Reeling Backward: "The Wraith" (1986)

"The Wraith" is what happens when a cool idea for a movie gets run over by the '80s.

Or should I say, this 1986 sci-fi/adventure is what happens when filmmakers borrow a whole bunch of ideas from other, better movies and toss them together without much rhyme or reason. This weird, awful, but strangely compelling flick seems like it checked the "all of the above" box in trying to appeal to different demographics.

On the one hand, it's a racing picture about a bunch of hooligans who seem to have taken over the roads, with inept law enforcement holding a tenuous grip on the thin white line between life and death. Then a solitary figure appears driving a super-advanced car out to dispense a little vigilante justice. It's not too hard to see the liberal borrowing from the "Mad Max" movies.

The "Wraith" car itself bears a great resemblance to other futuristic vehicles throughout cinematic history, especially the "Knight Rider" TV show that was popular during that era. This car doesn't talk, but it does seem to exist as an entity of its own that joins its life force to the mission of its driver.

Then there's the drippy romance portion, in which Charlie Sheen and Sherilyn Fenn make gooey eyes at each other, falling almost instantly in love and having sex (not necessarily in that order). Although in actuality, he's secretly her murdered lover, brought back from the dead in an even dreamier form. At times, their pairing has an almost John Hughes feel to it, teenage hormones mixed with fatalistic we-were-meant-to-be-together claptrap.

Occasionally, the Wraith appears outside of his car, and when he does so he wears a black suit of armor that resembles a cross between "Predator" (although that film did not come out until a year later), the boogums from "Alien" and Mad Max's leather outfit.

For some reason, the Wraith has twisty metal rods festooning his suit, and every time he takes revenge on one of the members of the road gang who killed him, they vaporize and disappear. My guess is they're supposed to be braces since the murdered guy was cut up by his enemies and Jake, the reincarnation of him played by Sheen, bears matching scars along his back and throat.

Since his former self didn't sustain any crippling injuries along his arms and legs, it's a puzzle as to why his new body requires support for his limbs. Furthermore, why the heck would they disappear each time he kills one of his killers, as if some sort of prophecy is being fulfilled?

Stylistically, "The Wraith" has some notable qualities, but metaphysically it's roadkill.

Writer/director Mike Marvin populates his film with a bunch of one-note weirdos and stock characters. Sheen seems almost indifferent to his time onscreen -- which, for the top-billed actor, he has surprisingly little of. He plays the classic new guy in town who stands up to the local tough, offering words of encouragement to the local pushed-around shrimp and smoldering gazes for Keri (Fenn), the hot squeeze next door.

Nick Cassavetes has a couple of neat scenes as Packard, the head of the road gang. He has a fixation on Keri, keeping her close by his side despite her constant protestations that she doesn't love him. At one point he coolly slices his hand open in front of her to demonstrate his conviction: "When you can't feel anything, you can do anything."

The gang's M.O. is simple: Find the owner of a hot car, force him to compete in a race for the title to his ride, and then sell it off to fund their own gearhead dreams. Of course, in the classic motif of films of this ilk, the worst piece of weaponry Packard can summon is a switchblade. Despite being set in Arizona, long a land of fierce gun advocates, none of the locals are packing any heat.

The car itself is kind of a write-off. It was based on a concept car, the Dodge M4S, that actually became a pace car for the Indianapolis 500 in the early 1980s. The filmmakers slapped some customized exterior pieces on it, the most noticeable effect being to make the rear end look like it's six feet longer than it should be. Jake, when he turns over the keys to the shrimp at the end of the movie, refers to it as a "Turbo Interceptor," though no one has ever called it this before.

Marvin's race scenes are shot with a keen eye, and the stunts and car crashes are generally pretty cool for a low-budget film. There's some jump-cutting and other effects that were fairly innovative for the time. The Wraith car/driver only seems to have one trick -- racing ahead of his opponent, then stopping in the road to force him to crash into him. After the fireball has subsided, the car reappears magically.

I did greatly enjoy Clint Howard as Rughead, the resident scientific genius of Packard's gang. He designs all sorts of advancements for their cars, though the Wraith shows up with a shotgun and blows them all to pieces before they ever get on the road. There's one terrific scene were Rughead demands the Wraith open his hood so he can attach some sort of jamming doohickey that's supposed to disable the car if a racer runs away -- again, it's something talked about but which never actually comes into play.

Rughead is surprised when the rear compartment of the car opens up instead of the front, and when he peers inside the strange engine actually pulses in a rhythmic, sexual way. The reaction shot of Howard, adorned with an Eraserhead hairdo and his face lit up orange by the glow of the unearthly technology, is a keeper.

For some reason, the Wraith does not identify Rughead as one of his targets, driving right past him at one point to plow into the garage where two other gang members are toiling. Sheriff Loomis, the local lawman played by Randy Quaid who talks a lot but makes few arrests, even declares all of the members of Packard's gang dead, despite the fact Rughead is still kicking.

"The Wraith" is not any kind of quality filmmaking, but I'm still glad I saw it. I was expecting something darker and scarier, and instead it's a big glop of Hollywood cheese, sliced from half a dozen other movies. Still, as a piece of '80s zeitgeist it offers something of a glimpse into the national psyche of the time -- not to mention the feather hairdos and jean jackets.

1.5 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "The Long Riders" (1980)

I had always taken "The Long Riders" to be an overstuffed bit of Hollywood hooey, a sensationalized account of outlaw Jesse James and his gang that, in terms of historical fidelity, landed just this side of "Young Guns."

Turns out it's actually truer to the facts than most Western tales of its ilk.

It certainly has a gimmicky feel, what with the unprecedented in Hollywood history casting of three sets of real-life brothers to play siblings and members of the James-Younger Gang -- the Keaches (James and Stacy) as the Jameses, the Carradines (David, Keith and Robert) as the Youngers and the Quaids (Randy and Dennis) as the Millers.

Actually, four: Christopher Guest and Nicholas Guest have small turns (basically three scenes) as Charlie and Bob Ford, wannabe members of the gang who eventually were allowed by Jesse to join -- after everyone else had quit, been killed or imprisoned.

The Fords, of course, were the ones who betrayed and murdered Jesse James, with Bob shooting him in the back of the head while James was unarmed and had his back turned. This scene is depicted in "The Long Riders" in a curiously flat way, with little visceral impact. It feels more like a tacked-on coda than an essential part of the story.

Narratively, the film seems smaller than its story. At a mere 99 minutes, the movie has to cover a lot of plot spread out over a number of years, with various members of the gangs romancing and marrying women in between robbing banks and trains. Each romantic relationship is essentially given one or two scenes in a fleeting attempt to lend them weight.

The only pairing of any impact is between Cole Younger (David Carradine), who puts on an air of studied nonchalance, and Belle (Pamela Reed), a worldly prostitute who wants him to make an honest woman of her. He's content to let them have their fun whenever their paths cross, and have nothing tying him down. He tells Belle he loves her specifically because she's a whore.

In one of the film's most memorable scenes, she marries a half-Indian named Sam Starr and forces the men to fight over her with cruel-looking oversized knives. Cole wins the duel but abandons Belle in disgust at having to prove himself to her.

This story thread is notable in that, as near as I can determine, it is the only part of "The Long Riders" that is a pure Hollywood concoction. Despite its highly stylized texture, the movie is actually pretty faithful to the  historical facts.

I should amend that to say it is faithful to the general narrative of recorded history, though it alters or muddies some details. For example, an 18-year-old brother of the Youngers, John, is killed in a chance meeting with some agents, and it's depicted as a terrible crime because Jim (Keith Carradine) asserts that his kid brother never rode with the gang or committed any crime. In fact, John did do some robbing with them.

Similarly, the battle with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, which has been hired to track them down, escalates to tragic heights when the lawmen throw a smoke bomb into the Younger matron's house and it explodes, killing their 15-year-old half-brother. The boy was killed, but he was really only nine years old. Not depicted is that the Youngers' mother was also injured in the attack and had to have her arm amputated.

In that age, I would think that chivalrous Southern gentlemen (at least in their minds) would be more riled about their mother being attacked and maimed than anything else. These changes actually serve to make the assault seem less outrageous than it really was.

Stacy and James Keach made this film as a labor of love, producing and co-writing the screenplay along with Bill Bryden and Steven Smith. James has an intriguing take on Jesse James, playing him as a preternaturally serene leader who sees himself as smarter and more important than the members of his gang.

James Keach later segued away from acting and turned more to directing and producing. Johnny Cash and his wife June were so taken with "The Long Riders" that they befriended Keach, and asked him to produce their biopic "Walk the Line."

I hadn't seen "The Long Riders" in at least 20 years. Despite the film's storytelling flaws, I found myself still admiring it on several levels.

The performances throughout have a terse, organic authenticity -- we never feel like the actors are trying to impersonate a historical identity, but use it as a springboard to draw their own characters. For example, I enjoyed the simmering tension that exists between the Jameses and Youngers, erupting at the worst of times.

"The Jameses ride with the Youngers," one of the latter insists, annoyed by references to the Youngers being part of the Jesse James outfit.

There's also a nice quiet scene aboard a train -- for once, they are traveling inside as passengers rather than riding up on horses outside to rob it -- where Cole confides to Frank that he hopes one day to write a book about his memoirs. Frank scoffs at this idea. This is a nod to Cole's actual later life, where he spent more than 20 years in prison and started a respected newspaper for the inmates. He eventually won parole and spent his final days starring in a wild west show with Frank.

The James-Younger Gang effectively met its end with an ill-advised raid on a bank on Northfield, Minn. Why the former Civil War bushwackers, who confined nearly all their felonious activity to Missouri and surrounding states, decided to travel hundreds of miles north to knock over a bank is unclear.

Things go awry -- the film implies the townsfolk knew they were coming and set a trap for them -- and the outlaws are caught in the street and torn to pieces. Though none of the Jameses or Youngers are actually killed in the conflict, their wounds are missive. I vividly remember Keith Carrradine getting shot through the face, a bullet going in one cheek and exploding out the other. Cole famously was shot 11 times, which the prison doctor dubs a record, but one of dubious distinction.

The town of Northfield still celebrates the bloody event with an annual reenactment -- much the same way my former home of Ocklawaha, Fla., reenacts the Ma Barker shootout every year.

I think three things make "The Long Riders" a noteworthy film, or rather three people: director Walter Hill, cinematographer Ric Waite and composer Ry Cooder.

Hill's staging of the violence has a horrifying sort of loveliness. He often resorts to fetishistic slo-mo to capture the impact of bullets ripping through the characters' flesh, or bodies hurtling through the air after impact. The excellent action scenes are aided by Waite's elegiac camera work, which juxtaposes moments of cringe-inducing violence with poetic compositions.

Both filmmakers seem enraptured by the long gray duster coats the gang always wear. This, along with their lack of masks and penchant for calling each other by their real names, often and loudly, makes one wonder why it took the Pinkertons so long to find them.

Cooder's old-timey musical score, mixed with actual songs from the era performed at weddings and saloons, is positively a delight to listen to. It's more at the forefront than most music in movies.

"The Long Riders" is more or less a forgotten Western, made during the artistic valley of the genre between 1969 and 1991, when "Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid" and "The Wild Bunch" made the format seem anachronistic, and Clint Eastwood breathed it back to life with "Unforgiven."

Though hardly deserving to be counted among those films' numbers, it's certainly more memorable than its non-existent reputation suggests.

3 stars out of four