Easy Wheels

Not even Hell's Angels' wild women in hot leather could save this from burning rubber on the road! EASY WHEELS stands out okay as a satire of biker / exploitation movies, and not as stupid or sleazy as you'd expect from the late 60s. Still, I'm not gonna get all hyped up about smutty women who prove their sense of superiority over the male crowd, nor the tough men wanting sexual desires over the women. The movie seems told on two different points of view here, making this very incoherent. Are the producers really too afraid to make a true feminist biker flick? It worked well for SHE-DEVILS ON WHEELS, only on a sleaze state of mind. Biker movies, on the other hand, have seen their day, and although this appeared to have revived the genre a while back, it stales on anything new and original. Not bad, but this wasn't my can of beer. Look for Ben Stein as a church minister.

I love B movies just as much as the next guy but this movie is awful. It says it's a comedy / action movie but the comedy is a huge stretch! Nothing's worse than an a movie that thinks it's funny! Trust me, it's not! The acting is atrocious, the writing is amateurish. I wish I can get back the hour and a half of my life back that I wasted on this film. Please, don't fall for this movies lies!!

The reviews decrying this film seem to have genuinely missed the fact that it's a comedy. Sure, all of it is deadpan but really, a biker gang who do a great doo-wop Rock Of Ages? A guy whose mudwrestler girlfriend gets into laundromat machines after work? It's a comedy, folks.

The reviewers complaining of the lack of action scenes or soft porn might as well level the same criticisms at Airplane. Indeed, Airplane's a good point of reference with the straight-faced humour, visual gags and touches of surrealism.

It plays on many 'good guys seeking out the evil-doers' clichés, and simultaneously on fated-lovers clichés too. The funniest stuff is in the way it plays with gender role and 'wrong side of the tracks' stereotypes.

The great and eminently quotable cheesy dialogue and the constant overloud leather-creak whenever anyone moves keep it relentlessly funny from start to finish.

If you like the comic edge of Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell's work in The Evil Dead you'll love this film. If, however, you thought Evil Dead was a straight zombie flick then you'll probably miss the point with this too.

Easy Wheels is one of those great independent low-budget films. The movie is nararated from the point of view of a reporter who is rescued by the bikers from a car accident. The leader of the Bourne Losers Bruce (Paul Le Mat) and his buddies are looking for another group of bikers known as the The Woman of the Wolves who are being suspected of stealing babies and selling them on the black market. This movie I laughed throughout. Some younger viewers may not get all the jokes, but I think most adults will get the jokes. I recommend this movie to people who drive and/or like biker movies. I also recommend this film to people who like to laugh a lot.

10/10

My review was written in May 1989 after a Cannes Film Festival Market screening.

"Easy Wheels" is a very cute, throwback to drive-in movies of the early 1970s, with genuine cult potential.

Bearing the trademark slapstick/comic book violence approach of the "Evil Dead" team of Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell and Robert Tapert, pic limns the adventures on the road of a femme motorcycle gang, Women of the Wolf. Its leader is She-Wolf (Eileen Davidson), a tough cookie raised in the woods by wolves.

Opposing force is a scruffy gand of male bikers led by mystic Paul Le Mat. The sexes clash in several hilarious battles, featuring crazy, violent gags and inspired double entendres.

Direction by David O'Malley is functional but uneven, with too many talky, static stretches to satisfy hard action fans. However, whenever the script is really cooking, which is frequently, the combo of highbrow dialog and lowlife physical shtick is terrific.

With his "Melvin and Howard" background, Le Mat is perfect casting as the hippy-dippy biker, and Eileen Davidson, with her Joanna Pacula-like visage and cool manne, is more than his match. Almost everyone in the deep supporting cast gets a chance to shine as well.

Tech credits are modest. Running in-joke satirizes elements of "Raising arizona", whose creators Joel & Ethan Colen previously were writes ("Crimewave") for Raimi & Co.