Werewolves on Wheels

I have wanted to see this movie for YEARS, considering it has one of the greatest titles ever. What I was hoping for was bikers riding along in full wolfman makeup, like the poster suggests. What I got was hippies galavanting across a desert and two(I think its two, it might be just one) members of the crew change into wolf form within the last 2-3 minutes of the movie. I can't say that I think it's art, unless you can watch 'Manos, the Hands of Fate" and think that's art...attempted art, I suppose. To be clear, this movie is NOT as bad as Manos, as very few movies ever made are awful to that degree. Still, the title made me think I would enjoy this movie enthusiastically as it implies the kind of shlocky camp I find amusing and I came away incredibly disappointed...and bored.

If you watch B movies long enough, you'll learn that movies with goofy titles usually aren't very good at all, and this one is no exception. It plays like they only had a rough outline connecting a few scripted scenes, because a lot of the time the movie forgets the story and has the bikers basically goofing around until something bad happens. A low budget and clumsy camera work just add to the aura of shabbiness.

I can't completely dismiss it, because there are a few small but good touches here and there. Some of the music isn't bad, and there are also a few visuals (a gigantic flock of birds, desert landscapes) that do pop out and grab your eye. And there are also a few surreal sequences that do show that the filmmakers were not completely without imagination. But such moments are very few, and don't even get this movie up to the rank of movies to watch with fast-forward.

This film is a masterpiece! Thrill to hairy, disgusting guys riding enormous motorcycles with no hands! Cringe in horror as they beat the living daylights out of some guy at a gas station. Wonder just what the heck is going on as hordes of barefoot monks descend from the hills to offer bread and wine. Keep your notebook handy, because a step-by-step lesson in dark spirit-summoning is there waiting for you (hint: freshly cut Hazelwood). Ponder the homoerotic subtext. See the worst Tarot card reading in all history. There's even a charming softshoe routine for the kids. There's a couple of decent corpses in this movie, too. and the soundtrack is hot, hot HOT!!! I liked the ending.

While shaky in premise, Werewolves on Wheels contains all the absurdity, excess and self-awareness necessary to maintain interest. The plot roams all over the place, the actors mumble a lot of their lines and the ending is distinctly dissatisfying - but nevertheless it's well worth 85 minutes of your time. A rowdy gang of bikers who call themselves the Devil's Advocates shows up at a gas station in the middle of the desert to terrorizes the attendant, then proceeds to stumble upon a monastery while partying in a nearby forest. The ominous monks share suspect bread and wine, greedily indulged upon by the rowdy gang. When they're too drunk to notice, head monk `One,' an interesting role for the usually funny Severn Darden, plucks a hair from one of their heads and places it in a bat buckle. He then prays to Satan and kills a cat. The fun begins at this point, and biker lady D. J. Anderson materializes for some sort of dark ritual. When the bikers realize she's gone missing, they seek out the monks and beat the living pulp out of them. The bikers think little of the events that have transpired, but the following night at the campfire Anderson seems to suck head biker Stephen Oliver's blood, and a mock Satanic dance culminates in the grisly deaths of two members of the gang. After terrorizing another gas station they roam around the desert pretending to make a movie, creating a distinctly self-reflective mood. Nonsense-preaching Duece Berry (whose character is named `Tarot') tries to warn Oliver that something's in the air but he'll have none of his buddy's mystic mumbo-jumbo. They burn a pile of old cars and Anderson sees foreboding signs in the flames. Much of the same insanity carries the film right up to its vague conclusion. Writer-director Michael Levesque, who worked on a couple of Russ Meyer films, is a decent enough filmmaker and the camera work and editing and enjoyable, but the film suffers from over-abuse of the zoom. At least three cast members also appeared in The Last Movie, also made in 1971, and folk singer Barry McGuire appears as a member of the bike gang. Most of the rest of the cast are stunt performers, including a number of the leads. Don Gere provides an excellent psychedelic soundtrack, by far the best of any biker movie I've seen. The unusually diverse cast and enthusiastic amateur creative spirit create an atmosphere more exciting than the majority of contemporary genre filmmaking. What it all comes down to is that this a movie for people who like to drink in the morning, like myself.

if you're looking for late night viewing while riding out a rough weekend, this is one piece of C grade cinema that will definitely entertain. it's best not to attempt to follow the plot, and just try to enjoy it scene for scene. some surprisingly inventive dialog at times and inspired casting for backing roles...check out the disturbed gas station attendant. It's a mix of Ed Wood's guerilla film-making style and Roger Corman's sense of poetic bohemia. Then the acid kicks in. its apparent the filmmakers were partaking in some type of recreational or experimental activities. the subtle charm of the avant-gardeness of it all seems to almost offset the fact that most of it makes little or no sense. i'm sure someone somewhere has found deeper meaning in this film than it deserves. But how can you go wrong with Satanic bikers who turn into werewolves? gather up the family after Thanksgiving and drop this gem on your relatives.