This is the stuff late night B-movies are made of! In more ways than you can count this simply should not work: a group of well-spoken, middle-class motorcycle *cough* rebels called (in an act of Shakespearean foreshadowing) "the Living Dead", whose whole raison d'etre seems to be raising terror in local supermarkets and such, decide to become zombie bikers for a hoot. They are able to achieve this with the aid of hidden knowledge from their leader, Tom, (who has a butler for God's sake!) who has made an occult alliance with a hoodoo frog or something, and who get eventually get thwarted, in (it must be said) quite a chilling way, before they presumably wreck havoc by knocking over another bin. And yet despite the ludicrous plot, executed with some ludicrous suicide scenes, and the ludicrous funeral scene for Tom (which will genuinely have you mouthing "what the ?") not to mention Tom's ludicrous Lazarus moment, the film does have a certain eerie feel to it which, although not particularly scary, nonetheless raises it above the slight 70s campiness of it all and makes it a watchable flick. A lot of this vibe is certainly owed to the music which, in addition to the wah-wah pedal getting an inevitable seventies workout, has a memorable recurring motif and certainly adds a tinge of mystery to proceedings especially in the morgue scene. Certainly the movie, along with the likes of 'Dracula AD 1972' and 'The Satanic Rites of Dracula', signalled the death knell of British horror which had ruled the sixties, but if you happen to come across it nestled among the late night schedules and you don't have work the next day, then with your tongue set firmly in your cheek settle down and enjoy...you could certainly do a lot worse.
The Death Wheelers
1973
Action / Adventure / Horror
The Death Wheelers
1973
Action / Adventure / Horror
Plot summary
A gang of young people call themselves the Living Dead. They terrorize the population from their small town. After an agreement with the devil, if they kill themselves firmly believing in it, they will survive and gain eternal life. Following their leader, they commit suicide one after the other, but things don't necessarily turn out as expected...
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
May 02, 2017 at 06:33 AM
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Middle-class, frog-worshipping zombie bikers? Yikes!
Interesting biker cult film
The British are one of the few cultures with enough savvy to pull off a good cult cycle science fiction scenario.
This one involves a family of a Satanic nature, the mother of whom is prim and proper, and whose other member, her son, is the leader of a Hellish motorcycle gang.
Goerge Sanders is the wild card as the butler figure.
The son learns that he can have an immortal and immoral life of evil just by dying, under the right conditions. The catch is a series of rituals along with an unfailing Faith in your resurrection into Evil.
He paves the way and convinces the rest of his biker gang to join him. It is a small grass roots gang of 2 women and 5 other men. Most are willing, but a couple of them relent.
Ann Michelle excels with a great presence as an evil biker girl. Too bad she wasn't a heroine more often, but the seventies were not a decade of risk taking, despite what people claim. Stereotyping was a seventies staple.
Still, this film has a great atmosphere to it, a bit of humor, and some creativity, never detracting from the story line.