Rev up for The Wraith

(repost of a review)

I can't believe I went through the entire decade of the 1980s without ever watching the movie The Wraith.

You know the one I'm talking about: the goofy flick about a ghost sports car and its mysterious black-clad driver that challenges the members of a gang to street races. Every video store open during the 80s was required to have this movie's poster pinned up on its walls.

Charlie Sheen drives the movie's well-worn plot of a murdered man who comes back from the grave to avenge himself upon his killers. It's like High Plains Drifter but with Clint Eastwood trading his spotted pony for a Dodge M4S Turbo Interceptor (according to Wikipedia, a "technology demonstrator vehicle").

The movie opens with a couple of animated balls of light coming down from the night sky (because 80s), zooming across the Arizona highways before colliding to form...The Wraith, an all black sports car, with a black-helmeted, black-jumpsuited asthmatic driver - seriously, as the camera is pulling into a closeup of Mr. Helmet Guy, we hear labored breathing; I guess coming back from the dead is strenuous work. His getup looks like a lovechild of a stillsuit from the movie Dune and a Borg from TV's Star Trek: The Next Generation. Then H.R. Giger puked on it for good measure.

The gang of killers is a hilarious assortment of 80s weirdos and wasteoids: lanky leader Packard Walsh, played by lanky Nick Casavettes, who races hapless motorists for their pink slips (heads up: he always cheats); a strangely coiffed Clint Howard is Rughead (Eraserhead must have been his hairdresser); rounding out the gang are Skank and Gutterboy, a couple of perpetually high tweakers who looked like they were ported over from another 80s' gem, Class of 1984. Note: The Crow, another murdered man returns from the grave for revenge flick also has a gang member named Skank. What are the odds?

This is all just silliness writ large. A pre-Tiger's Blood Sheen makes a good pretty boy, but nothing more. His role requires no acting, just show up, look at prettier Sherilyn Fenn (girlfriend of the murdered boy, and now Packard's "property"), and drive a dirt bike. Spoiler: yes, at the end, we see Mr. Helmet Guy take off his helmet to reveal Charlie Sheen, but, between you and me, I don't believe for a second he drove the sleek ebony Murdermobile in all those races.

Speaking of races, don't expect any true fast or furious action from those in this film. The Wraith's races against the baddies always end with an explosion, and those were fairly decent, but the camerawork and race choreography leading up to the kaboom were substandard: I've seen more intense car chases on the local news.

The movie appears to have been a co-production with a local Dodge dealership because every single car - that's EVERY. SINGLE. CAR - is a Dodge automobile. In this town, Ford spells f-i-g-h-t.

I don't know if I could truly recommend a supernatural car chase movie where the sleazy villain has the name of your grandfather's old sedan (remember the Packard, ya'll?) but I guess if you are sufficiently drunk - and NOT driving anywhere - you could do far worse than to let your eyeballs melt to the sights and sounds of The Wraith.

 (Clint Howard from The Wraith from https://medium.com/every-day-is-movies)

MEGAFORCE is a MEGATURD of a movie

You guys all dodged a major bullet by not watching MEGAFORCE. I honestly can't recall a worse movie; it was equal parts achingly dull and plain stupid.

It is obviously a big loud "boy's cartoon" with all the armored dirtbikes, armored six-wheel jeep things, armored airplanes, and armored armor, but boy's cartoons can still work, if you care to tell a decent story with a beginning, middle and end and also populate that story with interesting characters. Megaforce populated itself with accents-in-lieu-of-characters: Michael Beck (The Warriors), the number two guy on the call sheet, was the loudly accented "Dallas" a cowboy soldier; Edward Mulhare (Ghost and Mrs. Muir and Knight Rider) was the strangely British-accented general from the "Republic of Sardun" (which I guess is south of Ireland and east of Philly), Persis Khambatta (who should have been a Bond girl) was the exotically accented Major Zara, Henry Silva was also a thickly cowboy-accented Duke Guerera, and this not-even-close-to-grand ensemble was led by the non-accented Commander Ace "Call me Hunter" Hunter who acted more like a frat boy meets Valley Girl than the capable leader of a military assault unit.

I honestly don't recall what the plot was because I was beside myself when at the 45 minute mark NOTHING had happened in the movie other than they filmed in the desert because the Megaforce HQ was in the desert and then after a long while they flew to the other side of the world to fight...in the desert.

I remember lots and lots of dust from all the vehicles and dirt bikes rolling around in the desert and then lots of explosions, some in the sky and other on the ground causing more dust, lots and lots of it, to be kicked up. I think this movie was retitled in Japan as "Dust And Explosions Movie Caused By Excitable Man Wearing Fashionable Headband."

Zoran Perisic, he of the Superman: The Movie Zoptic photography process, got a big credit in the opening scenes for the now-as well as then-obvious screen-effects process shots which got big laughs for being so obvious (in the 1978 Superman, they were and are charming). 

Looking at it now, I don't know why kids would like this movie, as that was their target audience. The "action" was simplistic: lots of dirt bikes and a few neat looking six-wheel vehicles tearing up the desert and battling enemy tanks with rockets. Nothing was well-staged or photographed in a fun or unique manner, and all the Megavehicles had a sameness about them (unlike the GI Joe toyline which came out around the same timeframe and was all about variety in characters and vehicles). Aside from Persis being a very attractive woman, none of the characters were fun or memorable - compare the ensemble of Aliens to the group from The Abyss - which one do audiences remember better? Megaforce's group of actors was even more dull than the team in Abyss.

This movie was a giant turkey and it needed to be treated as such. Was Barry Bostwick high on substances while making this movie is the only question I want answered. Lastly, Albert S. Ruddy was the producer of Megaforce. He also produced The Godfather (if you have not seen The Offer on Paramount+ about Ruddy making Godfather you MUST watch it) and before that co-created Hogan's Heroes. Ruddy had such a weird career in Hollywood. He also produced Cannonball Run 1 and 2, the western Bad Girls (with the amazing Jerry Goldsmith score), and Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby.