This actually has the ingredients for a great movie done correctly. Unfortunately, the logic less plot, bad dialogue, two dimensional characters and awful music amongst other stuff only let it be nothing more than an enjoyable cheesy 80's b movie not to be taken too seriously. Despite it's flaws I still enjoyed it, the concept on it's own is pretty unique but can't help thinking they missed a trick with this one

The movie starring a young Charlie Sheen from the nineteen eighties was a very impressive piece of work for its time. It was one of the first movies to use computer enhancement. And to this day, the car that the "Wraith" dove in this flick would be considered bad to the bone, and would fit in impressively on some rich Californian coast boulevard! The acting was better than average for the time and budget allotted to do the film. The movie is solid and its about a group of kids that scare the towns people. The bully and even kill people and one kid comes back to kill the ones that killed him. Within one weeks time he kills all of them with this car. The special effects are great but it's those characters that make the film.Featuring a terrific driving musical score from musical legends of the era like Billy Idol, Ozzy Osbourne and Motley Crue, The Wraith is a movie that epitomizes the old Sicilian mafioso adage that "Revenge is a dish best served cold". But it is also a love story that transcends death with the apparent help of some friendly extraterrestrials that provide the murdered young man with resurrection and some really awesome and deadly hardware. And the most impressive piece of this deadly hardware of course is the superb, jet black Dodge Turbo Interceptor which may be the real star of the show. This was a concept car originally built by Dodge to be used as a pace car on the 1981 Indy Car World Series racing circuit. All in all, it's a great and entertaining movie with terrific race scenes and good character development for all the principal characters as well as the major supporting characters. The racing scenes and crash scenes are really well done with very good special effects that stand up well even today.Overall rating: 7 out of 10.

Jamie Hankins (Charlie Sheen) is murdered by Packard Walsh (Nick Cassavetes) and the rest of his gang for getting too intimate with a girl he desires, Keri Johnson (Sherilyn Fenn) A mystical figure shows up without warning one day, a man who goes by the name of Jake Kesey. He has an invincible Dodge Turbo Interceptor, and hits it off with Kerri. People don't realize Jake is actually Jamie Hankins who has come back to avenge his death by killing Packard and his gang. I am half and half on this movie. I did enjoy this movie very much in a B-movie type way, but I also feel they failed to execute on the potentially riveting storyline. It doesn't do nearly enough with the set-up and resorts to playing it safe far too often. Jamie was a man who was murdered, and it sure didn't seem like he was that angry about it. We get scattered flashbacks of Jamie's death that don't really amount to much, nor do they provide much emotion. Jamie kills Packard's gang in the most routine ways imaginable, all by car chaos. As a matter of fact, that's all it was really interested in. It felt like it was bragging by saying "Hey! Look at all these cool cars we are throwing your way, be in awe by it, and shut up" You got murdered bro, go nuts! On that note, the cars are indeed cool. We get a dodge turbo, a firebird, corvette, among others. The car chases are certainly exciting, but it gets redundant after a while when the storyline really begins to lack proper substance. The visuals are pretty dated, but still pretty neat, especially those flying lights. The abundance of plot holes can't be ignored. Why was there no conjecturing that Jake was Jamie? How did it take the sheriff so long to figure out what was going on? Charlie Sheen doesn't exactly give his best performance in this one. He's one of my favorite actors, but I'd be lying if I said he wasn't somewhat wooden at times. He was far too cool for a precarious situation that his character was in. I would have loved to see him be more conflicted and emotional, but we can't always get what we want, now can we? it's still Charlie Sheen, and I love him. Sherilyn Fenn is awful as the love interest. She couldn't emote very well, but she was pretty easy on the eyes. Her love story with Sheen is supposed to be very potent, but it fell very flat. Nick Cassavetes gives the best performance in the film as a ruthless gang leader. His menacing performance was quite riveting. Randy Quaid is amusing as the tough sheriff. The rest of the cast range from good to adequate. MAJOR SPOILERS! Here are my thoughts on the anti-climatic ending. Jamie manages to kill Packard, and they gave the viewers a happy ending, but it's rather ambiguous as well. Kerri & Billy find out that Jake is Jamie, and Kerri & Billy ride off into the sunset together. Is Kerri gonna be dead as well, is Jamie gonna stay on earth? it left so many questions unanswered, and it wasn't very logical. Final Thoughts: I almost forgot the amazing soundtrack. It has some classic 80's songs, if you love the 80's like I do. This movie is very enjoyable for what it is. It's a corny B-movie, but it could have been so much more. It had potential to be a suspenseful revenge film, but wound up being a cheesy 80's film. I can't complain too much. Cheesy 80's is just fine with me. Well worth a look, just make sure you temper your expectations5.7/10

So we find ourselves again in the heady, glossy '80's. A film that would delight any 10 year old; special, fast, shiny cars in high-speed races on Arizona desert roads. What more could a boy ask for? Well, in the case of The Wraith, we also have a supernatural avenging spirit.A gang of leather-clad "punks" lead by mullet-wearing Parkard (Nick Cassavettes), 'bothers' teenage drivers, and forces them to race for the possession of their cars. And they don't play fair. Packard is obsessed with Keri (Sherilyn Fenn), and believes that she belongs to him. We are offered glimpses of backstory in an incident where she was caught with Jamie Hankins, and the gang murder him. At the same time that Jake (Charlie Sheen) arrives in town, a visible apparition of possible alien origin arrives in a futuristic-looking sports car: A wraith with the intent of avenging his death (yes, he is the spirit of Jamie; revenge is his motivation). What proceeds is a series of repetitive kills, as the wraith races with the gang and blows their car (but not their bodies) to smithereens. In a different decade, this post-Knight Rider-like ghost-revenge flick, could have been less, well, 1980's. it focuses more on the fast-car elements, and less on the spiritual nature of post-death revenge. It's not a bad film, just very predictable and as I previously mentioned repetitive. There are hammy turns by Randy Quaid (Sheriff Loomis), and Eraserhead- haired geek, Rughead, by nerd regular Clint Howard. This adds nothing to the film, except for decade-cliché. The film bizarrely had a poster that was directly descended from the Back to the Future (1985) promotions (i.e. a figure exiting a vehicle with bright-white light emitting from the drivers door). The wraith itself is clearly lifted from the Japanese Manga character introduced in 1985, The Bio Booster Guyver (which was also turned into a Hollywood film in 1991). The costume almost identical.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com