cult film freak: CHARLIE SHEEN, SHERILYN FENN & NICK CASSAVETES 'THE WRAITH'

Sherilyn Fenn, Charlie Sheen, Nick Cassavetes & Matthew Barry in THE WRAITH Year: 1986 Rating: ***

Right before Oliver Stone flew overseas to begin filming his game-changing PLATOON, he had heard about the kind of b-movie he probably grew up watching... a small town gang of ruffians race cars along winding desert roads...

All for pink slips to own the losing vehicle, but there's a twist since one black car seems to have come from outer space... and Stone's Vietnam-opus leading man, Charlie Sheen, could have possibly ruined his potential star-power...

Charlie Sheen in THE WRAITH

Only thing is, Sheen has surprisingly little screen time as the titular WRAITH, otherwise a handsome young stranger-in-town, sporadically flirting with a vulnerable burger-joint carhop at a placid river hangout...

Enter Sherilyn Fenn, with an enigmatic backstory of being attacked and marauded by the epitome of town bullies... formidably led by the true leading character in coveting gang leader Nick Cassavetes, upon who Sheen's random protagonist seems a tacked-on afterthought, and, in real life, both he and Charlie have famous actor dads...

Griffin O'Neal, Jamie Bozian and David Sherrill in THE WRAITH

As does the first victim Griffin O'Neal, going up against a slick KNIGHT RIDER style black Dodge, thus beginning a string of vengeful daytime death races (while token investigating cop Randy Quaid, and geeky mechanic Clint Howard, also have famous siblings)...

Combining REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, TWO-LANE BLACKTOP, THE TERMINATOR and THE ROAD WARRIOR... with coolly-nefarious Cassavetes' horribly overacting cohorts resembling bizarre cyberpunk nomads.... writer/director Mike Marvin's THE WRAITH is a science-fiction car flick that would have been more effective without a black-armored, laser-gun blasting space-soldier staking the bullies in-between the road rage...

Nick Cassavetes and Sherilyn Fenn in THE WRAITH

A kind of slick sci-fi cyborg who cannot be seen facially, and, with even the black car not revealing the driver, the daytime sequence Charlie Sheen could have been played by anyone...

And yet the revved-up action sequences are fairly cool, seeming part of the high-octane hot-rod-racing flick the director really wanted to make beyond the glossily tacked-on, basic-cable-looking science-fiction underline.