Another Outposter contribution! Truly we are blessed. Once again it is Hawkzino stepping up. This time he is sharing his thoughts on a movie we reviewed here before – The Wraith. So we have a second opinion. Let’s get into it.
The Wraith
I recently re-watched The Crow at a 30th anniversary screening and was reminded of the first time I saw it, way back in 1994. The movie has grown on me over the years and is now an all-time favorite, but my initial reaction to it back then was more subdued and could be summed up in one short sentence:
“Oh, they remade The Wraith.”
The Crow version 1.0. Because they did. Kind of.
A young guy is murdered by a gang of thugs, returns from the dead, and gains his revenge by bumping them off one-by-one. One of the gang members is even called Skank, same as The Crow, and that can’t be a coincidence, right? It’s not a common name. I mean…I’ve met a skank, but that wasn’t their actual name.
Another freaky connection is that someone was killed on set during production. Not the star this time, but assistant cameraman Bruce Ingram, to whom the movie is dedicated.
The Wraith was released in 1986 and stars a pre-Platoon Charlie Sheen. Apparently, he filmed his scenes in ONE DAY and flew out to the Philippines to shoot Platoon straight after. Oliver Stone was pissed when he saw it because he thought it might undermine his movie somehow. He won an Oscar, so I guess that shut him the fuck up.
Sheen looks very young in this, all fresh-faced and breezy. There’s no angst, no face paint and I doubt he’s listened to a song by The Cure in his life. Maybe he would have benefitted from making this after the experience of filming Platoon had put some hair on his ass and given him a thousand-yard stare. But we are where we are.
So The Wraith is The Crow except with street racing and daylight and loads of other differences. The movie opens with a bunch of shooting stars/UFOs/angels (it’s never really made clear) coming to earth and flying at impossible speeds along mountain roads like in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, before crashing into each other to create a MAGICAL SUPERCAR!
The car in question is a Dodge M4S Turbo Interceptor PPG Pace Car, whatever that means.
It’s a real vehicle that was used as a pace car for the Indy 500 in the eighties and I can’t tell if it’s beautiful or ugly. I thought it was badass as a kid, but when I saw it again as a young adult I thought it looked ridiculous. The good news is that everything becomes cool again given enough time, so I love it now. It might still be ugly though. I’m not judging. I’m no oil painting myself.
We then see The Wraith himself, dressed in head-to-toe leather and wearing a bike helmet, even though he’s driving a car. The next day, Sheen’s Jake Kesey rolls into town on a dirt bike wearing double denim and no shirt. The world is upside-down.
The movie makes little effort to hide that Jake is The Wraith, so it isn’t much of a spoiler to say it straight out. Early on we see scars on Jake’s back while he’s sunbathing, then we cut to a flashback of a gang murdering a guy called Jamie Hankins while he’s in bed with his girlfriend. His stab wounds match the scars on Jake’s back. The only mystery is why his name has changed and why Jamie isn’t played by Charlie Sheen.
It’s not a continuity error, because Jamie’s brother Billy introduces himself to Jake and doesn’t recognize him. From this, I can only surmise that The Wraith resurrection rules differ from The Crow. Whereas Eric Draven literally crawls out of his own grave, here it’s more like the spirit of Jamie Hankins has been transplanted into a new body, with just his original scars to remind him that the past is real. It’s a nice touch.
Of course, none of this means that Jake is The Wraith, only that he’s the reincarnated Jamie Hankins. But the opening scene has already established The Wraith’s supernatural origins, so it’s pretty clear it’s all linked. I think the movie would work better if it didn’t reveal its hand so early, but I’m not in charge of these decisions.
Jamie is murdered because the gang leader, Packard (Nick Cassavetes), is obsessed with Jamie’s girlfriend Keri (Sherilyn Fenn).
Keri isn’t killed alongside her boyfriend like in The Crow. She’s knocked out and wakes up with no memory of the attack. It seems odd that the gang would pin their hopes of not being caught on Keri having amnesia, but it works out.
Packard’s gang is a whole jolly club, with jolly pirate nicknames: Skank, Gutterboy, Oggie, Minty, and Rughead.
Rughead is played by Ron Howard’s brother, Clint Howard, who is bald in real life but wears an Eraserhead wig that brings him up to about 5 feet 2 inches tall (in heels). Gutterboy has dirt smeared on his face the whole movie for some reason, but his best mate Skank looks like he spends a lot of time on his appearance with his multi-coloured mohawk, make-up and jewellery. He also drinks hydraulic fluid and huffs WD-40 for kicks. I love little details like that.
Packard’s henchmen follow his orders with no questions asked. No favor is too big to ask, apparently. I wish I had friends like that. They spy on Keri for him, build expensive bespoke engines for his hot rod, assist in murdering his love rivals, kidnap women and threaten to rape them to force their boyfriends into racing Packard for pink slips.
I’m pretty sure he’s not paying them, but he does own a flick knife, and nothing says the eighties like a hood with a flick knife. He likes to flick it out and wave it in their faces, and that’s enough to keep them in line.
Keri works at a burger stand as a roller-skating waitress. Billy, who is the cook, offers her a ride home but Packard is not happy about that. He makes Billy his usual offer: a race, with the winner keeping both cars. Billy lucks out when the Wraith arrives and they race him instead. Big mistake.
One issue I have with this movie is that the Wraith races three gang members in separate scenes, and each one plays out exactly the same. They race side-by-side for a bit, but he’s toying with them. He accelerates away, then stops in the middle of the road and lets them crash into him. Because he’s got a magical car that can disappear and reappear at will, the Wraith is unharmed while the gang member is engulfed in a fiery inferno.
The tactic works, so I understand why he doesn’t change it, but the movie could do with more variety.
Two interesting points to note about each kill.
One: even though the gang member should have burned up in the fire, his body is found naked but unmarked, with his eyes hollowed out. The movie makes a big deal out of it but doesn’t bother to explain it. The director has said he wanted it to evoke a lightning strike. An act of God maybe, I don’t know.
Two: the Wraith has braces on his arms and legs that I thought were part of the uniform because it gives him a more robotic look. But with each kill, one of the braces vanishes. Its significance is never explained, but the director said it means he’s getting stronger with each kill. That doesn’t make sense to me because he’s already invincible. I like to think of it more metaphorically – he’s throwing off the chains of the past, or maybe even ridding himself of the Wraith so he can become fully human again.
There is some variety in the action outside of the race scenes, such as when the Wraith storms the gang’s garage and shoots up their cars with a futuristic shotgun. He doesn’t kill any gang members at this point, even though he could. I guess he likes tormenting them before killing them, which reminded me of the hook-handed killer in I Know What You Did Last Summer. I’m looking at that movie in a whole different light now.
Was he the good guy?
Jake and Keri’s relationship takes a while to get going. They connect early in the movie and arrange to meet at the burger joint, but we don’t see him again for 31 minutes of screen time. That’s a lot, seeing as the whole movie clocks in at just under an hour and a half. I guess Charlie Sheen really did film his scenes in one day. When he finally shows up, Jake and Keri get chased by Skank and Gutterboy and Jake impresses her with his dirt bike riding skills (that sounded wrong).
Action is always a good shortcut to romance, which is a good job because the movie’s nearly over.
Skank and Gutterboy are the only gang members not killed in races. The Wraith drives his car at speed into their garage and the whole place explodes. Rughead survies because he didn’t take part in killing Jamie (and also he left the garage right before – very timely).
After The Wraith kills Packard in the final race (spoiler!), he reveals himself to Keri. He tells her that his Jake Kesey form is the closest he could come to who he once was, which still explains nothing about his origins. He tells her to pack light for a short trip, but it’s never explained where they are going.
My first thought was that they are travelling to the afterlife together, but that doesn’t make sense because she’s alive. Maybe he’s an alien created from Jamie’s DNA and he’s taking her back to his spaceship.
The final shot is of them riding away on his bike but they don’t disappear or fly away or do anything weird, so it might not be either of those. Maybe I’m overthinking it and they’re just going to a nearby motel to fuck.
Before he leaves, Jake gives the magic car to Billy. Gee, thanks. It’s only wanted for multiple homicides. I’m sure the police will let him hold on to it. Apparently, the instructions are in the glove compartment, which means it is an actual constructed vehicle and not of supernatural origin. It’s got to be aliens, right? God wouldn’t make anything that cool. I’m calling it.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention that Randy Quaid plays the most useless sheriff in movie history. He picks over each death scene, puts the heat on Packard’s gang, asks a lot of questions but achieves absolutely nothing. He’s given a lot of screen time but his actions don’t affect the plot at all. Events just play out around him. At least The Crow gave Ernie Hudson something to do in the last act.
Anyway, this movie isn’t a patch on The Crow, but it has its merits plus it gets an extra half-star for nostalgia and Sherilyn Fenn’s twin peaks (yes, we see them). Gentlemen, start your engines.
