The Wraith (1986)

               The ability to rapidly and widely spread information over the internet has had some inconsistent and unexpected effects over the past couple of decades. I don’t think it’s controversial to claim that it’s been a mixed bag. On the one hand we can instantly blast out news and weather alerts for affected communities, on the other hand disinformation merchants can piggyback on those same signals to gain influence by spreading lies. Another one of those unexpected effects is the way formerly academia-only terms have broken containment and escaped into the wilder culture where they run free and mutate into unrecognizable shapes through a society-wide game of telephone.

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              Take the term ‘toxic masculinity,’ which originally referred to facets of traditional masculinity that were harmful to the adherents. The phrase was intended to highlight aspects of traditional male gender roles that were harmful to the men themselves. This included things like suppressing emotions, engaging in risky and self-destructive behavior, the expectation of heterosexuality, the kinds of things that certainly could hurt other people but are primary directed inward in a negative way. Once the phrase started spreading everyone flattened the nuance of the term, losing the fact that ‘toxic’ means a particular kind of masculinity and isn’t describing the concept itself and everyone started using it incorrectly as shorthand for saying that men are terrible. Which they are, but that’s not what the original phrase was pointing out.

              The same thing happened with the ideas behind ‘the death of the author’ and ‘separating art from the artist,’ different spins on the same basic point. I’m not going to break out Barthes or anything, I just want to point out that ‘death of the author’ refers to the idea that meaning can be found in works that wasn’t consciously put there by the people who made them, while ‘separating art from the artist’ examines whether moral failings by an artist necessarily impacts the morality of the art. What neither of those terms refers to is the ability to still read those dumb Harry Potter books even though its author is a raging transphobe. People now deploy these phrases as ‘get out of jail’ free cards for still giving money to assholes. Do you know how much I’d love to be able to watch ‘Payback’ again? It’s one of the most compulsively rewatchable movies I’ve ever seen, but every time I start watching the moment I see Mel Gibson’s face I’m just out.

              The fact that the internet has ruined these terms doesn’t ruin the original ideas, nestled back in their proper academic contexts they’re as useful as always. These concepts even impact how much research I do for these reviews and what kind. The reason I keep quoting Wikipedia and IMDB and not much else is because they’re the closest I can find to truly neutral sources of information. I skim the plot summary to make sure it fits the theme, then I watch the movie, then I do a little bit of research on production dates and budgets and type up my thoughts. What I don’t do is read other reviews or watch interviews with the cast or crew. I do take some context of the movie into consideration: who made it, when, under what circumstances, etc., but I don’t listen to commentary tracks and I don’t look up any in-depth analysis. A lot of the questions I pose in these things do have answers that are out there, I’m deliberately not looking them up to keep my reactions and thoughts as original as possible.

              Which makes it a bit of a shame that I stumbled upon a full interview with the director Mike Marvin posted 3/17/10 on dreadcentral.com. It’s a very good and informative interview and answers a lot of questions that I had about some of the sillier aspects of the movie, and I don’t know how I feel about that. I had all these spiraling thoughts about casting and plot points and a lot of them were cut short by the director simply explaining what happened. That kind of spoils my fun, it’s much more entertaining for me to spend 300 words spinning out about the structure of a flashback or a weird ADR line, it’s less fun to have the director explain that one of the actors scheduled that day came down with food poisoning so they awkwardly looped in some dialogue and moved the flashback to a different section because another scene got cut and it flowed better. Luckily for me I don’t think everything he said in the interview is necessarily true, so I’ll sprinkle what he claims happened in from time to time.

              ‘The Wraith’ is a 1986 movie about the ghost of a murdered teenager coming back to take revenge on the gang that killed him through the medium of car crashes. Except apparently it’s not, because here’s what the director had to say about that: “I always envisioned him as emerging out of a sort of secondary dimension or reality, but I never saw him coming back from the dead as a ghost. I always thought he was a dimensional crosser, so when he was killed in the first place, instead of him going into the abyss or into the darkness or the void, whatever you want to call it, he goes to a place where he is able to literally cross dimensions.” He keeps going on like that, even mentions that he had an idea for a sequel where the dead gang members also cross over dimensionally and start wreaking havoc, and while he has some legitimate complaints about how the movie was made a lot of the things he says make him sound like a complete dingbat and I must regretfully conclude that the producers were right to rein him in.

              The movie officially stars Charlie Sheen as Jake Kesey, though we’ll get back to that. 1986 was a pretty good year for the third-eldest Estevez child, in just twelve months he appeared in an episode of “Amazing Stories” and the movies ‘Lucas,’ ‘Wisdom,’ ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,’ and ‘Platoon.’ This was the year his career really started taking off. Opposite him is Sherilyn Fenn as Keri Johnson. She was still a few years away from “Twin Peaks” and her other big career highlight that year was a small part in the Josh Brolin vehicle ‘Thrashin.’’  The terrible bad guy in this movie, Packard Walsh, is played by Nick Cassavetes, son of John, who had a small part that year in the Tommy Lee Jones movie ‘Black Moon Rising’ which has been on my list forever, I really need to see that. Last and just barely least behind Packard is Sheriff Loomis, played by a pre-crazy Randy Quaid. If you ever wanted to see Randy Quaid try to play a hard ass and fail, this is your movie.

              The director Mike Marvin has an interesting origin story. He started out by making ski movies at Lake Tahoe, whatever that means, and through some connections became a ski consultant on some movie shoots. He worked on ‘Better Off Dead’ and ‘The Spy Who Loved Me,’ all of which eventually led to him directing the boner comedy ‘Hamburger: The Motion Picture’ earlier in 1986. It was not a success. He has some interesting things to say about the casting for ‘The Wraith.’ In addition to Sheen and Cassavetes there are two other nepo-babies in the cast. There’s Clint Howard, son of Rance, and there’s also Griffin O’Neal, son of Ryan. Marvin claims he wanted Johnny Depp for the O’Neal part but the producers refused. This is where I start to doubt Mr. Marvin, because while it’s true Depp had only really been in ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ by that point he was about to be in ‘Platoon’ along with Sheen and the part they were talking about is so minor that I’m never going to mention the character’s name. He also claims that Depp was staying with Sherilyn Fenn in her hotel room during the shoot as they were dating at the time, which sounds like one of those partially true stories that’s expanded over the years.

              According to the director the idea for the movie started when Kim LeMasters at Disney wanted to make some kind of movie with cars. Considering that person isn’t in the credits anywhere and this isn’t a Disney movie a bunch of stuff must have happened between then and production wrap. He also claims that the listed budget of $8 million was actually closer to $2.9 million, with rampant theft making up the difference. He doesn’t elaborate. He views it as more of a Western than a horror movie, and specifically brings up ‘High Plains Drifter’ and how it’s only slightly similar, rather than basically being the exact same premise.

I suspect that's not Mr. Sheen up there.

              The movie itself opens with an absurd scene that sets up the plot for the rest of the runtime. There’s a gang of criminals who specialize in cornering people on the back roads around Tucson, Arizona and threatening them into accepting car races for pink slips.  They’re led by the evil Packard Walsh, played by Cassavetes. They never give his age so I’m just going to assume it’s the same as the actor’s and he’s 27. They box in a couple in a sports car, they drag them both out of the car, threaten them with knives, and hold the woman hostage to force the guy to race. Of course the bad guy wins and once they take the car and tell the couple to take a hike Packard brags that it’s all “nice and legal.” Which in the world of this movie does turn out to be the case.

              This point needs to be continually stressed: the rules of this movie universe are only tangentially aligned with our own. The laws are different, the people are built different, and any overlap between this world and our own is completely coincidental. Despite widespread assaults, murder, car accidents, moving violations, and destruction of public property law enforcement is completely unable to act against a gang they’re fully aware of. There are massive explosions with multiple casualties and instead of taking the sole witness into custody Randy Quaid asks him a few questions then waves him on home. In this world a warrant isn’t something a judge issues allowing for the search and seizure of property involved in a crime, it’s a piece of paper that allows you to force some criminals to come down to the police station and hang out for a couple of hours when that’s necessary for the plot. It’s a dumb script, is my point.

              So after establishing the gang’s M.O. and sketching in the personalities of the people who are going to die over the next 70 minutes we cut to a shot of a road stretching towards the horizon, down which a lone figure on a motorcycle rides. It’s Charlie Sheen as Jake, and this static shot is one of his longer scenes in the movie. I went through the entire film and counted up every second the actor Charlie Sheen is visible on screen and it adds up to 1,007 seconds. Take away the opening and closing shots, where he just rides a motorcycle either towards or away from the camera, and it’s 921 seconds. That is 16.47% of the movie. The character has more screen time than that, but we haven’t gotten to that plot point yet.

              Jake rides his motorcycle into Tucson and the first person he meets is Fenn’s Keri. He asks for directions to a local dam and she is instantly into him, offering to hop on his bike to show him the way. Before they can head off Packard pulls up in his sports car and orders her to get in. She does and Jake takes off, but not before Packard fixates on him as his next victim for daring to talk to his girl. During the drive over to the local swimming hole Packard tells Keri that if he can’t have her, no one will, along with a lot of other threatening talk that she just shrugs off. This pattern will continue throughout the movie: Packard will directly threaten her, will beat up people in front of her, tightly grab onto the blade of a knife in front of her face and bleed onto her, but she never reacts like she’s intimidated or scared, just annoyed. No matter how many people die over the course of this movie nobody ever really reacts the way they’re supposed to. Packard will explicitly threaten Keri’s life, and two scenes later she’s making out with Jake in front of the burger shack. The sheriff gives up on chasing the killer car after Packard’s death because he figures the vigilante is done now, no point in chasing him. It’s not even for plot convenience, it’s like everyone’s memories get reset at the end of every scene.

              Jake is at the swimming hole as well, openly staring at Keri, when he meets Billy Hankins, a friend of Keri and her coworker at the local burger shack. He drops some exposition for both Jake and the audience, filling in the details on Packard and Keri and his dead brother Jamie, who used to date Keri. We also get a little flashback to that murder, where Jamie and Keri are having sex when the gang bursts into the room. It’s very unclear what Keri witnesses until it’s eventually revealed to be nothing somehow. They knock Keri out and beat Jamie up before slashing him to death. Jake has some knife scars on his back. Guess who Jake will turn out to be?

              The next day Billy offers to drive Keri home after work, but before they get out of the parking lot Packard shows up, all pissed off. He challenges Billy to a race which he turns down flat, but it looks like he’s not going to have a choice when suddenly a weird-looking black car pulls up alongside them and revs its engine, clearly gunning for a race. And it is a cool car, by the way, a Dodge M4S Turbo Interceptor, originally a pace car for professional races. They created a mold of the exterior for the cars they were going to blow up and used the real thing for closeups. Packard and the gang forget all about Billy and rush off to have a race. One of the other members (the part supposedly earmarked for Depp) insists it’s his turn so he’s the one to face off against this obvious demon slash ghost car. They race for a while, then the Interceptor pulls away as if the other car is standing still. The gang member loses sight of it, then when he’s rounding a corner it’s parked across the road directly in front of him. He smashes into it with a decent-sized explosion, then after he’s gone off the side of a cliff there’s a bright flash and the Interceptor is back, good as new.

              The rest of the movie is basically just this repeated several times until everyone involved in the murder is dead, at which point he gives the car to Billy and takes off to the horizon with Keri on the back of his motorcycle. Oh, they both realize he’s Jamie back from the dead by this point, but the movie’s over so we don’t have to follow up on any of that.

This movie may have been made in the 80's

              A word about the car chases, and how for the most part they’re not very good. There are some decent individual shots, and some of the shots where the camera is mounted on the hood of a car barreling down the road do a good job of conveying speed, but on the whole they’re not particularly impressive. It’s just two cars driving with one out front and then the other, sometimes they’re next to each other, sometimes they bump slightly, but they all end with the Interceptor pulling away and then causing a crash. This is partially because when they were shooting these scenes there was an accident and a camera operator named Bruce Ingram was killed and another crew member was disabled for life (I can’t find his name listed). What had been scheduled to be a three-week shoot for the racing scenes instead turned into eight days.

              There are some odd flourishes to the movie that speak to loftier ideals that had to be cut along with over half of the budget. The windows of the Interceptor are tinted black so we never see inside. A couple of times we see a figure emerge, or stand silhouetted against the horizon, and it’s a figure in black leathers with a black helmet. I didn’t count any of this as Charlie Sheen time because there’s no way he’s in that costume for those shots. He also has braces on his back and limbs, and sometimes after he’s killed a gang member one will disappear. Only sometimes, mind you. This is never addressed by the movie, and normally I’d spin out a weird justification for it but the director speaks to this in the interview: “As the Wraith settles the score with the members of Packard’s gang and knocks them off one by one, he begins to get stronger and stronger. Then one more piece of what is supposed to be holding him together artificially begins to disappear.” I will simply say that this does not come across in the finished film. The gang members who die don’t burn along with their cars, they’re completely unmarked except for having burnt-out eyes. Marvin says something in the interview about St. Elmo’s Fire (the phenomenon, not the movie) and spontaneous human combustion when he really just should’ve said he thought it was cool. He also goes on about an entire subplot with Randy Quaid’s character involving a prairie witch, whatever the hell that is. This is why I find myself in the unenviable position of siding with the producers.

              One brief mention of the soundtrack, because while it’s not very good or consistent it does have some names in it. It has songs by Ozzy Osborne, Mötley Crüe, Robert Palmer, Bonnie Tyler, Billy Idol, and some other acts that didn’t really make it out of the 80’s. Almost none of these are their good songs, but they tried. This was released the same year as ‘Top Gun,’ every movie needed a soundtrack back then.

              Normally I would puzzle over these odd digressions in the movie, things that didn’t need to be there but were included for seemingly no reason. Things like the braces, the odd plane graveyard we see at one point, the futuristic engine of the car, Jake’s instruction at the very end to Keri that she pack light because it’s a short trip to where they’re going, which I guess means he’s taking her to the afterlife, or another dimension, or something? Then I read the interview and realized it was a crazy writer-director flying off in random directions being brought to heel by the studio. You read about how he originally envisioned that Jake drove the Interceptor by putting his hands inside the dashboard and being transported to another dimension, or his claims that his movie directly inspired the ‘Fast and the Furious’ franchise, and everything becomes that little bit clearer. It’s almost a fun movie with enough weird angles and edges that it’s worth at least a watch.