Werewolves on Wheels (1971)

WEREWOLVES ON WHEELS is a cheapo early '70s independent movie that screams "shot on a budget". Some maverick producers had the idea of riding the wave of not one but two '70s film trends, the biker flick and the horror movie, combining them into an unwieldy and unwelcome concoction to say the least.Of course, with that title this film is irresistible, but it's also rather dull. Horror fans hoping for werewolf action will be disappointed to learn that the werewolf scenes are limited to a couple of brief fights and murders with characters wearing what look like reject masks from an old Lon Chaney movie.For much of the running time this is a straightforward biker flick, padded out with some very bad acting and lots scenes of bikers riding down an empty highway in the blazing sunshine while music blares on the soundtrack. There are no sympathetic or even interesting characters here, the horror feels very lukewarm, and lots of scenes are shot in the dark so you can't see what's going on. Seriously, it's not very good.

This film is about the 'Devil's Advocates', a 1970s biker gang that is evil. They are so evil that at some dopey satanic ritual, one of them gives their soul to Mr. Evil and as a consequence, she is turned into a werewolf!(???).I enjoy watching bad films. I am not talking about boring bad films, but ineptly made and laughably bad films. You know, like the films of Ed Wood, Al Adamson, Larry Buchanan and William Grefe (just to name a few). These films all have the common thread of being so cheaply made that they are good for a laugh--particularly if you watch them with friends. Because of this, I assumed that a cheap film called "Werewolves on Wheels" would be exactly the sort of biker film for me! However, it turned out to be simply bad--unwatchable and unbelievably dull. Aside from when a few nude scenes sprinkled here and there occurred, I had to struggle to stay awake seeing this turkey. In fact, it might just be the perfect cure for insomnia! The film's biggest problem is the pacing. All too often, the film just seems to go on and on and on--like the director had never heard of editing. Too often, the gang members just blathered and drank with no particularly goal in mind other than to just fill up the screen with SOMETHING. In fact, it appears that there really was no script or dialog written for much of the film--they just improvised and every improvisation apparently went into the movie. A great example is the beginning of the film where absolutely nothing of interest happened for the first 15-20 minutes!! There was a bit of gang violence, but it wasn't particularly violent. Much of this time the gang just laid around belching and laughing.The next big problem is I wanted to see lots of bikers with wolf-man makeup riding their choppers. Sadly, this isn't the case. You don't even get to see any werewolves until the end of the film. The only other attack before this is done in silhouette (cop-out) and there is no transformation scene at all--just two measly people wearing what appear to be werewolf masks bought from a local store---good ones, but still, just masks. Plus, to make matters worse, the werewolves are amazingly easy to kill--you just light them on fire and watch 'em burn!Overall, the movie is brain-numbingly dull throughout and even the werewolf scenes are dull--offering no respite for the audience. And, speaking of no respite, while the theme music initially seemed pretty cool, it was repeated so often that I was looking for some relief from this droning and annoying music! An awful and stupid film.If you want to see a bad but fun biker film, I suggest you try "Born Losers", "Satan's Sadists" or "She-Devils on Wheels". All these films are silly but lovable bad films---whereas "Werewolves on Wheels" simply sucks.

I caught up with this corker recently, when I picked it up on a well-known Internet site for $5.00. On DVD, enhanced for widescreen TVs. Made by people who probably never expected it to show up on TV anytime, anywhere.WEREWOLVES …opens with a bunch of bikers riding into a gas station in the Far West and terrorizing the locals, or as many locals as the budget could afford. The gang is one of the goofiest ever committed to celluloid; even at their most depraved, they're about as scary as the motorcycle morons in EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE.It should come as no surprise, then, when these geniuses: A) stop off at an isolated "monastery" that sports an evil-looking symbol over the entrance and B) chow down on bread and wine offered by strangers-- scary-looking hooded creeps led by weird-movie icon Severn Darden and C) can't figure out what's going on when, time after time, they camp out for the night and lose several of their number to "wild beasts…."As veteran exploitation fans should expect, there are more Wheels than Werewolves here; the lycanthropes appear briefly, and the photography is so dark it's hard to see them anyway. However, there is some gratuitous nudity courtesy of a fairly attractive biker-babe, not to mention brief but splashy gore scenes. This includes some ahead-of-its-time eyeball violence. There are better werewolf flicks around, but fans of flesh and blood won't go away empty-handed.

Werewolves on Wheels (1971) ** (out of 4) Mildly entertaining Drive-In film is a cross between The Wolf Man and Easy Rider. A biker gang pisses off some monks who in return put a curse on the bikers. At night the beer and boobs flow but so does the blood when they start turning into werewolves. This film kept me mildly entertained throughout but thankfully it ran just over 75 minutes. The biggest problem is that not too much happens and I wish the director would have gone for a few more laughs. The opening sequence rips off the ending to ER.Makes a good double feature with Werewolf of Woodstock.