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On
a lonesome highway, out of the heat and
rippling haze of the desert, The Devil’s
Advocates ride. (Now
that is one inspired name for a motorcycle
club.) There
appears to be about a dozen of them on
bikes, with a couple of biker skanks,
bringing up the rear, in an old ambulance.
As they roll along, snog their old ladies, pop some
pills, smoke some reefer, and dabble in a
few other hallucinogens, they continue to ride.
And ride. And ride. And ride -- I’m
sensing a theme here.
Trouble
starts when a straggler is run off the
road by a couple of good old boys in a
pickup-truck. As the other Advocates burn
rubber in pursuit, the
locals manage to give them the slip. But
the
not so bright hit-n-runners then make the
bone-headed mistake of stopping at the
very next available gas station -- so it
isn’t that big of a surprise when the
Advocates roar up and surround them,
looking for a little payback.
Adam
(Stephen
Oliver), the
gang’s leader, forcefully pulls the
driver out, and proceeds to give him a
big old wet kiss on the lips!? (The
hell?) He then punches him in
the stomach (that’s better),
and then turns him over to the rest of the
gang, who proceed to beat the crap out of
him. But the Advocates aren't completely
ruthless as they leave the geriatric
passenger alone, and after the bloodied
driver is unceremoniously dumped in the
back of the truck, the old man punches the
gas pedal and tears off. Having had enough
fun, the Advocates let them go and invade
the gas station instead.
As
the others imbibe huge amounts of beer,
Helen (DJ
Anderson) --
Adam’s old lady, wants Tarot (Deuce
Barry), the spiritual sage of the
group, to
tell her her fortune. Tarot gets really cranky because he reads
the cards and doesn’t tell
fortunes (there’s a
difference?), and it doesn’t
matter because he doesn’t do readings
for chicks anyway. At
first, this makes Adam happy because he doesn’t
like it when the morose Tarot starts
messing with his cards -- I guess it makes
him even more morose. But Helen is
insistent, and he finally orders Tarot to
do it, just to make her shut up. Wanting
to know how she's going to die, Helen
watches at Tarot
lays out the Chariot Card, the
Lover’s Card, and the Angel Card. (Do
you wanna hit or stand pat?)
Next comes the Devil’s Card, which Tarot
ominously warns will have a future
influence on her. And then he deals
another, more ominous card that says her
fate is predetermined, so she cannot
change it. Adam
claims it’s all a crock and won’t let
him flip the last card. But Helen's really
got her panties in a bunch to know, so
Tarot reveals the last card: Helen will
die by a lightning strike in the Tower of Satan.
(I
had a vision once where mall walkers
trampled me to death. Walked right out of
the Sam Goody and BAM! -- I wonder if they
have a card for that?) Overcome
with disturbing visions of death and the
Cloven One, Tarot is visibly upset by the
reading. Adam snaps him out of it, still insists it's all a load of
bull-crap, and herds everyone outside to
head deeper into the wilderness for a little
R&R.
So
they’re off again, and we’re entreated
to another long travelogue sequence until
they
eventually stop at a fork in the road for
a beer break. Unable to shake the visions,
Tarot is still a bit uneasy. Adam
chides him for believing in all that
mumbo-jumbo but Tarot claims he only
believes in the truth, and claims he
can show them all the "real
truth" if they're willing to follow.
They are, so he leads them down the
fork lest traveled into a primordial
woods. (And
no,
Werewolves
on Wheels
is not based on the poetry of Robert
Frost. Maybe if it was an AIP picture?)
is not based on the poetry of Robert
Frost. Well, maybe if it was an AIP picture?)
Ditching the bikes, they head further into the
trees and find a huge circle of stones in a clearing
--
obviously an altar of some kind -- where
they commence to have a drunken orgy. And
it isn’t very hard to spot the Tower of
Satan in the background -- and exact match
to Tarot's prophetic vision. And when Adam
starts calling for the Devil to come out
and join the party, he doesn't realize
that the Devil is listening -- and has
every intention of taking him up on the invitation...
*
* * *
The
origins of the Outlaw Biker flick can be
traced back to the summer of 1947, where
over the July 4th Weekend, the AMA --
American Motorcyclist Association -- sponsored a Gypsy Tour Rally in Hollister,
California. Around 4000 bikers showed up
-- mostly returning veterans, trying to
readjust to civilian life -- a lot more
than the town could really accommodate.
And then a couple of rival clubs -- the
Boozefighters and 
the Pissed-Off Bastards of
Bloomington -- allegedly got into a
rumble, resulting in the so-called
Hollister Riot. I say allegedly, because
aside from some public drunkenness and
general disorderliness, there wasn't much
of a riot. However, inspired by a (posed)
picture he saw in LIFE magazine about the
rowdy weekend, writer Frank Rooney wrote a
fictionalized tale called "The
Cyclist Raid"
for Harper's Weekly, where a gang of
hooligans ride in and take over a small
town. Fiction soon clouded the truth, and a
legend was born.
It
was Rooney's imagined Hollister Riot that inspired
The Wild One,
recognized by most as the first Outlaw
Biker flick, and created a whole new genre.
And the film also influenced the bikers
themselves -- and most of them were
emulating Lee Marvin's skuzzy Chino, not Marlon Brando's pretty boy Johnny.
Starting with Roger Corman's mucho
profitable The
Wild Angels
in 1966 -- inspired again by an article in
LIFE
about the massive funeral of a
legendary Hell's Angel member -- most of the
other films followed suit, focusing
on the rough and rowdy world of life on the
road, using real bikers in their films as
extras.
With
low production costs and money to be made,
over the next few years some 40 to 50
biker flicks were unleashed on the public
-- Satan's
Sadists,
The
Glory Stompers and The
Devil's Angels,
to name a few, but by the dawn of the '70s,
the genre was no longer firing on all
cylinders. And as filmmakers almost always
do when a genre is about to die, they
combine it with another to try and squeeze
a few more titles out of it. In the horribly
misstitled Hell's
Bloody Devils,
Al Adamson
stuck some bikers in his James Bond
knock-off with some less than stellar
results.
AIP was yucking up it's own creation with
Eric Von Zipper bumbling his way through
most of the Beach
Party
series. So it was inevitable, then, that somebody
would start combining the biker and horror
genres. Hershell Gordon Lewis started the
blood flowing with She-Devils
on Wheels,
and then there was Psychomania
-- the tale of biker gang selling their
souls to the devil for immortality.
Strange film. They worship a toad. I'm
serious.
About
this same time writer David Kaufman teamed up
with director Michel Levesque on a script
for Werewolves
on Wheels.
Levesque was a production designer for
Russ Meyer, and they got financing from
Paul Lewis, who had a hand in a ton of
biker movies, including Easy
Rider and Hell's
Angels on Wheels.
From what we've seen so far, there wasn't
much of a script to this film as a lot of
the dialogue appears to be adlibbed -- but
adlibbed very well by the mostly amateur
cast. Oliver was already a genre veteran,
and if you look closely, you can spot
folk-singer Barry
"Eve of
Destruction"
McGuire, and former child
star Billy Gray, who had just come off a
much publicized marihuana bust, amongst
the Advocates. And according to Levesque
in the DVD commentary, most of the cast were stoned for the entire shoot. Method
acting I guess.
An
initial deal with A.I.P. fell apart but a
distributor was found with Joe Solomon's
Fanfare Productions. Solomon was one of
the quieter patron saints of exploitation
cinema, but brought us plenty of biker
mayhem: The
Born Losers,
Run,
Angel, Run,
and Nam's
Angels a/k/a The
Losers --
where the government sends some renegade
bikers to Vietnam on a covert rescue
mission. When
the film was released in 1971, the poster
and press-kits screamed "The gang thought it
was tough...'til they found a new kind of
hell...THE BRIDE OF SATAN!" And all
the promotional materials -- including a
complimentary barf-bag in case the film
made you sick (hopefully for the right
reasons), promised us lycanthropic hooligans
on Harley's. But what we really got was a
different kind of monster all together...
...As
the drunken orgy continues unabated, several
evil monks appear and offer the Advocates
bread and wine. The slovenly bikers
greedily accept and gorge themselves. But
the
wine is drugged, and the bikers start
dropping like flies. (And can you
imagine the potency it would take to knock
this crowd out?) When the head evil monk
shows up, announcing himself as One, the
spokesman for He Who Must Remain Silent
Forever (Severn Darden -- a
well known comedic actor, who you may also remember
as
the leader of the mutants in Battle
for the Planet of the Apes),
he babbles in satanic, circular logic for a
while, and then removes a strand of hair from
Helen. (Satanic rites are weird.)
Returning
to the tower, One calls upon
his Master and sacrifices a cat, draining its blood into a cup, and throws the
carcass into the fire. Taking the blood, he
draws a circle around himself, leaving
only a small gap for the Bride of Satan to
enter. He then constructs a crude fetish doll
out of wax and sticks Helen's stolen hair
onto it. Inviting the other black robed
monks to circle up and join the ceremony,
One leads them in a chant to summon their
Master's new Bride. (And
I think they're
supposed to be speaking in
tongues, but it sounds like they're just
strumming their fingers over their lips. Like
I said -- weird.)
Outside,
in the passed out pile of Advocates, Helen
slowly rises. Compelled by One, she is
mesmerized and drawn into the temple. And
at
this point you might think that you’ve
had some spiked wine, too, as she switches
frequently from biker gear to a wedding
dress. When she enters the altar room in a
puff of smoke, One dips some bread into the cat blood and
feeds it to her. And before you know it,
she’s buck-naked and doing a strangely provocative
dance number
around the large fire pit while caressing a very large
snake!
When
the others slowly wake up, Adam notices Helen’s gone.
Hearing the ruckus going on inside the temple,
he rousts everybody else up to go
and rescue her. Inside, One is smearing
blood all over the wax doll. Seeing what they've done to Helen,
Adam and the bikers start kicking evil
monk ass. The
Advocates make quick work of One's minions, but each
biker manages to get blood smeared all
over his face. During the melee, One drops the
wax doll into the fire. As it melts, Helen
screams, but this seemingly frees her from
One's spell. Adam
grabs her and they make their escape.
Day
breaks as the Advocates head further into
the desert. (Yay,
more travelogue footage.) When night
falls and they make camp, Helen drops some
acid and starts doing the standard
freak-out dance around the fire -- that's not
nowhere near as entertaining as her earlier
number. Suddenly, she has a vision of the wax doll,
melting in the fire, and goes screaming
into the night. Adam chases after her,
while the
other bikers decide to mock the satanic
rituals they just witnessed and start
chanting, "oobla doobla ooggla urbla,"
and chase each other around the bonfire.
Mouse (Owen
Orr) decides
to make Shirley (Anna
Lynn Brown) his
own personal Bride of Satan. She’s
willing, but he’ll have to catch her
first. Meanwhile,
one sand dune over, Adam and Helen are in the process of doing
the nasty -- but she throws a hitch into the
foreplay when she bites him on the neck.
Nearby, Mouse and Shirley’s game of tag has
degenerated into a wrestling match. But their
foreplay is interrupted by a several hairy paws
that attack them, and then were treated to not
one, but two, slow-motion throat slashings
-- complete with a geyser of arterial blood. (And
in case you missed it, they repeat it for
you.)
We leave the scene with the
shadows of two monsters savaging the
victims to pieces.
The
next morning, the bikers make the grisly
discovery. (It’s
pretty obvious who the monsters are, but I
will point out that Adam and Helen have no
recollection of their actions.)
Assuming something from the desert
killed them, Adam states that all they can
really do is bury them with beer cans and move on.
Which means more
travelogue footage -- that leads
us to the gas station scene. (Ah,
the gas station interlude, my favorite
part of the movie. More on this later.) The
pudgy and cranky owner is a Mr. Burke --
heavy on the Mister, mister, and he
doesn’t like their kind (Damn
hippy-pinko-commie biker freaks!)
and makes them pump their own gas. He
warns them to be careful and to not burn
his place down, and constantly reminds them
they’re in the desert and that they only
way out is to parachute straight up. What
a great kook.
After
that brief interlude, they’re on the
road again and stop at an old landfill,
filled with the beaten husks of hundreds
of old cars, for
the night. Tarot goes off by himself to
meditate. When Adam finds him, they talk; he thinks they
need to head off to Florida, like the good
old days. But Tarot says something’s
wrong, something bad, and he can’t ride with
them anymore. Adam ignores him and continues
on reminiscing, so Tarot tries harder to
convince him that evil’s afoot. Adam
says to lay off the bad vibes because he’s
starting to freak everybody out with all
the negative waves. Again, Tarot warns that he’s just telling the
truth. Right on cue, Tarot is gripped by another
vision: he’s back in the temple, and is being force fed the
bloodied bread at the foot of a crucified
Helen.
That night,
while the others sleep, the same
furry claws attack the biker standing
watch. The monsters ravage and kill him, and
then toss the body into the bonfire. (They
had lit up the entire landfill, making
things nice and creepy.)
The
next morning, while fighting over the last
beer, the Advocates realize that
someone’s missing again. Finding the burnt remains in the
ashes,
Tarot lays the bad magic trip on everybody
again, but Adam blames the evil monks -- and
has a hankering to break his boot off in a
certain evil monk's ass. So
we’re back on the road again. And it's here
where the movie takes an even more surreal
turn:
A
freak sandstorm blows up onto the highway,
and engulfs the bikers. When the sandstorm
quickly dissipates, the bikers are gone!; vanished before the eyes of the gals
in the trailing ambulance. (I
can’t begin to tell you how effective
this scene is. See illustration.) We
cut to the middle of desert, where the
mystically displaced Advocates find
themselves lost in the sand dunes with
absolutely no idea how they got there.
Since their bikes aren’t built for off road
travel, it takes them awhile to make it
back to the highway. Believing the Monks are behind this,
Tarot doesn't think they should mess with them
anymore, but Adam is determined to settle
the score. And fed up with Tarot's negativity,
Adam sucker punches him. They brawl, but
Tarot is quickly beaten into
submission. However, the fight and mystical detour has taken up too
much valuable daylight, so they have to stop for
the night. And an
eerie silence hangs over the Advocates
gathered around the campfire. But the silence is broken
when Adam sees a vision of a wax dummy --
this time in
his image, melting in the fire. He
obviously freaks out at this, and then starts to
painfully change. Helen sees her wax doll
in the fire, too, and also starts to change.
The other bikers aren’t sure what to make of
what’s happening. Tarot tries to help
Helen, but it isn’t long before the
remaining Advocates are facing two
snarling werewolves. (And
we finally get a good look at them -- and
I think they stole the masks from Paul
Naschy.)
Were-Adam
buzzsaws through a
couple of bikers, while Were-Helen chases
after Tarot.
He circles back to the campfire, and using a
log as a torch, manages to hold her off.
Following his lead, the other Advocates take
up torches and set Helen on fire. She
screams, falls into the campfire, and is
consumed by the flames. We then get a quick blip of her
in the wedding dress, rising up out of the
fire like a Phoenix. Outnumbered,
the remaining werewolf jumps on his bike
and roars off. With torches in hand, the others mount their
bikes and go after
him. They eventually catch up and set him
one fire. Were-Adam quickly loses
control and crashes. His bike explodes,
engulfing him completely.
Led
by Tarot, the
remaining Advocates return
to the temple to avenge their friends.
They head into the altar room, find One
and some other monks. And as each Advocate
picks a partner to beat down, and
raises his arm to strike, they see their
own faces under the monk’s hoods and
quickly
collapse. Summarily defeated, they all succumb to the power of
One, and Tarot is the first to be fed some
bloodied bread at the foot of the
crucified Helen; thus fulfilling his
vision. Creepy.
On
a lonesome highway, out the heat and
rippling haze
of hell, the Devil’s Advocates ride...
The
end
If
I could sum up Werewolves
on Wheels
in one sentence it would probably go
something like this: I like it -- a lot, but I
don’t quite get it; especially
that gonzoid ending. Which
isn’t necessarily a bad thing. At one
point, in a brief moment of clarity, I had
it, and it all made sense, but this was
quickly lost before I could write it down.
That happens to me a lot. But it bears an
important question: When does an exploitation
film move beyond the usual crap to
inspired filmmaking? I think Werewolves
on Wheels
definitely qualifies. Which begs an even
bigger question: Was it by design, or by
some divine cinematic accident?
Now,
a film that promises werewolves on wheels
but doesn't really deliver them until the
70th minute of an 85 minute movie, has a
pretty steep hill to climb. And this movie should
be terrible based on the title alone, but
if you can move beyond your preconceptions,
you can see some pretty ingenious stuff
going on here. The
film itself looks great, and shot with a
real eye for composition and framing, and exploits
it's locales beautifully. You can really
feel the heat of the desert and smell the
sweat of the bikers, so to speak. Director
Levesque has
a thing for fire imagery, and all the
fires in this film are huge, and the
resulting, flickering shadows will have
your eyes playing tricks on you.
With
the barest bones of a plot holding things
together,
there are enough surreal ambiguities to
keep you interested. And the
film does feel like it was made up as they
went along. Case
in point: the gas station scene. From the
camera angles used, and the reaction of the
cranky owner, I don’t think he had a
clue he was being filmed. Either that or
he was a colorful local that they decided
to stick in -- or
maybe they let him in the film to pay for
the gas. Overall,
the acting is above average, and if the
dialogue was improvised, there are no
blaring incidents and everything seems
natural enough. And the southern-fried rock
soundtrack by Don Gere is dang near
perfect. E'yup, I got another song stuck
in the old random play jukebox in my
noggin: "Oh I've got one foot in
heaven, and the other in hell..."
If
the film fails at all, and it's only a
small bump, it's in the make-up and gore
department. The newly formed MPAA came
down hard on the film and a lot of the
gore had to be cut. I don't think the
werewolf costumes are all that bad, but
Levesque probably made the right choice by
keeping them in the shadows and allowing
most of the carnage to be done of screen
or in silhouette. And from what gratuitous
gore shots we get, the MPAA ruling might
have been a blessing in disguise.
As
I said before, there
are several elements of this film that I
just can’t quite figure out, or quite piece
together, and it's really bugging me. Was
Tarot in league with the Satanists to
begin with? He led them down the path to
the devil’s temple in the first place,
right? Right. But then
he did try to save them. And
then he led the late charge to avenge his
friends, right? Right. Maybe it
was his fate -- and he knew it, and he
knew he couldn't change it -- and he was
just fulfilling his destiny. (Oh,
wow.)
So
maybe I do get.
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