The Wraith (1986) – Review

In one of the most 80s movies ever made — and I mean that as both a compliment and a warning — we get Charlie Sheen showing up in a small Arizona town in the role of a mysterious stranger. At the very same time, a black, otherworldly turbo interceptor rolls into town like Darth Vader’s hot rod and starts tearing through the ranks of a local gang of car thieves. Coincidence? Of course not. This is the 80s: coincidence is just code for “Don’t worry about it, it’s cool.”

The premise of The Wraith is straight out of a midnight double-feature or an EC Comic. A murdered young man comes back from the grave, rebuilt as some kind of avenging angel — or, in this case, a biker leather-clad spirit fused with a Dodge M4S concept car. His mission? Exact stylish revenge on the gang of psychos who killed him, one fiery car wreck at a time. This idea owes more than a little to the 70s cult horror film The Car, where an evil vehicle stalks a desert town, but here the menace is flipped — the car is the good guy, or at least the anti-hero. The difference is that The Wraith adds neon lights, mullets, and synths until the whole thing practically bleeds VHS static.

 

This is how the 80s looked to me.

The movie opens in the sun-baked town of Brooks, Arizona, Packard Walsh (Nick Cassavetes) runs a gang of greaseball car thieves who terrorize locals with “race me or lose your ride” shakedowns. He also creepily claims Keri Johnson (Sherilyn Fenn) as his personal property, despite the fact that her boyfriend Jamie Hankins was brutally murdered not long ago. Enter Jake Kesey (Charlie Sheen), a mysterious new guy on a dirt bike whose body bears suspicious scars and whose timing is way too convenient to be random. He befriends Keri and Jamie’s brother, Billy Hankins (Matthew Barry), but clearly Jake isn’t just here to make small talk at the local swimming hole.

 

“Your mission is to proceed up the Nung River in a Navy patrol boat.”

Almost on cue, a black Dodge M4S Turbo Interceptor — part concept car, part death machine — shows up with a faceless driver dressed like a motocross racer from hell. One by one, Packard’s gang members — including Skank (David Sherrill), Gutterboy (Jamie Bozian), and Rughead (Clint Howard), rocking the worst haircut in cinema) — get picked off in explosive street races that leave behind smouldering wrecks and corpses with burned-out eyes. Sheriff Loomis (Randy Quaid) tries to track the car, but it vanishes in clouds of neon light, making him look more confused than ever.

Note: Like the devil car in the 1977 classic The Car, this vehicle has no problem evading police and blowing through roadblocks.

With his gang reduced to roadkill, Packard panics, kidnaps Keri, and heads for the border — only to be stopped cold by the Wraith in a fiery head-on collision that even his mullet can’t walk away from. When the dust settles, Jake reveals himself to Keri and Billy as Jamie reborn, a ghost on borrowed time who came back to settle the score. He gifts Billy the Interceptor like it’s just another hand-me-down, then rides off with Keri into the desert moonlight, proving that in the 80s, even vengeance from beyond the grave can have a happy ending.

 

Wait a second, she rides off with a dead guy?

Stray Observations:

• Charlie Sheen filmed all his scenes in a single day before running off to Platoon. Blink too long and you’ll miss half his screen time—he’s in the movie for less than 30 minutes.
• There was a 1984 Saturday morning cartoon called Turbo Teen, which was about a teenager with the ability to transform into a sports car. I sense some DNA of that in this film.
• A vengeful figure arriving in a corrupt town to mete out supernatural justice was also the premise of the classic Clint Eastwood film, High Plains Drifter.
• This film also bears a lot of similarity in plot to the TV movie starring Charlie’s father, Martin Sheen, The California Kid (1974).
• Skank comments about The Wraith: “I don’t know, but whoever he was, he’s weird and pissed off!” An obvious nod to the John Carpenter classic The Thing. 
• Sherilyn Fenn is meant to be in high school here, though she looks like she wandered in from a perfume commercial instead of third-period algebra.
• Despite the supernatural setup, the film never bothers to explain the rules—The Wraith shows up, blows up cars, and apparently has ghost traffic laws of his own.

 

“Where we’re going, we don’t need rules.”

Written and directed by Mike Marvin, The Wraith’s influence goes way beyond its own decade. Anyone who’s read James O’Barr’s The Crow or seen Alex Proyas’ gothic 1994 movie will notice the family resemblance. Both stories revolve around a man brutally killed who returns from the grave to wipe out the gang responsible. It’s not just the broad strokes — Proyas even named one of the gang members Skank, directly lifting from The Wraith. So, while this film might look like an oddball relic now, it quietly seeded DNA into one of the most iconic revenge sagas of the ’90s.

 

“You’re all dead. You just don’t know it yet.”

The supporting cast is gloriously 80s as well. Nick Cassavetes chews scenery as Packard, the head psycho whose idea of flirting is literally threatening women at knifepoint. Randy Quaid shows up as a sheriff who seems permanently two steps behind, and Clint Howard (yes, Ron Howard’s brother, rocking a bizarre skullet-and-glasses combo) plays the gang’s nerdy mechanic. It’s a rogues’ gallery of car-obsessed cartoon villains just begging to be exploded in increasingly creative vehicular deaths — and the movie happily obliges.

 

Clint Howard never disappoints. 

But the real star isn’t Sheen (who disappears for chunks of the runtime, off running around Vietnam with Oliver Stone), or Sherilyn Fenn (the requisite love interest in denim cutoffs), or even Quaid. No, the star is that car. The Dodge M4S Turbo Interceptor was a genuine concept car loaned to the production by Chrysler, and it looks like something that would’ve been at home in Blade Runner. Every time it screeches onscreen, the movie suddenly feels ten times cooler, even if the plot is held together with duct tape and engine grease.

 

“Eat your heart out, K.I.T.T.”

Watching The Wraith today, you can’t take it seriously — and that’s the point. It’s part supernatural slasher, part gearhead fantasy, part MTV music video. The desert landscapes glow with sun-baked menace, the soundtrack pumps out peak-80s tracks (Ozzy Osbourne, Billy Idol, Robert Palmer), and the vibe is pure drive-in pulp. Sure, it’s derivative. Sure, the dialogue sounds like it was written on a cocktail napkin. But when the movie is firing on all cylinders (literally), it’s a neon revenge fairytale where Charlie Sheen’s spirit warrior vaporizes bad guys in a killer car. How much more 80s can you get?