippings, would let the audience know that she still cared for him.
I really enjoyed Charlie Sheen in this. The director originally wanted Johnny Depp for the part of Jake but that didn’t work out. Interestingly enough, Sherilyn Fenn was dating Johnny Depp at the time and he was living at the studio’s hotel with Sherilyn.
Charlie plays the wraith in a very laid back demeanor. It was appropriate in order to keep the focus on the revenge story. I don’t think I had ever seen him in a role like this before. I remember seeing this and realizing that he was not in the film very much. There is something very wise and all knowing about his delivery. I think it’s his voice. It was very zen master-like.
I saw this just about the time that it came out in the 1980s on one of those up all night movie TV shows. This was when Charlie Sheen was such a heartthrob that I was pretty shocked that they didn’t market the film as a Charlie Sheen movie or put his face front and center, all over the poster. It may have been at the detriment of the film because this was one of those films that no one knew about when it came out and even now, it’s a movie known mainly by a lot of retro nerds and movie lovers. Some people dislike the movie so much that they just want to pretend it never existed.
That might have been a good thing for Charlie’s career because Oliver Stone’s Platoon came out a few months later and Oliver was nervous that Charlie’s appearance in The Wraith was going to ruin his movie. Hardly anyone for years knew The Wraith existed. Even the name, The Wraith is an unpopular term.
Besides that, the film also doesn’t get a whole lot of love from the cast and crew because it's a memory of the fact that because the film was rushed, sadly a camera operator, Bruce Ingram was killed and another cast member was left a paraplegic after the second day of shooting some of the car stunts.
Everyone just really wanted to hurry up and finish the job.
If there was more time to work on the film, it could have really helped the film with dialogue alignment and better emotional depth you can see that Mike Marvin was reaching for. There were plot lines omitted and scenes left on the cutting room floor, leaving the director to fill the audience in with the details in interviews.
It’s nice for Mike to tell us after the fact, but it all should have been put in the film, even if a character claimed they heard of some supernatural stuff like this happening somewhere else. At least then we know what is possible in the world we are seeing.
One thing that the film serves you on a hot platter are fast cars on the road, up close and personal. If you are a car lover, you'll love the action in this. The car stunts were amazing. The angles and shots of these gorgeous cars will blow your mind. As I mentioned in my Christine review, I am not a driver, but I am a car admirer and boy are there some sweet cars in this film.
- Dodge M4S
- Chevrolet Corvette
- 1986 Dodge Daytona Turbo Z
- 1977 Pontiac Firebird
- 1966 Plymouth Barracuda
- GMC pickup
- Daytona Turbo Z
- Plymouth Caravelles and Gran Furys
- Chevrolet Malibus
- Plymouth Caravelle
The movie was basically a very effective commercial for the Dodge M4S which was a prototype sports coupe originally engineered, designed, and built by Dodge / Chrysler in 1981. Being that it was a prototype, it was not an effective car, but it's always been great for show. It was designed to be used as a pace car to reach a top speed of 200 mph (322 km/h) at an estimated cost of $1.1 million.
7 versions of the car were used in the film for different purposes. There was one for close-ups and details, a few for stunt driving, and four "shells" for awesome crash scenes. Speaking of wanton destruction, there is an explosion of a garage hutt that was ridiculous. It was an explosion on steroids. Boom! Pure and absolute schlock. In fact there are so many awesome explosions in this film and I loved every minute of it.
There are at least two scenes of “wouldn't it be cool if we did this” in the film that could have been totally left out of the film. It was the shack garage shoot 'em up scene and the graveyard scene. It was total fluff that added nothing to the story but more confusion. But boy,oh boy was it ever the coolest.
The musical score was composed and performed by Michael Hoenig and J. Peter Robinson which had a very simplistic synth sound. The soundtrack is yet another star of the film featuring some rather infamously 1980s rock music.
- Tim Feehan – "Where's the Fire"
- Ozzy Osbourne – "Secret Loser"
- Stan Bush – "Hearts vs. Heads"
- Ian Hunter – "Wake Up Call"
- Mötley Crüe – "Smokin' in the Boys Room"
- Robert Palmer – "Addicted to Love"
- Nick Gilder – "Scream of Angels"
- Lion – "Power Love"
- Honeymoon Suite – "Those Were the Days"
- Lion – "Never Surrender"
- Bonnie Tyler – "Matter of the Heart"
- LaMarca – "Hold on Blue Eyes"
- Billy Idol – "Rebel Yell"
- Jill Michaels – "Young Love, Hot Love"
- James House – "Bad Mistake"
However, on the plus side is that the film knows exactly what it is. It’s not trying to win awards. It's just trying to be a fun movie about cars, bad boys and hot babes. If that’s not your cup of tea, keep moving.
Is this my favorite film of all time, no, but it is so entertaining in so many ways, from hot race cars, rock music to all of the many interesting characters that really stand out and they don’t totally betray the story. The story is pretty solid, because I have seen a lot worse. It’s got a lot of 1980’s cheese and fun built in for a whacky time.
My Rating:
7.5
That sums up my review. I hope you liked it.
Take care movie lovers! I'm off to the next review!
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