Mechanical Terror Week: Wheels of Terror

Here in my car, I used to feel safest of all.  Unfortunately, I watched a film called Wheels of Terror and it led me to this forced reference/Gary Numan joke.  In the echelon of killer car films, this one is pretty damn low.  A lot of people know Christine, some people know Maximum Overdrive/Trucks (movie/TV movie) and a few people remember The Car.  This one- not so much.  To be fair, it was a made for TV film.  Of course, Dark Night of the Scarecrow was also made for TV, but is remembered fondly as a cult hit.  This may help explain it, however.  The director was Christopher Cain, who has also made such works as The Amazing Panda Adventure, The Next Karate Kid and Gone Fishin'.  That helps a bit, I think.  The film is about either a killer car or a killer man in a car, depending on how you want to look at it.  Let's go out to Firestone to find some replacements for our...

The film begins with a long shot of a Quarry.  Gee, we won't see this location again, will we?  We cut to a car driving around and just generally trying to look menacing.  Unless your name is Gravedigger, it's a little hard to achieve that.  After this, we get a lot of character introduction, background and all of that stuff that we care very little about most of the time.  All you need to know is that there is a single mother taking care of her kid in this desert 'non-town.'  Trouble brews when the car drives up alongside a young girl, pulls her in and drives off.  Who is the man behind this crime (assuming there is one)?  You'll have to wait and see, folks!  We get the cliche 'police do a manhunt for a missing kid' scene too.  This film is just doing nothing to stand out at all, but I'm sticking with it.  Eventually, they find the kid's body in a river, upsetting the whole town.  Well, at least this will only happen once...

Yeah, not so much.  The killer/killer car strikes again, grabbing another kid.  There are a lot of simple things you can do to avoid this, but then you wouldn't have a film.  Instead of staying with the kids at all times when they're not inside, we get to see the woman chase down the car in her own.  Unfortunately, she's chasing a muscle car in one that's more of a 'chess club member' car, so he gets away.  We get more police talk and drama about the missing kid.  Oddly, they don't wrap this one up like the other one.  Are you only allowed to have one 'dead kid found in the water' scene a movie?  Our heroine is concerned about the recent turn of events and decides to stay with her kid at all times.  Blah blah blah more family drama.  As the mother goes to pick up the kids from after school, the car drives up and grabs her daughter.  Falling asleep on the job, huh?

I hope you like car chases!  If so, you're in luck.  The last forty minutes of the film or so are one, prolonged chase scene.  Our heroine is driving a small school bus with a few kids in it and is following the car.  She can't stop to call the police, she explains, because her kid will be killed if they lose the guy.  The chase is broken down into several sections, including one bit in a junkyard and another bit involving a motorcycle cop getting caught in the middle.  She continues to chase the car until her daughter can climb out.  By her daughter, of course, I mean a stunt-person in a wrongly-colored wig.  The pair get reunited and the car crashes into the Quarry- what did I say earlier?- and explodes.  Oh good, we get no explanation or closure.  The End.

Drive until I get angry.  The plot of this movie is about as minimalist as you can get.  A guy in a car is killing kids, so a parent must chase him/her.  Maybe it's about a killer car possessed by moonlight or aliens.  I tend to believe that it's just a guy, but they never do attempt to show you who's behind the wheel.  We don't even get a voice or a burned hand a la Joy Ride/Joy Ride 2.  It would be nice to see a little more explanation in a plot, wouldn't it?  Things shouldn't just happen for no reason and then just stop happening.  When you explain things, we can make an emotional connection and relate to the characters.  This film is just an excuse to see a muscle car drive around in a desert area and crash into things.  I just hoped that you would give me something, even if it was silly as hell.  Take us away, shots that prove how silly the wig used for the stunt-person was...

Next up, what's scarier than a normal serial killer?  A serial killer driving a monster truck, of course!  Stay tuned...