It was my birthday on Monday and for it I got some cash to buy a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV with enough left over for a case of Otter Pops. If you don't know what an Otter Pop is, they're just the umpteenth attempt by a company to fill plastic tubes with Kool-Aid then sell them by the case with the idea being that consumers are supposed to put them in the freezer and eat them like stick-free popsicles. If your sweet tooth was acting up though, it wasn't uncommon for little kids fiending to ride the Sugarland Express to just cut open the unfrozen tubes and drink the shit up before it had a chance to freeze. As for Otter Pops, their sole selling point was that, unlike the competition, their plastic tubes came with cartoon Otter characters printed on them with a different character representing each flavor... It's sad that I'm playing a game whose opening week was the biggest in history ($500+ million), and I'm instead going on a tangent about frozen Kool-Aid being sold to me by cartoon otters in funny outfits.

Anyway, I can't just sit around saturating my pancreas with frozen sugar water all day while I run over hookers and blow up ambulances, so I'm taking a much needed break and doing what I do best: reviewing shitty movies! And yes, I know, if these reviews are the best I can do, I won't survive past 30. Don't you think I've come to terms with that already? For those who have been long time readers of the site, you might remember me doing a review for this flick many moons ago before we changed over to the new multi-writer format. When I'd first heard the title some 7 or 8 years ago, the immediate image that frolicked through my skull was that of wolves with wheels for feet, not unlike those freaky Wheelies guys in Return to Oz. It wasn't until I'd actually tracked down a copy that I realized my bizarre dreams of wheel-footed lycanthropes was not to be and instead I was in for a movie about bikers turning into wolves because they picked on the wrong druids... You can understand my disappointment, some of which likely played into my rating the movie so low to begin with. As such, I'm giving the flick a second chance to make me not want to kill it's family. Let's see if the movie's any better now that I don't have all that damned “imagination” getting in the way.

As you can guess, our feature centers on a standard issue biker gang common to the exploitation films of the '60s and '70s. They've all got long hair, beards, bandannas, sunglasses, jackets with their group logo on them, and random nonsensical names like “Mouse”, “Pill”, and “Movie”. This group in particular goes by the title of “the Devil's Advocates” and they get their kicks driving through rural America, spooking cattle, beating people up, and making out with rednecks... because I guess the only thing that hurts a redneck more than repeated blows to the baby maker is, uhm, violating him with homosexual tonsil hockey? Fuck if I know... and that's not to be taken as an invitation, so don't get your zippers in an uproar! The ironic part is that it's the bikers calling the redneck a “faggot” when they're the ones sticking their tongues in his mouth. Either way it's not something I need to see after eating a bag of curly fries.

The man-loving leader and resident poor man's Kris Kristoferson of the posse is Adam and he's leading his people into the desert on a spiritual mission... yes, bikers on a spiritual mission... and by that, I mean they're gonna go do peyote. Adam's right hand man (I'll pause now so everyone can make the mandatory gay jokes about that statement...) is a superstitious goof named Tarot. Adam's constantly touching Tarot, slapping his ass, nuzzling his face, and calling him “Baby” so if you didn't think his slipping the tongue to another guy proved he's into meat in his seat, his relationship with Tarot is the off-white, salty icing on the big pink wedding cake. Not that there's anything wrong with that! I guess it just gives him license to call other people the “rhymes with 'maggot'” word cuz, well, he's obviously one himself. Meanwhile, the rest of the gang checks out a male gas station attendant's ass and make thinly veiled requests to each other for oral sex. Well, like leader, like gang I guess.

Any moving involving a person named Tarot is required by US law to include a scene where someone has their tarot cards read so the rest of the movie has a general path to follow. This time that someone is Adam's beard... not his literal facial hair, but the biker momma (named Helen) he keeps around so people won't think he's into dudes. Tarot tells Hel that her future holds Satan, mystery, and a Ben Franklin finale as she's to be struck by lighting while on top of a tower... and yes, I know the lightning didn't kill Ben Franklin, I just thought it sounded catchy and semi-educated. The Advocates make a pit stop on the secluded grounds of a churchyard for Satanists, and the church's worshippers come out in full druid regalia baring gifts of circular bread and silver carafes of homemade wine. The druids are sworn to a vow of silence though, so their mouthpiece comes out and introduced himself as “One”. While the miscreants get shit-faced on spiked refreshments, One takes a strand of hair from Hel and mumbles something about controlling them all with that single follicle. Sure enough, through a painfully long-winded ceremony that had me nodding off more than once, a hypnotized Hel drinks cat blood, then gets butt nekkid and does the Lambada with a python (and an encore with a human skull), thus christening herself as the latest Bride of Beelzebub. I can't imagine how much alimony that guy's gotta pay out the ass each month, given all the brides he's taken over the centuries.

Adam and some of his boys regain consciousness and break up the ceremony, but in the process they get some kind of shit smeared on their faces by the otherwise passive Satanists. Fleeing the unholy cathedral, the group get back on track to “clearing their heads” in the desert like nothing had happened. Of course a whole lotta stuff happened, hence why once they do make it out to the desert Adam and Ellen turn into werewolves and make Kibbles 'N Bits out of two of their own members. Tarot knows something's amiss, but the rest have no recollection of what happened, so they chalk up their friends' deaths to being drunk and attracting hungry coyotes. When the next victim winds up burned to ash in a bonfire, Adam finally agrees that something weird is going on and the Advocates need to go back to the Church of Latter Day Satanists to get their whammies revoked. That reminds me, I gotta go TiVo the “Press Your Luck” reruns that I'm missing by sitting here trying not to sleep through this stuff. Be right back...

Before they can confront the druids again, Adam and his boys need to meander through more pointless scenes of nothing. The makers of this movie need to be brought up on criminal charges of genocide for the murder of its audience's valuable time. It all comes to a laughable finish as the gang's lupine “parents” come out amidst yet another bonfire and this time try to attack the entire remainder of the gang. Overcome by numbers and fire,Ellen meets her end rolling around in flames and roaring like a dinosaur out of The Land That Time Forgot. As for Adam, he gets the “Frankenstein as done by the Hell's Angels” treatment, as he's chased through the night by his own crew, wielding torches like a mob of angry peasants... only on motorcycles. He soon falls to the ultimate wipeout, thanks in part to a jacket that burns easier than tissue paper. The remaining Advocates return to the Satanists' place to exact revenge, but just wind up joining the druids as they all become... Werewolves On Wheels.

My original judgment of WoW was an enthusiastic thumbs down, condemning it to the land of single Smilies as a complete waste of time that I never wanted to watch again. Having sat down and watched it again after all this time, I can see some glints of entertainment peaking out from beneath its aging, chipping, turd brown paint job. In no way is it going to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with exploitation classics of the sacrilicious '70s, but it may go down as the greatest werewolf biker movie of all time! The acting was actually pretty good, the story was semi-interesting I suppose, and the make-up and gore effects were, well, not bad for the bottom-of-the-barrel budget this thing probably had. There wasn't a lot of blood to toss around, but what was there was that lovable, campy, H.G. Lewis style,“red paint” looking arterial ooze. The few werewolves we did get had that old Lon Chaney Wolf Man charm to them, so I don't fail the movie for that either. What I do fail the movie for is the complete lack of editing. There are just WAY too many scenes of people standing around talking at the same time and accomplishing little to nothing aside from padding the run time. No actual dialog happens, nothing moves the story along, we just watch the bikers stand around doing a whole lot of speaking but saying absolutely Jack T. Shit. If the bullshit could've been trimmed (maybe in favor of some more story or some more werewolf violence?), I gladly would've bumped this review up a few points. Meanwhile, some of the stuff left just made me spit take my Juicy Juice™ all over the TV! One scene especially baffled the crap outta me, when the Advocates are swallowed out of nowhere by a randomly appearing cloud of smoke, which transports them out into the middle of the desert?! And what effect does this have on the story? The cloud doesn't swallow up the group's truck nor their two community whores, who are left on the road... that's it. ANOTHER POINTLESS WASTE OF TIME TRYING TO ADD ANOTHER 10 MINUTES TO THE MOVIE!

Now I understand why I gave out the solo Smiley review the first time I watched Werewolves On Wheels. Who knows though, maybe if I wait another 5 or 6 years to watch it again I'll like it enough to dub it as a mediocre! But, for now, two is as good as it's gonna get... and it's lucky it's getting that much. To finish out the review with something at least remotely interesting though, let's check out some movie trivia: In 1971 there was a Gary Busey biker flick called Angels Hard As They Come that, when it was released in Europe and Australia, took on the alias of Angel Warriors for who in the name of Amy Winehouse's barbiturates soaked tampon knows why. That same year, when Werewolves On Wheels made it's way into those same markets, it was renames Angel Warriors 2, making it an unofficial sequel... at least for Europeans and Australians. No wonder the rest of the world hates us.