Wheels of Terror

It starts out okay; I like that compressed visual depth of field, as it evokes a distortion of reality, consistent with the story's theme. But oh how this film quickly deteriorates.

Driving a school bus for a living, Laura (Joanna Cassidy) is a single mom who has moved with her teenage daughter to a small, presumably quiet rural town to get away from big city crime. Much to her chagrin, an ugly yellowish old car with windows that apparently are tinted, as you cannot see inside, terrorizes Laura and her daughter, then terrorizes the whole town. The first half is marginal at best, as the script trends cliché-ridden and borrowed, and characters are superficial. Then comes that dreadful second half.

The script is written so that at the midpoint plot turn, Laura, driving the school bus, gives chase to the evil car, which has just kidnapped Laura's daughter. The chase "scene" expands to almost the entire second half, some 35 minutes. It's just Laura in the school bus and Laura's daughter kidnapped inside the car.

Sometimes the school bus chases the car. At other times the car chases the school bus. It all depends on where in the plot you arrive at, after you have used your remote to fast-forward through all that chase redundancy. The ending is as hokey and laughable as any ending I have seen. We get dust flying through the air, lots of frenetic background music, screaming, silly maneuvers, explosions, and vehicles that are so durable that even after falling off a cliff, they still return with purring engines and tires that never go flat.

The editing, stunts, and photography in the chase scenes are actually quite good. And Joanna Cassidy is a fine actress. But the script's plot structure is way too unbalanced. The action is not believable. And the film comes across as a rip-off of James Brolin's movie "The Car" (1977). "Wheels Of Terror" might have had some degree of credibility with a vastly rewritten script. As is, it's not worth watching unless the viewer is interested in learning the technical aspects of filming a chase scene.

A person in a beaten up dirty old Chrysler kidnaps little girls and kills them. When a school bus driver's only daughter is kidnaped right in front of her, she begins a desperate chase to get her daughter back alive. The special effects leave something to be desired, but the the car is a rather scary effect. Entertaining and exciting, but unremarkable made for TV (USA) movie.

Rated R; Violence and Adult Themes.

That pretty much sums up the film. There's a car without a driver, the aformentioned hotshot, and a "suped-up" yellow schoolbus. The whole 1st half of the movie is set-up for the second half, which is a ridiculous chase between the "driverless car" and our heroine.

I loved "Wheels Of Terror" I saw it back in 1990 on television and then recently saw it for sale on ebay and bought a copy......I liked it but I think some of the movie is wasted on slow motion scenes...I would recommend this movie to anyone. Joanna Cassidy is awesome.....the drama and the plot seemed kinda corny before I watched it ya know how could the bus keep up with that fast dodge charger...everything is explained...I am writing a scrip for "Wheels Of Terror II Burn Rubber" which is my own creation I am going to try my hardest to make that movie a reality and maybe it would bring "Wheels Of Terror" back to television or even put it in theaters but I doubt it. I left a message for the sequel I am putting together on the message board.....please give me in put on it. Wheels Of Terror on a scale on 1-10...1 is bad 10 is good......I would give it a 7 it is a favorite of mine.

Wheels of Terror is one of those movies that has a mixed theme of horror, mystery, and suspense. It is about a 1974 Dodge Charger (it is said by a police officer during the movie about the year of the car, but how he could have known that without seeing it is a mystery) that terrorizes an Arizona community. The grill of the car was customized for the movie to give it a satanic look. There are several clues throughout the movie that tells the viewer that nobody is driving the car, however nobody comes right out and says for sure. There also are no clue on where this car came from or how it became evil.

The main plot surrounds a mother and daughter who have just moved to Arizona from L.A. to be away from the city to start a new life in the country. Most of the main events of the story surround the car stalking young girls, which lead up to the final chase scene between the mother driving the mini bus and the car which kidnapped her daughter. The chase scene lasts a good half hour.

The acting in this movie is rather poor. You will ask yourself "how can anyone be so dumb?" Before the daughter is kidnapped by the car, there was at least two scenes where the car was about six feet away from her and she was completely blind to it. How can you not see a car that is right in front of your face that is about to run you down? The makers of this movie used a bit too much of the slow motion technique during the final chase scene to add more of a dramatic approach to what was actually happening. The movie is actually very good despite what some of the other critics may think, it is definitely worth seeing a few times. The suspense and mystery really make it worth while.

This movie is very similar to the 1977 movie, "The Car". The difference between this movie and "Wheels of Terror" is that "The Car" will run down anybody in it's way and is more ruthless. The movie is more violent than "Wheels of Terror". Another short story similar to "Wheels of Terror" is from one of the segments of the 1983 movie, "Nightmares". The segment is entitled "The Benediction", which is about a satanic driverless truck that terorizes a priest that is traveling across a desert. Unfortunately the segment is less than a half hour long, but is very creepy and suspenseful.