Review: 1971’s Werewolves on Wheels
Yes. That’s the answer to the question you were wondering. Yes. There are werewolves. Yes, they ride motorcycles.
And with that out of the way, we can talk about the enormity of this movie and the hundreds of things it also adds besides werewolves riding motorcycles. Because, beyond the obvious, there is so much more to this movie. There’s cultists, gang dynamics, tarot readings, beards (so many, many beards), Satan, existentialism, and frolicking bikers before the darkened days of “no homo”.
People, this is WEREWOLVES ON WHEELS…
The Plot:
A biker gang be biker-ganging. They are a group of friends who love their hogs and live to ride them. They also love to drink beer and hug each other. They’re just living life, man, and those be damned to try to stop them.
They have cool biker names like…”Scarf” and “Movie”. I’m sure it was much more menacing in the 70’s. However, our leader is the stern but patient, Adam (Stephen Oliver in a beard just as luscious as James Brolin in The Amityville Horror). His main “old lady” is Helen (D.J. Anderson), who is basically the biker mom of the group. And then there’s the mysterious (sometimes sexist and bitchy) Tarot…who plays tarot cards. Again, I’m sure that their names were much more menacing back then.
During their biker adventures (mostly just drinking and free love), they happen across a land owned by Satanist cultists…which they decide is the best place to get drunk and have an orgy.
But, alas, it is not.
Soon, a strange trace overcomes Helen and she starts trace-fire-dancing with a large nope-rope, and begins to change into a Satanic werewolf. Soon, bikers are killed off one-by-one in wonderfully 70’s-style slow-mo deaths.
Tarot, ever the psychic, knows that something is wrong and tries to save Adam and the group before it’s too late. But can this wet-blanket go toe-to-toe with Satan himself, or is this band of beer-chugging brothers doomed to eternal damnation?
Thoughts:
I will be honest, I saw the cover and immediately thought, “Oh, this is going to be on Manos: The Hands of Fate levels of crap…terrific!”
However, within the first shots, I was pleasantly surprised. The camera-work is actually very well done. The music (albeit being for a biker-exploitation film in the 70’s) was actually good and engaging. The costumes were terrific and while the acting was camp-good, there were a few scenes that felt actually genuine.
I’m going to detail it out in my brain roll segment, but the chemistry between Adam and Tarot mixed well together. Their scenes were the most enjoyable because they came off as the most genuine and expressive. D.J. Anderson did a great job with a lot of trope-y schlock coming her way. She was beautiful and fit into the role perfectly.
There were quite a few shots that were artistically done and diverted from other horror of the time and what was to come. The editing was well-done and kept the pace (with the exception of the “filling up our hogs at the gas station” scene).
So, all in all, this movie both exceeded and also met my expectations (which honestly were a bit low).
Brain Roll Juice:
So much. So, so much to say.
Okay I don’t know if you know this, but sometimes I have a special radar for certain things, especially in cinema (hint: it’s queer-related). Now granted the Hays code in Hollywood was ceremonially axed in 1968, it left a LOT of ripples in its wake, some continuing to this day.
We’ve all heard the shaking of heads and the utterance of “go woke, go broke” whenever a high-budget movie tries to step out of the trope-like binds and doesn’t financially succeed.
Hell, even my good pal, Jim Phoenix brought this up in our review of The Shed. Gay anything in a movie is a risk. Honest LGBTQ+ representation that actually looks queerness in the face and examines it is seen as a high-risk, low-reward venture for studios. Movies that are schlock and exploitation are more acceptable, but it’s still…not exactly welcomed.
So, what’s my pay-off to this massive lead-up? Hear me out.
There’s a lot of chemistry between Adam and Tarot. And while Tarot is kind of a bitchy dude, he’s a likeable character (at least I like him). In fact, if made today, he’d probably be portrayed by a female. He is supportive and even virginal, a Cassandra-type figure trying to save his…very good friend.
And I’m not saying that their relationship is that of a sexual one. The vibes I got from Tarot are even that of an ace, or an aromantic ace. He’s fiercely loyal and emotionally attached to Adam, which seems to be partially if not wholly reciprocated.
Hear me out…Hollywood, sell me the rights to this film for a Del Taco meal, and I’ll re-write and direct. Same characters, but there’s a romantic triangle between Adam, Helen, and Tarot.
Helen senses something’s off, but not exactly what, meanwhile Tarot and Adam get closer, but Helen gets angry because Adam denies (or doesn’t recognize it yet). Helen, wanting to keep Adam close to her, willingly goes to the cult and asks for the power “to destroy anyone who gets in her way”. Of course Satan is a dick and makes her a werewolf.
Now Tarot can sense something (he’s still a psychic like in the original movie) is not quite right and tries to warn Adam about it. Adam thinks he’s just being a dick to Helen and gets defensive, thinking Tarot is trying to push their ambiguous relationship into something he’s not ready for.
Helen begins to kill the others because of stupid shit they say or do, and starts to lose more and more control over her werewolf-ness. It’s scaring her, but she can’t come clean because then Adam might leave her.
It all culminates into a final scene when Adam must choose who to believe – his lying but devastated lover, or Tarot and their confusing feelings. Both take courage to confront, and honesty is the only way he can save them. Will love win or will he doom them all?
I have a few ideas for the ending, but I ain’t gonna spoil it for y’all.
Anyway, Hollywood people, hit me up on Twitter (@brannykj). I got the goods.
Bottomline:
Super fun. Super retro. Super beards and biker lingo. A gem of exploitation nostalgia. If that’s your mama jama, then you’ll be all over this flick.
(4 / 5)
We’ve now reached the end of Fallout, season one. As I mentioned during the last review, I was heartily concerned that this show, like so many others, was going to drop the ball at the finale and ruin an entire season.
Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. This episode was everything it needed to be and more.
Let’s discuss.
The story
We begin our story with Maximus returning to the Brotherhood of Steel compound. He has a head, which he is claiming is the real head of Wilzig.
I don’t know why he thought that was going to work.
Of course, it doesn’t. The elder cleric is about to kill Maximus until Dane says that they hurt their foot.
Because of this, the Brotherhood is sent out to get the head. Or rather, what’s inside of it. They head to the city run by Moldaver. This happens to be the same place Lucy and The Ghoul are headed.
There, Lucy does manage to find her father. What she ends up finding is so much more than she wanted to find.
What worked
The first thing I have to discuss is how seamlessly the storylines of the series combined.
Each of our four main characters has been on their own journey. Lucy is trying to save her father. Maximus wants to become a knight. The Ghoul wants to find his family. Norm wants to know what’s going on in Vault 31.
I sure wasn’t expecting all of these stories to come together in the way that they did. And to preserve the ending, I don’t dare say more. I will only say that yes, all four stories tie in perfectly with one another. By the end, two characters end up having the very same goal.
As I hinted before, I did not see the twist ending coming.
Yes, we might have guessed some things from the last episode. We of course guessed that Lucy’s dad was involved in some nefarious and probably sci-fi way. But the way this story twists at the end is nothing short of serpent-like. Which is why I cannot go into too much detail here. If you haven’t seen it yet, you need to experience it blind.
Finally, I can give the Fallout season finale the most important praise I can ever give a finale. It did its number one job, getting us excited for season two. We have answers, but now we have new and more exciting questions. And even better, we have a desire to see vengeance done.
What didn’t work
Now that the season is done, though, I can bring up something that bothered me through all eight episodes.
I don’t buy Lucy and Maximus’s relationship.
Maybe because it’s rushed. Maybe because the two actors don’t have a lot of chemistry. Maybe it’s because I’m not sure even now either character could tell you a single thing about the other. There is just no spark between the two. So their love story feels tacked on. I honestly feel like their love story could have been removed from the show entirely and it would have no negative impact.
I also didn’t buy Dane’s confession. This is a minor spoiler, but it comes up early in the episode. Dane confesses that they hurt their foot so that they wouldn’t have to go into the wastelands.
And at first, I kept expecting Maximus to thank them later. I honestly thought that they were just lying to save Maximus’s life. But no, as it turns out, they were not.
But it just doesn’t make sense. The motivations don’t jive. I honestly think it would have been better for the story if they had lied to save Maximus’s life.
At least then there’d be one other Brother of Steel who had some nobility.
In the end, this first season of Fallout was everything I could ask for. So far as I can tell, it was everything fans of the Fallout franchise could ask for. There wasn’t a bad episode in the bunch. Honestly, the only real complaint I had was that the season was so short.
I’ll be counting down the days to season two, and I hope you’ll be joining me then. Because war, war never changes.
(5 / 5)
If you like my work, you can check out my latest science fiction/horror novel, Nova, launching on May 17th. Pre-orders are available now on Amazon.
Episode seven of Amazon’s Fallout is the penultimate episode. This is often when a series goes off the rails and starts to mess things up. After being burned so often recently, I was apprehensive when this episode began.
Thankfully, this was a fear that did not come to pass. And so far, Fallout’s finale is doing just fine.
The story
A lot happened in this episode, so we’re just going to skim over some of the more important storylines. We’ll start with Lucy and Maximus, in Vault 4. Lucy has discovered what she believes is a secret collection of monsters. But of course, it turns out that it’s simply people that the vault dwellers discovered and are trying to help heal. But her meddling around was enough for them to kick her out of the vault. With two weeks’ worth of food and water, of course.
But Maximus assumes they’re going to do something much worse. And so he steals their power coil to fight through the perfectly innocent people and save Lucy.
Meanwhile, we dive further into The Ghoul’s past, when he was still Western star Cooper.
After attending a Communist meeting, he’s approached by Lee Moldaver. She suggests that Vault Tech is hiding something, something terrible. And she tells Cooper that his wife Barbara knows more about this than she’s letting on. Moldaver gets Cooper to bug Barbara’s Pip Boy, and listen in on an important meeting.
Poor Cooper hears far more than he wants to.
War, war never changes.
What worked
I would like to first point out that this was one of the funniest episodes so far. I mean, it got incredibly tragic and sad by the end. But it also had some great laugh-out-loud moments. This should be a surprise to no one, with such an array of comedians guest starring. Chris Parnell was in the last episode as well but is now joined by the incredibly funny Fred Armisen as DJ Carl. This is of course not his first foray into the funny and spooky world, as he also played Uncle Fester in Wednesday.
Most of what makes this episode funny is the character’s understated and deadpan responses to wild situations. When Maximus returns the energy coil and is greeted by a simple thank you. When Thaddeus gets an arrow through his neck, and slowly realizes that hey, he might be a ghoul. These were hilarious because they could have been truly dark moments. But because this world is so dark, and the characters have already been through so much, they’re simply done. They take all of this in stride because of course that’s what’s happening. It’s par for the course for them.
On the other hand, we’ve finally seen the full extent of The Ghoul/Cooper’s past. And it’s so much worse than we could have imagined. I assumed that he’d lost his beloved wife and daughter in the atomic blasts two hundred years ago, somehow not dying with them and instead turning into a literal and figurative monster. The truth is so much worse. I’ll do my best not to spoil the ending. But I will say this. There is nothing more painful than mourning someone and hating them at the same time. And it’s easy to see how Cooper turned into The Ghoul. That sort of pain could drive anyone mad.
This balance between comedy and tragedy is one of the reasons why this episode worked so well. It’s one of the reasons why the series is working so well. It manages to combine the core tenets of theater in a way that never compromises the strengths of either. The eventual downfall of Thaddeus is a great example of this because it’s both tragic and funny. We’ve seen what happens to ghouls, and it’s a horrible end. But as he’s hardly been a sympathetic character, we can all get a good laugh at his predicament as well.
The sheer amount of good old-fashioned gore doesn’t hurt either, of course.
What didn’t work
All that being said, there was one thing that bothered me about this episode. And it was the reveal of Vault 4’s big secret.
Honestly, I was expecting the Vault 4 storyline to go way darker. I wanted it to go way darker. While I’ve never played these games myself, I know enough about the story to say that these vaults are not the bastions of safety and morality that they have so far been portrayed as. And while that has certainly been alluded to, we haven’t seen it.
We haven’t seen the depravity in these vaults. And it’s there. But maybe we just haven’t gotten to it yet.
In the end, The Radio did exactly what it needed to do. It set us up to have most of our questions answered in the season finale. And I can’t wait to see how it all ends.
(4 / 5)
If you like my work, you can check out my latest science fiction/horror novel, Nova, launching on May 17th. Pre-orders are available now on Amazon.
Amazon Prime’s Fallout has continued to be a suspenseful delight. And with the last episode’s dramatic cliffhanger, I was certainly looking forward to this one.
Thankfully, it did not disappoint.
The story
We start our story with Lucy and Maximus waking up in a decontamination room in Vault 4. They’re welcomed guests, once they’re done with decontamination.
Vault 4 at first seems very much like Vault 33 to Lucy. She’s surprised, however, to find that a lot of people who live there are actually from the surface. And the people who live in this vault are, well, a bit mutated. Their overseer, named Benjamin and played by the hilarious Chris Parnell, has just one eye in the middle of his face. Some people have extra limbs or missing ones. And yet it’s clear that everyone’s living together in peace and companionship.
At least, that’s what it’s supposed to look like. There is, after all, the matter of the weird cult the surface dwellers seem to have formed. And, the small matter of the vault level no one is supposed to go to. It should come as no surprise that, of course, that’s exactly where Lucy finds herself before the episode is over.
Of course, this episode wouldn’t be complete without checking in with the Ghoul. And his part of the story is, honestly, more compelling.
We see him apprehended by people referring to themselves as The Government. And while he appears to be a prisoner, it’s clear soon enough that he’s the one in charge.
Far more compelling are his flashbacks to his past. While his wife, Barb, is starting to be more secretive, he learns more than he wants to about Vault Tec. He also learns that the Communist party in Hollywood might know more about what Barb does for a living than he does. And it’s clear soon that she never wanted him to know.
For good reason.
What worked
I first want to draw attention to the excellent way we are learning about the Ghoul. As we learn more and more about his past, we can see how he’s become the monster he is today. It’s clear that once upon a time he had everything he could want. A lovely home, a family he lived for, and a successful career. And he lost all of that, even his dog. And with those losses, he lost his humanity in more ways than one.
But I also think we’re seeing signs that his humanity at least isn’t as lost as he thought it was.
On a lighter note, I loved Maximus’s response to the vault. While he’s apprehensive at first, he is swept away by the welcome basket. He’s lived his whole life hungry, barely surviving, and suddenly he has food. Good food. Caviar and oysters. He has a warm robe and TV and a safe place to exist. It must have been like stepping into a fairy tale for him. And while it wasn’t exactly helpful for Lucy, it’s completely relatable that he decided to sink into a chair and have a snack in front of the TV for a while.
What didn’t work
While this episode was mostly good, I do have one complaint. When Lucy is first meeting with Overseer Benjamin, we see him accidentally drinking a cup of coffee that has gotten moldy.
Now, this makes perfect sense in our world to convey someone too busy and forgetful to clean up old mugs. But it’s hard to fathom someone living in a Vault in which every resource is carefully monitored, letting something like coffee go bad. It’s a small detail, and it was funny. Also more relatable than I’d like to admit. But in this instance, in this world, it was jarring.
So far this season has been intense. There’s a lot of intrigue and mystery. There’s a lot of high emotions. And there’s a lot on the line for everyone. Maybe, for one character, more than we’ve ever realized before.
Good thing we still have two episodes to discover what’s happening.
(4 / 5)
If you like my work, you can check out my latest science fiction/horror novel, Nova, launching on May 17th. Pre-orders are available now on Amazon.
