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.
Review of The Death Wheelers
