Strange Tales of FreeVee: The Wraith

Though I grew up in the early 2000s, one thing my mom and dad dedicated themselves to was exposing my brother and I to the movies of their time: the 1980s. Thanks to them, I saw nearly every John Hughes film ever before the age of 12. I also got exposed to some lesser known gems, interesting offerings my parents saw once and glommed onto for some reason. This is one of those films. A science fiction dustland fairytale, The Wraith is a movie that is near and dear to my heart, and not enough people are aware of it. So when I found it on IMDBtv a while back and got to rewatch it for the first time since my dad had shown it to me as a kid, I was jacked.

Set against the stunningly captured Arizona desert, the film concerns a small town terrorized by a gang of car thieves. Along the backroads surrounding their small burg, they corner motorists and force them to race, putting their vehicles up as collateral. When they’re not stealing from the town’s denizens, they are helping their leader Packard terrorize Keri, a local girl he’s become obsessed with. Packard is so obsessed in fact, he and his gang murdered Keri’s boyfriend Jamie (Charlie Sheen) so no one stood in Packard’s way. Despite this being a small town, though, and everyone knowing that Packard didn’t like Jamie, nobody seems to be able to connect the dots. It is even established that Kerri was there during the attack, but “her face was covered.” A wrench gets thrown into the gang’s plans though, when a masked stranger in a sci-fi Dodge Interceptor shows up in town and begins to pick them off one by one in races. Meanwhile, a new kid named Jake ( also Charlie Sheen), who seems oddly familiar to everyone, rolls in on a dirtbike and begins to romance Keri.

One thing that should be said initially: this is not a masterpiece of a film. The story is filled with glaring plot holes that are either lazily explained or just not mentioned at all (Like how no one seems to recognize that Jake is Jamie); Randy Quaid’s Sheriff Loomis is the most incompetent sheriff to ever grace a screen, and the dialogue between some of the characters is filled with some of the cheesiest lines since Road House. If you sit down to watch The Wraith expecting an Oscar Nominee that has aged like fine wine, you would be entirely out of luck.

However, the film shines in other ways. As previously stated, the desert locales are gorgeous. While they do drag at times, the racing scenes mostly succeed in being thrilling sequences, filled with impressive stunt work and special effects that do hold up 36 years later. The Soundtrack is a truly epic collection of synth-laced 80s rock, with titles from artists like Ozzy Osbourne and Billy Idol. Nearly every race scene will have your head banging.

Packard is also an impressive villain, and actor Nick Cassavetes truly does play him as psychopathically as possible. Whenever he interacts with Keri, there is an unhinged nature about him that is mildly more unsettling than anything else in the film. He steals every scene he is in. Exposition scenes at locations like the Big Kay’s drive-in burger joint and the swimming hole are fun and hold your attention. It gives this silly tapestry of neon-tinted characters a little more depth, as though they’re people in an actual, tangible world. These depictions of small town teenage life contribute to the entire aesthetic The Wraith is trying to capture: high melodrama in a small town setting; Shakespearean themes of love and vengeance against the pastel-painted backdrop of rural America in the 1980s.

While The Wraith doesn’t deliver on all of those promises, it certainly aged better than many films of the time, and the fact that this was an independent production makes that all the more impressive. If that doesn’t do it for you, it also features Clint Howard, which was almost a requirement of films of the period. A true cult classic of the 80s that deserves so much more recognition than it has, you can watch The Wraith for free on IMDBtv.