Doctor Movie: Episode 315: Wheels Of Fire

Show Notes

Join Doctor Movie for a look at your favorite movies from behind the steering wheel. Lets take a trip on what’s left of the road into the post apocalyptic future where you live in a desert and everything you own is black. Your car, your clothes… all black! Anyways let’s burn some rubber with Wheels Of Fire!

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Cinematic oddities and awesomeness under the watchful of the all-powerful Ming and Doctor Movie!

Mad Max, Red Sonja, a Psychic and a Dwarf all walk into a bar.

Stop me if you've heard this one.

Nyuck, nyuck.

Wait a minute, I hear something!

Hey, everybody, welcome back to another episode of Doctor Movie, your favorite show on Wheels.

Speaking of Wheels, we got a movie for you from 1985 called Wheels Of Fire, which is, you know, maybe that's what I should call this show.

I don't know.

But yeah, I got to check this one out.

It was on the old list on Tubi.

And we have a action slash sci fi flick.

Let's just be honest.

This is another Mad Max rip off.

So much so that, I mean, there's no denying what this movie is.

It did get a 4.7 out of 10 on IMDB.

Let's look here.

The synopsis says, there are no rules and no place to hide from the deadly highway warriors, which is hilarious, because post-apocalyptic, there are no highways.

It's just dirt.

So I love that they're called the highway warriors, even though there's no highways.

Anyways, they ravaged the roads and machines of destruction.

But one warrior will stand up against impossible odds.

With help from his flame spewing, nuclear charged armored automobile.

They put a lot of emphasis on the car here.

The car is really not that important.

Yeah, he's got a flamethrower, but who does it, right?

Anywho, this movie is directed by Cereo H.

Santiago.

Filmed in the Philippines for the most part.

Let's see here.

We got a wide a watch.

Let's see, we'll just talk about Cereo first.

He made a lot of movies that you kind of go, oh yeah, you can see the similarities here.

He's the one that gave us Equalizer 2000.

He gave us Firecracker, Vampire Hooker's Death Force.

I'm all about some Death Force.

Raiders of the Sun, which I have already covered on this show.

So there you go.

You know, some fun to be had in these movies.

We got some Why To Watch here.

Says Wheels Of Fire is a well shot and really good use made of the Philippine location.

So yeah, I do know a lot of us shot in the Philippines.

Despite the mostly shoddy line delivery, it's still a great deal of fun helped by an over the top protagonist.

Is he really over the top?

I don't know.

He's kind of laid back, if you ask me.

While there isn't a ton of substance on show here, on balance, Wheels Of Fire is not bad and it's pretty entertaining.

Yeah, I mean, it's got its moments, right?

I mean, come on.

When the movie is going to have as little dialogue as possible because you're going to have car chases and flamethrowers and I mean, what's not to like, right?

So if you're going into this looking for some incredible dialogue, then you're just out of luck.

Let's look at our cast, shall we?

I don't know that I'll get very far.

Here's the thing.

Everybody's name in the post-apocalyptic future.

You know, you've got one girl named Spike.

It's played by Linda Grosvenor.

Let's see if she's been anything that we've seen.

Apparently not.

So, anywho, but she plays Spike, who is about the only normal dressed person in this whole show.

So her name's Spike, but she's like a psychic, or I don't know if she's a psychic.

She's a mind reader.

So, there you go.

We've got Linda Weissmier in this movie playing Arlie.

She's in Malibu Express, Evil Town, Preppy's Private School, Joysticks.

Let's just face it, her role in this, she plays the sister of our hero, and she's hired just because she's topless 75% of the movie.

Not that that's a bad thing, but that's what this movie required, I guess, and she got to roll.

We got Laura Banks in this.

Let's see what she has done.

Oh, Demons In Paradise.

So, we know what we get in there.

Road Raiders.

Sounds like another movie of the same design.

Uh-oh, if things just went back, there we go.

Now, she plays Stinger.

So, we got Spike and we got Stinger, and they're both, you know, attractive ladies.

So, why they would have these names, like they're starting a new legion of, you know, Doom wrestling team, or what, the Road Royals wrestling team?

Yeah, kind of weird, kind of weird.

Uh, that's kind of it.

It's a shame that really the three girls in the movie are the ones that are top billing.

It doesn't really show our hero on here.

That is really strange.

Let's get into it.

Yeah, it's the Road Warriors.

Dudes driving a blacked out car.

Here's another thing, too, I don't understand about all these movies.

And I know it's a budgetary thing, right?

But if you lived in a post-apocalyptic desert, I mean desert, why would you wear nothing but black clothing and drive black vehicles?

Do you know how hot that would be?

Right?

I mean, I'm sitting outside right now in my car, which is not running.

That's why I think it sounds a little different.

I'm on my lunch break.

I just had to get this one done.

I'm sitting in my car.

It's 60 some odd degrees.

I've got my windows rolled up, and I've got black interior.

And it's warm.

I can't imagine being out in the desert in a blacked out, take-you-pick vehicle, dressed in all black with shoulder pads strapped on like football shoulder pads, and going, oh yeah, this is the future.

But I don't know.

It's one of those things that was overlooked, I guess.

It looks cool.

And being in all black against the tan gray landscape, looks pretty cool.

So there you go.

That's why we do it.

But yeah, so our hero is coming into town to see his sister.

She's dating this young guy, and he's battling another guy for the rights to a car.

Our hero has to step in and save him because they did a switcheroo on him.

So it ends up being a big fight there, and it becomes a big car chase.

So you get an opening of some action going on.

But then it comes down to, you know, stopping these guys that are kind of a bad group that are trying to sway this competition.

But it all leads to another group coming along whenever our hero's sister is hanging out with her boyfriend.

They're trying to get it on close to a dune of some kind, and the bad guys come, interrupt them.

They end up taking her away, and the guy's like, hey, I'll be in your gang.

I'll do whatever you ask.

Just don't hurt me.

And she's like, whoa, what a coward, right?

Which she was warned about from our hero, but, you know, that's kind of what you get in here.

So our bad guys tie up the boyfriend to the back of a vehicle and just start dragging him, right?

And they leave him for dead, and our hero, all in black, finds him.

I need to find his name, because I keep...

I don't have a name for him.

Anywho, he tells him that the Scourge, which is the name of the main bad guy, took his sister and, I mean, from there on, man, she's just being used left and right.

They strap her to the hood of a car, spread eagle, no shirt on, and drive back to the home base, wherever that is, for the bad guys.

And from there on, it's about the quest of our hero hunting down the bad guys and saving his sister.

Let's see here if I can find a name.

Nope.

This is incredible.

So I probably should have paid attention when the movie was playing.

I don't know.

But from here on, he's traveling, and he runs into another vigilante, and her name is Stinger, and she's dressed like Red Sonja.

And at first, they don't like each other, but then you're friends.

They end up traveling together.

They don't trust each other.

And here's where these movies just take a crazy turn, right?

There's a scene where you see the bad guys tracking down some older people in a truck, and they kill them and curse the gas in the car and all that stuff, kill the person, and the truck is left just out in the desert.

Well, they, our hero and Red Sonja are stopping, stinger.

They're going to park and take the night and rest, and she wanders off, sees the truck, goes over close, and all of a sudden a hand pops up out of the sand, a white ghostly-looking hand, and pulls her down through the sand into a pit underground.

And in this pit, there's like a whole bunch of albino, you know, Edgar Winter-looking creatures.

So they're pulling little Star Wars here on us because it's supposed to be like sand people, but they live underground, and they get this intricate cave and all this stuff.

And inside of there is another girl that's captive, and her name is Spike, which is our person that can read minds, right?

And then our hero figures out what's going on.

He falls through and comes in and saves the day and gets the girls out.

So now there's three of them riding in a car.

Then there's another car incident where the bad guys have stopped some people, and there's a little guy, a dwarf, that's with this group.

His name is Mud.

And now he's part of the group too, so there's our heroes.

And they travel on, and they come across this group of people living out in the desert who are building a rocket.

It's almost like a cult kind of thing, and they're all happy-go-lucky people, and they got some technology people there that's ordered to get them the fuel and all that stuff.

But yeah, they're building this rocket to go to another planet to get off of this one because it's been too destroyed.

So yeah, there's that whole story.

So our hero's like, hey, I'm gonna leave the ladies here so they'll be safe, and I'm gonna go track this guy down and save my sister.

And when he leaves, the bad guys show up, and they destroy the rocket and kill a bunch of people.

So now you got that situation going on.

So they end up going and getting the legit military, which I'm like, well, why didn't y'all just do this before?

Go contact this group to go head off Scourge and all the bad people.

And yeah, it's just another run around kind of excuse of things happening in this show.

I will admit, even though it's got some pretty decent action, I was kind of checking out from time to time because I was like, yeah, I feel like I've seen this before.

And again, and again, and again, and again.

The only thing that really took it somewhere else was the underground kind of thing.

And you feel like you've seen that before too.

It's like part Star Wars, part Indiana Jones.

So yeah, they're reaching for whatever they can find to make this movie work.

But at the end, it finally comes to him finding his sister, but him getting trapped as well.

But the cavalry is coming, and the bad guys set up a big kind of plot where they're going to surprise attack the good guys when they show up.

And they've set some dynamite, some explosions out in a certain area where they're going to drive across.

And so our hero and his sister decide they're going to find a way to go ahead and detonate it beforehand to give a warning to the cavalry that's coming.

And that's what the whole struggle is from here.

Matter of fact, his sister gets shot and killed.

Even though she gets shot like 40 times, she still reaches up and hits the plunger, right?

And sets it off.

And then here comes the cavalry.

They're fighting.

And it comes down to our hero and the main bad guy who have a history.

They know each other.

They've battled before.

And I'm going to go ahead and reveal the ending to this because it's worth talking about.

The bad guy is driving off.

The whole bad guys, they're all retreating at this point.

And our main bad guy is in his own vehicle.

And he parks underneath like this big cliff, thinking that he's hidden.

And then out of nowhere, our hero's car just comes flying off the cliff and just crushes the other car beneath it.

And then you see our hero standing on top.

So he set his car to go off there automatically and kill the bad guy.

And that's kind of it.

We get Red Sonja, or Stinger, she kind of gets killed in a very unflattering way.

This guy is one of the main bad guys, and he's got a gun, but it's jammed, so he pulls out a knife, and she pulls out a gun.

He comes running at her, and she shoots him, but he grabs her, and they both fall off this cliff, and she dies.

And I'm like, if you just took out his legs first, with the gun, or you could have just stepped aside, you didn't have to go out that way, but that's what we got.

Oh, I forgot to mention, she's got like a falcon that follows her around.

So that's the way our hero kind of knows what's going down, because he can look up and see that bird, and I'm like, that could be any bird, not just the one.

When you see one circling the sky, can you tell that high up that, oh, yep, that's that same bird?

Yeah, I don't think so.

Anywho, this movie is okay.

It's all right.

It's nothing really to write home to.

If you like the Mad Max world, this one might be worth checking out.

It's not near as good, but it's got some moments.

It's got a few things in there that can keep you going, but you got just an oddball group of vigilantes that get together and try to make this thing work.

And I do like the car killing scene.

I thought that was pretty awesome.

So there you go.

That's my take on Wheels Of Fire.

I will give this a 2.5 out of 5.

It's just a little weak for me, but still not terrible.

All right, folks, that's it for this one.

We will check you later.