Rating: C+
Dir: Mike Marvin
Star: Nick Cassavetes, Charlie Sheen, Sherilyn Fenn, Randy Quaid
There cannot be many more quintessentially eighties movies out there. I mean this in ways good, bad, and neutral yet worthy of your attention. To begin with, this was a time where movie plots were clearly optional. OK, while there is one here, it isn’t exactly logical. A mysterious driver, the titular Wraith, shows up and starts racing to the death, members of a gang involved in a previous fatality. Simultaneously, Jake (Sheen) shows up, and starts prising Keri (Fenn) away for her obnoxious boyfriend, Packard (Cassavetes). He just happens to be the leader of said gang. Might these two new arrivals be linked? Remarkably, nobody here seems to make the connection, not even local detective Loomis (Quaid), who’s investigating events.
So, is the Wraith a ghost? An extra-terrestrial? A visitor from another dimension? Could be any of them. The film is notably uninterested in providing anything as trivial as a basic explanation. Feel free to make one up yourself, if you’re that bothered. Personally, I got over myself, and simply wallowed in the nostalgic mud-bath this offers. This would start with the Dodge M4S Turbo Interceptor driven by the Wraith, which looks like a Cybertruck’s cool, if slightly disreputable, uncle. [Fun fact: one of the seven Dodge Interceptors used in the film is now owned by comedian Jeff Dunham]. Anything which touches it, or him, immediately explodes in a giant fireball. And since this is the eighties, it’s not a CGI giant fireball either.
That’s one of the good things I mentioned. Another would be the car chases in general, which have a strong and effective physicality to them. I say “in general,” since there is occasionally obvious use of sped-up footage. However, the rest is solid work, and showcases some impressive Arizona scenery, since the whole movie was shot in and around Tucson. Sadly, an accident involving a camera truck while filming one of the chases, caused the death of camera operator Bruce Ingram and severely injured first assistant director Leon Dudievor. The parallels with The Crow – both films about revenge from beyond the grave, touched by the cold hand of actual, on-set mortality – are kinda spooky. The Crow did have a better soundtrack though.
And that’s one of the bad things I mentioned. While I’m a huge fan of eighties music, this is evidence the era had a lot of shite too. Robert Palmer and Billy Idol, I could tolerate. All the terrible hair metal? [Though is there any other kind of hair metal, apart from terrible?] Not so much. The hairstyles and fashions are also a mixed bag, to put it mildly. It’s nice the director to decided to make the wig worn by Clint Howard’s character a tribute to Eraserhead. Probably not the time or the place though, Mike. This is complete nonsense, yet the young cast – most of whom seem related to more famous people – sell it all with sufficient commitment to paper over the cracks.