WEREWOLVES ON WHEELS
Starring Stephen Oliver, D.J. Anderson, Barry McGuire, Severn Darden

Directed by Michel Levesque

Dark Sky Films

“We must begin in blood, so that we may end in blood!”

Dig, if you will, the Devil’s Advocates motorcycle gang, tearing up the Southern California countryside on a hell run, beating up hayseed motorists, molesting retarded gas station attendants, harassing herds of cows. Seriously bad motor scooters, to be sure. But the gang meets their match in some real devil’s advocates – namely, a cult of Satanic monks led by One (Darden), who knocks out the One Per Centers with some drugged wine and lures Helen (D.J. Anderson), head mama to Advocates leader Adam (Stephen Oliver from Russ Meyer’s Motor Psycho), into a black magic ritual. The gang revives in time to stomp some monk ass and rescue Helen before retiring to the high desert to cool out, but unbeknownst to them, Helen is now a werewolf, and she’s quick to pass along the curse to Adam. The newly furry pair begins to pick off the rest of the gang, and only occult-minded Tarot (Barry McGuire of “Eve of Destruction” fame, who became a devout Christian after making this film) knows the solution. Too bad they handed out a beatdown to him and left him by the side of the road miles back…

My buddy Nick and I were recently discussing the truly atrocious Night of the Lepus, a notorious ‘70s stinker about giant killer rabbits (ask Sleazegrinder about it), and our talk got me to thinking how Werewolves on Wheels just missed being a turd of similarly epic proportions. A movie about werewolf bikers is a really, really stupid idea, but director Michel Levesque (who also made the women-in-prison pic Sweet Sugar, and served as production designer on Russ Meyer’s Supervixens and The Incredible Melting Man) is wise to keep the monsters on the back burner for most of the picture and focus instead on atmosphere, especially in the ritual scene (though D.J. Anderson’s naked snake dance is the best visual effect) and the concluding fiery brawl and chase through the desert at night. It’s a better looking movie that it should be, thanks to cinematographer Isidore Mankovsky (later an episodic TV veteran), and there’s an excellent score of ominous fuzztone by Don Gere, and the hairy, leather-and-demin-bedecked cast bluffs their way through the script with admirably affected bravado. Plus, there’s very little fat around the script by Levesque and David M. Kaufman – yeah, it’s riddled with holes and anachronisms, but it never drags or gets bogged down by a message or silly psychedelic sequences. In short, it’s an agreeable drive-in flick that should only rank the groove of the most ardent biker movie heads or horror fiends.

Dark Sky’s DVD is widescreen and includes the original trailer and radio spots, as well as a trailer for another biker flick on their roster, The Losers. Levesque and Kaufman provide a light-hearted commentary track in which they discuss shooting in the desert, pulling off some potentially dangerous stunts, dealing with a heavily medicated cast, which improvised a good portion of its dialogue, and how the Tibetan Book of the Dead influenced their script. You’ll just have to pick the disc to figure out that one. ________________________________________________________

- Paul Gaita