Charlie Sheen, Nick Cassavetes, Sherilyn Fenn

A marauding gang of car-racing delinquents terrorize the residents of a small town, until a mysterious, otherworldly stranger arrives to challenge the ruthless roadsters.

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62% liked it

7,620 ratings

PG-13, 1 hr. 30 min.

Directed by: Mike Marvin

Release Date: November 21, 1986

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DVD Release Date: November 26, 2002

Stats: 472 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (472)


  • October 18, 2008
    Pale Rider with cars and a touch of Brat Pack.
  • May 1, 2008
    Packard Walsh and his motorized gang lord and terrorize an Arizona desert town, where they force boys to drag-race so they can 'win' their vehicles. After they beat the decent teenager Jamie Hankins to death, dragging him from his girlfriend while they made love, a mysterious pow...( read more)er creates Jake Kesey, an extremely cool motor-biker, who has a car which makes invincible and is returning to get revenage on the people who killed him and get back the girl he loves. . Jake befriends Jamie's girlfriend Keri Johnson, takes Jamie's sweet brother Bill under his wing and manages what sheriff Loomis couldn't: eliminate Packard's criminal gang the hard way. This film gives us some great eighties in it's soundtrack which includes Robert Palmer and Billy Idol. It also gives a look at the popular "punk" look of the eighties in the character of Skank.
  • September 24, 2006
    I went to see this because it was advertised on Headbanger's Ball. It's a silly film. The car, however, is undeinably cool. And Sherilyn Fenn is undeniably hot.
  • September 6, 2007
    This is just one of those films thats so bad that its good!A proper 80's thriller,its got Ozzy Osbourne and Motley Crue on the soundtrack, its got Sherilyn Fenn looking fit and its got Charlie Sheen being cheesey.Good Stuff!
  • June 8, 2007
    Being dead is just swell! You can come back, kill all your enemies and get the girl!
  • November 18, 2009
    One of stephen King's first movies.
  • August 21, 2009
    I LIKED THE CAR AND THE STORY
  • August 5, 2009
    "The Wraith" is a film for people who like cars, babes in slutty clothes and hard-rock music from the 80s, which is not exactly my profile. IMDb will tell you exactly what car each of the characters in the film is driving, but I tend to classify cars the same way I classify flowe...( read more)rs: by the colour. So I can tell you the Wraith drives a black one, the bad guy drives a red and grey one, and there are other cars of other colours, which I forgot.

    The babe, though, I did enjoy, since she was none other than Sherilyn Fenn, four years before she became Audrey Horne, so the film had pleasant echoes of Twin Peaks (all the more so as there is a guy called Packard and Fenn brings meals on wheels.) As for the music, I did listen to some Billy Idol as a teen, and I could recognise Robert Palmer and Bonnie Tyler, but I had to play the sound down during the action scenes because Motley Crue and Ozzy Osbourne are really not for my ears.

    As for the story, well, it's a ghost galleon tale where cars stand in for ships. You have a gang of road pirates (who actually call themselves that way) who are being haunted by a ghost (or "wraith", a term less suggestive of sheets and booh-hoos, though this one uses a marker pen and Scotchtape at one point) who rams their cars one by one. There's also a "romance" between a new guy in town and Fenn - he rides a nice motorbike with an open shirt, she has nice legs, they immediately connect, they kiss, and they enjoy the sensation so much that they mlater have sex in a pond in a rock.

    The film is trash, probably the "Fast and Furious" of its day (if "Fast and Furious" is really about what the poster suggests it is about), and left me chuckling at its silliness. Its only "message" apart from its obsession with cars and babes is that you should stand up to bullies, which in my experience is not always recommended, especially if you're a teenage girl and the bully is a psychopathic murderer with a switchblade and a gang of moronic punks behind him.

    But it was watchable, partly because it's well shot (I was lucky enough to see it in the original format, rather than in a grainy pan and scan VHS copy), it has some 80s flavour and you can always fast forward through the boring bits (the three or four car chases.)

    The premise is left pretty much unexplained though. As is the fact that the supernatural car comes equipped with a guidebook in the glove compartment.
  • June 16, 2009
    Cheesey yes, but I love it.
  • April 28, 2009
    this movie shares a lot of plot similarity with the crow. guy comes back from the dead to avenge his murder, not as good but pretty good

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