She-Devils on Wheels Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		2.5

She-Devils on Wheels Blu-ray Movie Review

Daughters of anarchy.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 24, 2016

Note: This film is available as part of The Herschell Gordon Lewis Feast.

Mention the initials “H.G.” to most people, and my hunch is virtually everyone will default to thinking about H.G. Wells, the legendary author whose science fiction masterpieces resulted in such memorable films as The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The Island of Dr. Moreau and War of the Worlds. Certain fans who have a slightly different definition of what constitutes a memorable film might have a variant reaction to those same initials, however, positing one Herschell Gordon Lewis instead of Mr. Wells. Lewis has long been known by the sobriquet “Godfather of Gore,” and his early exploitation pictures were, for their day, amazingly overt in their depiction of what ultimately came to be called “splatter”. Lewis, who only just fairly recently died at the age of 90, had an interesting if not especially distinguished career, though it’s notable that Lewis maintained a more than abundant sense of humor about his films and his contributions to the supposed art of cinema. Lewis’ filmography (it’s a bit of a stretch to actually call it an oeuvre) hasn’t been especially well served in the Blu-ray era, though there have been at least a few releases of his work, including The Blood Trilogy, The Wizard of Gore / The Gore Gore Girls and The Lost Films of Herschell Gordon Lewis. Now, in what amounts to an elegy of sorts for Lewis, Arrow Video has assembled what will certainly go down in the annals of the Blu-ray era as one of the most lavish deluxe sets produced, at least within the confines of what can only be accurately described as “cult cinema”. Along with a collection of fourteen films (nine making their Blu-ray debut), Arrow also includes a glut of bonus content (some with Lewis’ involvement), as well as impressive packaging and non disc supplements.

If A Taste of Blood and Color Me Blood Red found Lewis attempting (either intentionally or unintentionally) to mine a certain Roger Corman-esque ambience, She-Devils on Wheels might be seen as Lewis getting into a cinematic turf war with Russ Meyer, especially Meyer’s legendary 1965 opus Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!. While there is a kidnapping element to the plot, what might really tie the two films together for some viewers is how both present women as the forces to be reckoned with, with males coming off as the veritable patsies a lot of the time. She- Devils on Wheels could also be seen to have a none too subtle lesbian subtext, but it’s couched here in a late sixties’ context that allows for the film’s female biker gang to be rough and tumble, but to at least give passing lip service to being serviced by men.

Queen (Betty Connell) is the aptly named leader of a gang of female bikers also aptly named as the Man Eaters. The gang is just flat out nasty at times, even if some of their marauding is on the hilarious side (my favorite moment is when one of the bikers zooms by a little girl and steals the tyke’s Slurpee). The supposed shock element in the early going of the film is seeing women doing all the bad things that men biker gangs are infamous for doing, and for a 1968 audience, that might have been enough. For jaded modern day viewers, a lot of the depictions are going to seem quaint at best and pretty comedic at worst.

There are a couple of conflicts, both intramural and otherwise, at play as the plot unfolds. Queen starts to get into it with Karen (Christie Wagner), a newcomer to the gang who doesn’t play by Queen’s kind of random rules (including “choosing” men to party with). Things get even more tense when a male gang shows up and attempts to take over Queen’s domain. A series of melodramatic events ensue, including a couple of immolations that more securely link the film to some of Lewis’ other splatter-fests more so than some of the rest of the plot dynamics.

She-Devils on Wheels Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Arrow has included some general verbiage about the transfers in this set:

All film materials sourced for restoration were scanned in 2K resolution on a pin registered 4K Lasergraphics Director Scanner at Deluxe Media, Burbank. Film grading and restoration was completed at Deluxe Restoration, London. Thousands of instances of dirt, debris and light scratches were removed through a combination of digital restoration tools. Overall image stability and density fluctuation was also improved when possible.

The original mono soundtracks were transferred from 35mm prints by Deluxe Audio Services, Los Angeles, and were conformed and restored at Deluxe Restoration, London.

Additional audio conform for How to Make a Doll and Just for the Hell of It by David Mackenzie.

Although the best existing elements were sourced for this project and every attempt was made to present the films in this collection in the highest quality possible, some of the films still exhibit varying degrees of damage that could not be digitally repaired to our satisfaction. The condition of the existing materials for Moonshine Mountain, The Gruesome Twosome, How to Make a Doll and This Stuff'll Kill Ya all contained extreme levels of dirt, scratches and debris as well as many instances of torn or missing frames. They all exhibited heavy degrees of colour fading as well. Likewise, the print sections sourced to complete A Taste of Blood were both faded and heavily scratched. Throughout the restoration workflow process, our priority was to retain the original photochemical look of the films rather than create unwanted digital artefacts by heavy handed picture cleanup. Therefore, many of the films in this collection exhibit "warts and all" appearance, in keeping with their distribution history and physical condition.

Restoration supervised by James White, Arrow Films.

She-Devils on Wheels is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.33:1. This is another one of the nicer looking films in the Lewis set, one with really nicely suffused color and a coarse but organic looking grain field. The palette is among the more impressive in Lewis' films of this era, and this high definition accounting of it is often quite inviting, especially with regard to elements like the fun interstitial illustration that spins in what seems like an obvious referent to the then trendy Batman: The Complete Series, which used a similar gambit with its famous logo as a bridging element. But other colors also pop extremely well, with really great green and reds and even pinks like Queen's blouse. Occasional scenes are distinctly out of focus (see screenshot 5).

She-Devils on Wheels Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

She-Devils on Wheels' LPCM mono track is occasionally fairly boisterous sounding, as in the opening roar of engines (before any imagery is seen). However, things are generally pretty boxy sounding, and there's attendant hiss that's especially noticeable in quieter moments. Dialogue is generally clearly rendered, though occasional slight distortion creeps into the upper midrange.

She-Devils on Wheels Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Arrow has packaged this set a little unusually, with two films per disc and one set of supplements for both movies available from a main menu. While some of the supplements are obviously geared toward one individual film, others are a bit more general in nature, and so I'm listing the complete supplemental package for each particular disc rather than for each individual film. The supplements for She-Devils on Wheels and Just for the Hell of It are:

• The Shocking Truth (1080p; 10:25) features film editor Bob Murawski discussing Lewis.


• Garage Punk Gore (1080p; 9:12) features Chris Alexander focusing on some of the musical elements in Lewis' films.


• H.G. Lewis on The Alley Tramp (1080i; 2:58) features Lewis discussing yet another film he completed in 1968.


• Promo Gallery

  She-Devils on Wheels Trailer (1080p; 1:37)

  The Alley Tramp Trailer (1080p; 2:34)

  She-Devils on Wheels Radio Spot (1:00)

• She-Devils on Wheels Audio Commentary features Mike Vraney from Something Weird Video with Jimmy Maslow and Herschell Gordon Lewis.


• Herschell Gordon Lewis Introduction to She-Devils on Wheels (1080p; 1:24) is available under the play menu for that film.


• Herschell Gordon Lewis Introduction to Just for the Hell of It (1080p; 1:59) is available under the play menu for that film.

She-Devils on Wheels Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

She-Devils on Wheels doesn't exactly qualify as a proto-feminist cinematic anthem, but it's an interesting gender swap, even if it's just as often unintentionally funny. Video is among the strongest in this set, and audio is also generally good. As with all the other films in this set, the supplementary package is quite enjoyable.