If you only had spare change to spend on a film, a safe bet was to make a genre film--this provided you with a built-in audience, an audience that was likely not too picky about things like production values and acting talent.  But why stop with one genre?  Just as the Sixties turned into the Seventies, the brilliant idea of making a cheap film mixing two genres--the biker film and the horror film--was conceived and the cinematic result was...

By RAYMOND L. BLAKEY

Creepy Cheapies--A term that defines a particular type of film, movie, or motion picture. The term is applied to a film in the horror, thriller, or dark fantasy genre that is made for a low budget, usually pennies on the dollar, but delivers the same impact, thrills, chills, edge, and story telling of a film made to be a high profile or big budget/blockbuster.

Greetings Horror-Wood Readers…it is great to be back amongst you doing Creepy Cheapies after having been tossed all around this great country of ours by Hurricane Katrina. I was fortunate, and with the help of some dear friends and family I came out okay. But, there were many people who did not. I want to send out my truest condolences to each and every one of them. I ask that anyone reading this also try and remember those that suffered during this truly terrible event.

And, speaking of disasters, let’s get on with our movie. However, I must warn you that this film does not meet the criteria of being a Creepy Cheapie. Werewolves On Wheels (1971) would have been a true masterpiece of exploitation, had it not tried to be a horror film. In fact I got the impression while watching this movie that it might not have originally been intended to be a werewolf movie. The end result is a film that could have been great schlock, but fell completely apart by the end.

The movie starts out just like every other biker gang movie you have ever seen, a bunch of bikers riding down a sun-soaked highway looking mean, tough, and dirty. The gang is known as the Devils Advocates. The opening riding sequence goes on for quite a few minutes and is the first hint given to the audience that this movie suffers from a lot of padding.

When the gang enters a nearby gas station/diner, after beating a man nearly to death, we are introduced to the main characters in this particular opus. The leader of the gang is named Adam (Stephen Oliver), who is clearly an actor and looks way to square jawed to be the filthy biker gang leader we are meant to believe he is.

He bears a striking resemblance to Kris Kristofferson. His "old lady" is named Helen (D.J. Anderson) and looks and sounds almost exactly like a young Mary Tyler Moore. This adds a very disturbing aspect to Helen as later scenes in the film certainly depict her doing very un-Mary Tyler Moore things.

Helen wants to have her tarot cards read by the gang’s guru, new age, hippie member Tarot (pronounced oddly like ta-roe). Tarot is played by Deuce Berry, who looks like Alice Cooper. It was starting to feel like I was a watching a movie starring the stunt doubles of famous actors. Tarot reads Helen’s cards and tells her she is going to die being struck by lightning in the tower.

After this very brief introduction we then follow our ragtag gang along the highway until they stop at a place where they know a bunch of Satan worshipping monks live. We do not know how they know this, nor are we ever told why they go there to begin with. But, they not only stop to look at the place, they sneak in and start yelling for Satan to come out of the temple.

Moments later, they are greeted by a bunch of hooded monks who offer them bread and wine and the bikers act like fools and eat and drink as much bread and wine as they can gorge down their throats, until the drugged wine puts them all to sleep. Moments later, the obvious leader of the monks, called only "The One" (Severn Darden), plucks a strand of Helen’s hair and goes into the temple to begin…the longest summoning of the devil ever put on film.

I’m not kidding; I don’t think actual satanic masses take as long as this one does. One of the monks must have a monologue that is easily 15 to 20 minutes long and if it isn’t it sure feels that way.

During all of this, Helen wakes up and travels from the courtyard outside, all the way into the room where the ceremony is going on in a trance. Through the course of her walk, she is first wearing her biker clothes, then a sheer bridal looking gown, and, by the time she gets to the altar, she is naked and begins an erotic snake dance. As I said, very Un-Mary Tyler Moore-like behavior.

Finally, Adam wakes up from his drugged out slumber and realizes what has happened. He rousts as many of his biker buddies as he can (about 4 or 5 of them). They storm the temple, beat up the monks and take back Helen. Then they ride away as fast as they can.

Then for the rest of the movie this is what happens. They ride in musical montage, A lot. They stop and harass gas station attendants, they drink, smoke pot, snort coke, and party. Tarot says cryptic and spooky stuff. They get systemically stacked one by one at night by some sort of animal creatures. They ride around, again! This is the entire movie.

As this continue tarot and Adam become more and more at odds as Tarot is more and more convinced some great evil is trying to destroy them all. Finally, Adam is sick of the whole business and orders that they go back to kill the monks. So they ride off with musical accompaniment again. But this time they are sucked into a weird dust cloud and find themselves in the deepest part of the desert far away from the road.

This leads to a huge fight between Tarot and Adam, with Tarot leaving beaten. Once the bikers get on the road, they run into Tarot who has been waiting to ambush Adam and they fight again until the sun sets and we learn that Adam and Helen, big shock, have been the ones turning into werewolves all along and killing their friends.

At this point we are treated to the most confusing ending I’ve ever seen. Half the reason for this is that the lighting is hideous. The crew who made this movie apparently had no idea how to light a scene at night. It is so hard to tell what is happening that after a few minutes of growling and rolling around, one of the werewolves is lit on fire and burns to death and it is impossible to tell whether it’s Adam or Helen. We learn that it was Helen who burned as we see that Adam-wolf runs away from the gang, now all brandishing torches and jumps on his bike.

The movie ramps right up to stupidity at this point as the surviving bikers chase a werewolf on a motorcycle through the darkened woods. It might even be somewhat impressive, if we could see it. Eventually Tarot lights the back of Adam-werewolf’s cycle on fire and he dies in a fiery crash.

With this, our intrepid bikers head back to the monastery to confront the monks only to discover that underneath the hoods, the monks are all their dead friends. Or it might be themselves. It’s really hard to tell, as everyone has dark soot on their faces and we never really got to know the bikers well enough to identify them.

The bikers all fall down and fade away in a rush of psychedelic imagery and music. Adam, clearly meant to be "The One" now then delivers some cryptic speech and the movie ends, as you might guess, with the Bikers riding down the highway with musical accompaniment.

All I can say is I am glad for the existence of the Internet Movie Database, because I was not going to go back and watch this mess again to find out character and actor names. I was so confused at the end that I didn’t who I was.

It is a rare thing for me to disagree with Renfield in terms of what is and what is not a Creepy Cheapie and in this case we must agree to disagree. Until next time kiddies, remember it isn’t always the monster that is scary; sometimes it’s the movie.

(To discuss more Creepy Cheapies, you may join the Creepy Cheapies E-mail list here.)

Thanks, Ray.  Werewolves On Wheels certainly qualifies as a Creepy Cheapie on account of its low budget, sloppy production, indifferent acting, and emphasis on Satanism and werewolf hijinks.   However, you're right... one could make a case that this is really just a standard biker flick with the werewolf action tossed in almost as an afterthought.  Certainly, the relationship between the bikers and the Satanists is confusing, since the roots of it are undefined, and the ending is totally obscure unless you posses a pair of night-vision goggles to wear while watching it.  Speaking of "case," a case of beer might come in handy while checking out this flick.

Article copyright © Ray Blakey

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