Mad Max Ripoffs: Wheels of Fire!!!

Time for another Mad Max ripoff, my pretties. This one is fondly remembered by genre fans for the topless lady who becomes a living hood ornament for the bad guys. I can only dream of the day I'll be a big enough bastard to drive around with a topless woman strapped to the hood of my car, and frequently do. I'd give her some stock lines to learn so when we got stuck in traffic she could yell abuse at the other drivers based on their cars. I couldn't see anything, and would run over everyone all the time, but it would be worth it.

Villain solves this problem by standing, which must be fun over long distances. Image censored for boobs, as we wouldn't want to upset anybody.

To understand how she came to be strapped to the car, you'd have to go back to a different time. A time when her boyfriend is trying to win a car or something by fighting some weed. The weed subs in a big guy and the boyfriend starts getting his ass beat. Just when all seems lost, our indifference is blown by the arrival of Trace, Hood Ornament's brother and our nominal hero, who rescues boyfriend from a beatdown. They're then chased through the desert until they separate for no reason, and the bad guys capture our heroine.

I shall call the villain Standy, Who Stands On Cars.

In a bold artistic choice, she plays the whole kidnapping and sexual torture scenario with a sort of half-bored indignation, almost as if her trauma has induced a state of bad acting. We can forgive this though, as it's absolutely hilarious.

But do not be mildly perturbed, dear readers!!! For Trace slowly develops a plan to save her, or at least a general feeling that he might. But first, he picks up some other chick with a pet hawk, who falls into a cave and finds another teammate, who claims to be psychic because she can tell the cannibals who live there are planning to eat her. I think this girl is full of shit, because all her psychic insights suspiciously resemble the bleeding obvious.

She also claims to be able to translate this dwarf's thoughts into English, because in Wheels of Fire, dwarfs have their own language.

After a while, Trace, Hawky and Psychic run into a bunch of fucking hippies who are building a space rocket to get off post-apocalyptic Earth and start a new life. It would be awesome if the movie ended with their rocket climbing a few hundred feet and then collapsing, but it didn't happen. Trace, however, immediately forgets about looking for his sister and starts arguing about politics with some guy, and then with Hawky, whom he then sexes in public, then he leaves. I think Trace is autistic.

How many people were they planning to fit into that rocket? Fuck if Wheels of Fire knows!

I won't give away the ending, but it's not that the hippies go to space in their rocket ship. Wheels of Fire is somewhat of a classic, but suffers from the same problems that most of these ripoffs do: they have plenty of cars, explosions, sexy women and shoulder pads, but they're shot so indifferently you might as well be watching security footage. There's a small scene in this one where Trace sneaks up behind a rock before moving on, only it's filmed from in front of the rock, so what we're actually looking at is a rock covering most of the screen. They should have put the camera on the other side of the rock, with Trace. And that, my friends, is a free film school lesson for you.

Post-apocalypse checklist:

MOHAWKS: none.

SHOULDER PADS: a couple of bad guys have them, but nothing special.

CUSTOM CARS: there's a nice one with spikes, Trace has a flamethrower and grill attached to his, and naturally the bad guys accessorise theirs with Playboy Girl.

MUTANTS: underground cannibals that resemble the Morlocks from the 1960 version of The Time Machine, and presumably the psychic, unless she's just bullshitting.

GOGGLES: one of the bad guys and one of the hippies has them.

TOTAL: 4/5 - very post-apocalyptic.