After a young man is murdered by a road-racing gang of motor-heads, a mysterious fast-driving spirit descends from the sky to take revenge.
1986 delivered a lot of entertaining movies to filmgoers around the world: “Top Gun,” “Aliens,” “Stand by Me,” “Labyrinth,” “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and “Poltergeist II: The Other Side,” to name but a few. In amongst that bevy of titles, was a low-budget feature called “The Wraith,” which starred Charlie Sheen, Nick Cassavettes, Sherilyn Fenn, and Randy Quaid. It is in no way a cult classic but watching it again for the first time since 1986 brought back a lot of memories. Loads of cheesy, cringe-worthy memories.
In “The Wraith,” a mysterious young man named Jake Kesey (Charlie Sheen) appears in the small town of Brooks, Arizona. Immediately smitten with Jake, Keri Johnson (Sherilyn Fenn) befriends him and they both hang out at a sun-and-swim gathering on a local river on the outskirts of town, just to have Packard Walsh (Nick Cassavetes), the leader of a gang of car thieves, pull her away and demand to know who Jake is. Packard views Keri as his property and won’t allow anybody near her, even though she detests him and does not love him. Around the same time as Jake’s arrival, a mysterious helmeted, all-black-clad figure drives into town in a sleek, black Dodge M4S Turbo Interceptor and tracks down Packard and his gang, challenging each of them to a race for pink slips but after every race, Packard’s hoodlums wind up dead, with their eyes gouged out of their head.
As they are mysteriously killed off one by one, slowly but surely, it dawns on Rughead (Clint Howard), one of Packard’s goons, that the figure is seeking retribution for the death of Keri’s former boyfriend, Jamie Hankins, who Packard and his crew killed one night many years ago and then disposed of the body. Because Keri was with Jamie at the time, the trauma of the event left her hospitalized with no memory of how he was killed. With all of Packard’s gang now dead, a race to the death is the only answer Packard will entertain. As he races against the mysterious figure and his Turbo Interceptor, he quickly realizes, much too late, that he may have sealed his own fate.
“The Wraith” is more entertaining now than it was back in 1986, only because so many faces in the film have gone on to bigger and better things, and trying to identify them all is half the fun. Charlie Sheen needs no explanation but Nick Cassavettes, who played the movie’s villain, Packard, like his father before him, John Cassavettes, started out as an actor and then gradually segued into directing and that was a good choice because his performance in “The Wraith” was absolutely horrendous. He was probably cast because of his famous last name but I would rather watch a no-name actor, hired for their genuine acting abilities, give an actual performance than some known name that creates the illusion of a performance instead of actually giving one. Cassavettes has directed such films as “John Q.,” “The Notebook,” “Alpha Dog,” and “My Sister’s Keeper,” and most certainly takes after his father in this department.
Sherilyn Fenn became well known for her portrayal of Audrey Horne in David Lynch’s surrealistic “Twin Peaks” but also appeared in “Wild at Heart,” “Of Mice and Men,” and “Boxing Helena.” And of course, Randy Quaid became famous to generations of filmgoers thanks to his portrayal of Cousin Eddie in the “Vacation” movies. “The Wraith” overflows with cheesy 1980s pop culture references and while the acting is, at times, embarrassing and awkward, director Mike Marvin manages to (just barely) preserve his honor by infusing it with some genuinely thrilling car races and chases. Back in the ’80s, we went to see movies like this for the action, the beautiful bikini-clad girls, and the constant supply of car chases. In other words, the good ol’ days!
Now available on Vestron Video Collector’s Series Blu-ray™ (plus Digital)
