SHE-DEVILS ON WHEELS (1968)

Directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis

Screenplay by Herschell Gordon Lewis writing as Allison Louise Downe

Starring - Christine Wagner as Karen, Betty Connell as Queen, John Weymer as Joe Boy

PLOT -  Karen is a member of the Maneaters - an all female outlaw motorcycle gang. Led by thier president  - the brutal Queen and their seargent-at-arms - the butch and deadly Whitey, the Maneaters terrorise thier local, small town - cops and rivals beware.

The maneaters even have thier own "stud line" - a group of willing, young local men who the Maneaters use as thier own personal sex slaves.

The problem is, Karen has started to fall in love with one of the Studs - a man named Bill and this breaks the clubs number one rule - NEVER fall in love with a man.

Further problems are also brewing, as a rival male gang of local thugs, led by the cruel and viscous Joe Boy, have started to hang around on the Maneaters territory- a disused airfield where they race thier bikes. A violent fight ensues over the territory in which Joe Boy and his cronies are humiliated. In revenge they kidnap, beat and it is implied, also rape, the Maneaters youngest member - Honeypot.

 Queen swears vengeance....

CLASSIC DIALOUGE - Queen - "We ain't no daisy pulling buncha broads - We're the Maneaters !!!"

QUEEN (to a cop) - "Dirty Mother Fuzz !!!

Karen - "That's why I'm late, I had to sneak out so Mom and Dad wouldn't see me."  For God's sake. She's supposed to be an outlaw biker and she's scared of  getting in trouble with her parents, plus she's at least 30 years of age....

Queen - "We don't owe nobody nothin', and we don't make no deals, we're the swinging chicks on motors, we're Maneaters on wheels !!!!"  All this is delivered with a completely straight face right into the camera - shattering the fourth wall into oblivion.

PERFORMANCES - I think it's probably charitable to describe most of the performers in this movie as "non actors", indeed many of the gang members where real bikers hailing from the Iron Cross Motorcycle Club's Cut Throat Division. They still look more like a group of bored housewives and College girls to me than hard bikers, but even if they where, they'll all be about 75 now, so I don't think I'm going to lie awake at night, dreading the sound of roaring bike engines pulling onto my drive, in the highly unlikely chance any of them are reading this...

Betty Connell as Queen gives probably  the best performance - she was clearly never going to win any Oscars and is perhaps dressed a bit too "Glam" to make a truly convincing badass motorcycle mama, but she does have screen presence and pulls off the scenes where she's required to be aggressive well enough. 

Christine Wagner as Karen on the other hand is terrible. She delivers every line she has in a REALLY flat monotone. I know the character is supposed to be a bit wet compared to the other gang members but she's supposed to be the audiences identification figure - our eyes and ears into this shady world that the Maneaters inhabit - they could have at least cast someone who  imbued the role with a tiny bit of life. Aw well...

Another problem is that a lot of the dialogue is drowned out at points by the sound of motorbike engines reving up, unavoidable most likely as the film is made on a very low budget, so they probably didn't have the means for decent sound editing and mixing. Also seeing as the subject matter is bikers then its hardly surprising that a large number of scenes involve loud bike engines firing off.

SFX  - It's  not really the type of film that calls for a large number of effects. There's the odd bit of blood here and there after fights, but it's really of the spilled tomato ketchup school of gore. There's a bit were someone gets dragged over gravel whilst tied to the back of a motorbike, but the end result is he just looks like somebody has "custard pied" him with a soggy Pizza. There is a decent decapitation scene where you get a good, old fashioned severed rubber head but this is let down quickly when you see the "decapitated corpse" - they just got the actor to lie on the floor with his head concealed behind a nearby lamp post.

 

SEX AND VIOLENCE  - The sex scenes consist of little more than fully dressed adults rolling around on the floor with each other, it's more like watching monkeys wrestling at a zoo than the orgy it's supposed to be.

The violence generally consists of badly choreographed but quite amusing fist fights. There's the aforementioned decapitation scene and the guy getting dragged around by the bike as well. However, neither scene turned out to be as extreme as they probably sounded in the original script. The bike dragging scene is let down by the fact that the motorcycle looks like its only doing about 1 mph, in reality, the victim would probably be in more danger of cutting himself shaving than being grievously injured by this "non stunt".

RATING  - I realise that I've probably sounded a tad scathing in this review, but the fact is, I always really enjoy this film whenever I watch it. It's cheesy as hell, it's nowhere near as X-rated as it aspires to be and the actings awful. But that's all part of its charm,  It's dated O.T.T. dialogue is particularly fun. Also, there's an hilarious scene when the Maneaters terrorise the townsfolk. They SMACK an old man on the ARSE !!! They cause a few shoppers to jump out of the way and actually DROP THIER SHOPPING !!!!!! One biker even STEALS A SMALL CHILD'S ICE-CREAM !!!! The absolute HORROR OF IT ALL !!!! I suppose the small acts of rebellion are always the most satisfying...

I'm giving it 3 badass biker chicks out of 5. Enjoy it with a few beers, they just don't make 'em like this anymore.