THE DEATH WHEELERS
THE DEATH WHEELERS
A group of juvenile thugs on motorbikes begin to practice black magic. As a result of this, they start to believe that suicide will grant them immortality. The only occult film in the history of cinema where a significant role is played by a large frog.
Genre cinema is often the art of combining distant inspirations into one coherent concept. Had it not been for the fusion of a spaghetti western with a samurai film, there would have been no KILL BILL; the mixture of Buster Keaton's slapstick comedy with bloody horror gave the world EVIL DEAD II. It is possible, however, that in 1973 audiences were not ready for the fusion of a biker film with...satanic horror.
This is exactly what THE DEATH WHEELERS offers. The main character here is Tom, a young psychopath and leader of a motorbike gang named the Living Dead, whose mother practises black magic and, alongside her servant, worships the Toad God. Tom commits suicide on his eighteenth birthday, but his mother brings him back as an immortal, supernaturally strong living dead.
The above description wasn’t written under the influence of mind-altering substances - the script for THE DEATH WHEELERS probably was.
The motorbike horror film directed by Don Sharp may not have found a large audience at the time of its release. Years later, it is exceptional proof that British cinema has never been afraid of the bizarre and the crazy. It’s also probably the only film in cinematic history where the driving force of the plot is a massive, dignified frog
Grzegorz Fortuna
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