WHEELS OF FIRE (1985)

WHEELS OF FIRE (1985)

Tagline: The future is now. One man stands alone against a world gone mad.

(Action, Adventure, Cars That Look Like They Were Stolen From A Junk Yard) [R]

Just because we’re traveling together, doesn’t mean we're sleeping together. 

In this one, we are taken to a post-apocalyptic future where a gang driving cars and riding motorcycles is taking over the scorched landscape. Led by Scourge, they have been murdering and stealing from everyone in their path. Meanwhile, Trace is just trying to keep his sister Arlie out of trouble when she is kidnapped by the gang. That was a bad choice and Trace is about to take his revenge on them all. This dude has machine guns, a bad attitude, and a freakin blow torch, so you had better watch out. 

First off this is basically a MAD MAX rip-off only with about a billion times more action. They hardly even wasted time with a plot at all. If you are looking for a movie with more football pads than the entire NFL, more people’s pants falling down than a Hanes commercial, more bullets coming from a single gun than is even remotely feasible, telepathy, and cannibal sandmen. Then this movie is going to be your cup of tea. 

One thing you have to remember about the 80’s is that pretty much anything goes. So if you normally stay away from rated R movies, I highly recommend not watching this. It was bad enough back then that it was normal for flicks to just get totally insane, but it seems like low-budget movies were always going to go way the heck out of their way on the gratuitous “everything” to get buts in seats or to get you to rent their flicks. With that out of the way, we’ve got a wild one here. 

Acting-wise Gary Watkins (JOHNNY DANGEROUSLY) is actually pretty decent as Trace. He definitely gets a lot more action sequences in this movie than Mel Gibson gets in at least the first 3 MAD MAX movies. Laura Banks (STAR TREK II THE WRATH OF KHAN) is passable as Stinger. Lynda Wiesmeier plays Arlie and seems like she was only hired because she didn’t mind doing certain scenes, but she was also in quite a few iconic 80s flicks like REAL GENIUS, TEEN WOLF, and PRIVATE SCHOOL among others. Joe Mari Avellana (CAGED FURY) plays a pretty decent bad guy as Scourge. Linda Grovenor (DIE LAUGHING) plays Spike in this and is also decent. She kind of gives off a Princess Leah vibe, but isn’t really a main character and only has a few lines. Before you freak out, no I am not saying she’s Carrie Fisher. The rest of the cast is not what I would call decent. They served their purpose, but the acting is definitely less than good and it appears that some of the dialog was dubbed in.

Budget wise this thing is all kinds of rough. They even recycled scenes from a movie called RAIDERS OF THE SUN. Having said that, it’s not like it only cost 5 bucks. They did make a giant rocket-looking structure in the middle of the desert which probably wasn’t super cheap even if it turned out to be mostly made of wood on the inside. This thing was mostly filmed in the Philippines, but the landscape looks a lot like it was shot in parts of California and Arizona. 

The pacing actually works but I thought the story was far too dependent on “let’s show how terrible Arlie is getting treated” scenes that should have been cut or used for at least 1 second of actual storytelling. The score is way off and comes across like they told the guy or gal doing the score the movie was about something totally different. There is also some pretty funny stunt work in this with dudes just falling all over the place after getting hit with nothing. Some of the car battle scenes are clearly sped up as if the director knew he had exactly 120 minutes of film to work with, but like I said, he wasted some of that film on dumb scenes. 

Overall this is actually pretty entertaining for a low-budget MAD MAX rip-off only apparently with a lot more gas around because no one mentions a gas shortage. It also definitely has plenty of action coming across as one giant 110-minute action sequence.

There are a good number of scenes I would rather they skipped, but I still think it deserves a score of 4 out of 7.  

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