You have no idea how blatantly honest the tagline is!
Killers on Wheels is a 1974 Exploitation Film directed by Kuei Chi-hung, the exploitation/gore maestro of Shaw Brothers, starring Ling Yun, Danny Lee and Terry Liu.
A group of friends from Hong Kong, including humble businessman Guo Jian-Zhong (Ling), his wife May (Terry Liu), best friend Si-Wai (Danny) and Si-wai's fiancée, Carrie, intends to spend a month away from city life by staying in a coastal beach resort.
But as luck would have it, the beach is the constant haunt of a ruthless biker gang led by Michael and Johnny, a pair of brothers from a wealthy family with too much time on their hands and delights in terrorizing the local populace, with the police being absolutely helpless about it.
When Johnny, the pervert and meaner of the brothers, ends up lusting after Carrie, all hell breaks loose as the four friends valiantly tried defending themselves from the biker hooligans' onslaught.
You might notice the tagline in the poster above promising blood, gore, violence, revenge and tits. The movie absolutely delivers all that in spades and more.
Killers on Wheels contain examples of:
- Accidental Murder: Two of them, both which are plot-centric.
- When the biker punks breaks into the villa, Johnny deliberately goes after Carrie, the same woman who caught his attention at the start of the film, intending to rape her. While doing so, Johnny accidentally shoves Carrie through a glass barricade, where the back of her head goes through some sharp corners…
- It all comes back to Johnny as part of his well-deserved Karmic Death. In the final scene, Michael managed to steal Guo's tractor and decide to charge the tractor through the villa's front hall, in an attempt to kill Guo. But Michael is unaware that his brother, Johnny, is strung by his wrists in the middle of the hall, effectively squashing his brother into a bloody pulp by accident. Resulting in a strangely satisfying Oh, Crap! look on Michael's face.
- Asshole Victim: Johnny, the younger brother of the main villain Michael, when the latter rams a tractor into the villa in a failed attempt to kill Guo Jian-zhong only to run over Johnny instead. Since the victim here is a pervert, rapist and tried to get away after committing murder, he's definitely an asshole.
- Badass Biker:
- They are the main villains of the picture, a band of hooligans with too much free time on their hands who partakes in bike races all day long and terrorizes a small coastal town.
- Si-wai proves himself to be quite capable in the one scene where he grabs a crowbar and fights off a bunch of bikers, while on a bike himself.
- Beach Kiss: Michael had one of these with his lover with both of them butt-naked, in order to celebrate Michael winning his bike race. It doesn't add anything else to the plot, the same which can be said for most of the nude scenes in the entire film.
- Booby Trap: The final raid on the villa had Guo Jian-Zhong installing several traps in anticipation for the bikers. Including electrified railings, flaming balconies, trapdoors, and the like.
- Conveniently Timed Attack from Behind: In the final scene after Guo Jian-Zhong had killed every single biker punk except Michael, the last villain, Michael momentarily gets the drop on Guo until May, having suddenly recovered from her post-rape trauma, manage to summon enough strength to ambush Michael by stabbing him In the Back with scissors.
- Crowbar Combatant: After Carrie's death, a vengeful Si-wai grabs a crowbar, his own bike, and ambushes the biker punks, skillfully knocking many of them off their feet, wounding them with the crowbar's tip, and later attacks the biker's camp wounding plenty of them. Too bad Si-wai didn't quite succeed in his revenge.
- Cycle of Revenge: The entire second half of the film runs on this. The biker punks invades the villa and accidentally kills Carrie, so her fiancée Si-Wai goes for revenge attacking the punks and wounding several of them. He fails and gets wounded in the process, so Guo Jian-Zhong kidnaps Johnny, the younger brother of the gang's leader Michael, intending to have Michael and the rest of his mooks Lured into a Trap. With really bloody and graphic consequences.
- Disproportionate Retribution: The biker punks, after being called a bunch of ruthless punks by Guo (which... they are) and threatened to have the cops being called upon them, decide to retaliate by setting the villa on fire, steal the boats, invade the villa and trash it's interior completely, before attempting to gang rape May and Carrie resulting in the latter being killed.
- Don't Try This at Home: After the final scene where Guo and Carrie are the only survivors, and all the biker punks are violently killed, the film ends with this announcement in CAPS:THERE IS NO RULE OF LAW THAT A KILLING WHICH RESULTS FROM THE USE OF EXCESSIVE FORCE IN SELF-DEFENCE IS ONLY MANSLAUGHTER; IF SUCH A KILLING IS DELIBERATE IT IS MURDER.
- Evil Counterpart: The villainous biker gang in this film can be considered a villainous version towards another benelovent gang from Young Lovers On Flying Wheels, another Shaw production (which is a drama with minimal amount of action, instead of exploitation film) from two years earlier that portrays biker gangs in a far more sympathetic light.
- Gangbangers: The bikers can be considered these, what with their backstory as rich punks seeking thrills for fun.
- Genre Shift: For most of the half, the movie is a meandering, directionless slog that intercuts between the biker punks being noisy hooligans, Guo Jian-zhong and his friends trying to enjoy their vacation without being bothered by the punks, the antics between Michael and his rebellious brother Johnny... but then Johnny instigates a fight, one thing leads to another when the punks made a move to attack the villa, and ends up accidentally killing Carrie and leaving May in a state of semi-insanity after they gang-raped her. It quickly takes a dive to Exploitation Film territory after that.
- Generic Graffiti: In order to show that they mean business ("bad" business) one of the first things the biker punks did is to vandalize Guo Jian-zhong's vacation van with graffiti.
- Gorn: Plenty of it.
- Gratuitous Japanese: At the end of the first night confrontation that goes out of control, leading to the biker punks setting the villa on fire and making a run for it, one of the punks randomly said "Sayoonara oyasuminasai" note for no particular reason. Note that this bit of Japanese was in both the original HK version and the English dub.
- Harpoon Gun: Early on when the punks tries to harass Carrie by chasing her on a beach (note that they're on motorcycles, while Carrie is on foot. Barefoot.), Si-Wei who just got out from the water after a scuba diving trip uses a harpoon gun to threaten the punks into backing off. The same harpoon shows up in the finale, used by Guo Jian-Zhong to execute a biker punk from up close.
- Hate Sink: Johnny, the brother of the biker punks' boss Michael, is clearly the bigger sink in the picture. He's a pervert and lecher who started the entire mess of the film by lusting after Carrie, instigates his underlings to raid the villa, is shown to be a pervert that treats the females of the gang as sex-toys, repeatedly rude to his underlings and his brother, and ultimately crosses the line when he murders Carrie, and shows no remorse over his actions. He even repeatedly taunts Guo Jian-zhong that he will be a dead man when Michael arrives after he was caught alive by Guo for the murder and whines that "Society never cared for youngsters and modern hooligans"... despite how he's clearly in control of his own life, being the younger son of a rich family, and is putting the blame of his violent ways on somebody else.
- I Have Your Wife: A rare example where it's the good guys who does it; Guo, the last unscathed character from the biker gang's rampage, decides the best way to deal with those punks is to kidnap their second-in-command, Johnny, and lure their leader Michael into attacking, so that he can utilize traps and ambushes to take down the hooligans.
- High-Voltage Death: During the finale, a few biker punks tried forcing their way into the villa by climbing up the railings to the second floor, unaware that Guo Jian-zhong had stuck exposed wires to the metal railings. Once Guo flicks a switch, plenty of bikers gets fried to their deaths.
- Improvised Weapon User: In the final villa fight, Guo Jian-zhong wields a propeller he ripped off his speedboat as a weapon, and easily slices numerous punks to shreds.
- It's Personal: Guo Jian-Zhong and his friend Si-wei, originally considers the biker punks as (somewhat major) inconvenience and is willing to turn the other cheek, even after they had vandalized their vacation van and attempts to tear down their villa just for the heck of it. But when the biker punks' shenanigans goes too far leading to the death of Si-wei's girlfriend, Carrie, all hell breaks loose.
- Knight of Cerebus: Carrie is an inverted example, that the film goes off the rails once she gets accidentally killed by the punks, leading to Guo Jian-Zhong and Si-wei declaring TOTAL WAR with the biker punks.
- Madness Mantra: From May, after getting gang-raped by Johnny's punks and witnessing her friend Carrie's death.May: I want to go back to Hong Kong... I want to go back to Hong Kong... I want to go back to Hong Kong...
- Men Are the Expendable Gender: Despite the biker hooligans having both male and female members, in the final assault on the villa, the dozens or so bikers who accompanied Michael - and ends up dying horribly one after another - are all males. Could be justified by the biker punks' treatment towards their female members; for most of the film the lady bikers are depicted as play-girls and whores, instead of an actual attack force.
- Molotov Cocktail: These are among the weapons Jian-Zhong made for defending the villa against the biker thugs in the finale, made from combining empty beer bottles with spare petrol for his motorboat. He uses a bunch of these when a number of bikers tried climbing upon the villa's balcony, killing at least two by turning them into Man on Fire.
- No Range Like Point-Blank Range: The final confrontation in the villa has Guo Jian-Zhong executing a punk in this manner... with a Harpoon Gun. Although it's a Gory Discretion Shot.
- Police Are Useless: Played ridiculously straight, considering Johnny and his band of biker punks have been terrorizing the beach and scaring off locals for months and they literally didn't even lift a finger. The movie gave a rather flimsy Hand Wave that since the beach resort, being located in the outskirts of Hong Kong, isn't under the city council's jurisdiction.
- Rape Leads to Insanity: For May, after the bikers led by Johnny barges into the villa. With Johnny going after Carrie, while Johnny's thugs gang-rapes May, leading to her reduced to a drooling, vegetative state for the entire ending.
- Rich Jerk: The leaders of the biker thugs, Michael and Johnny, are a pair of brothers spoiled by their family into believing they're entitled to have anything they want, and voluntarily starts a bike-racing gang that wantonly terrorizes beach-goers for their own sadistic fun.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Si-wai sets off on a bloody rampage towards the bikers when their leader's brother, Johnny, accidentally kills his fiancée Carrie. And later on there is Guo Jian-zhong against the bike gang to avenge Carrie as well, and also for his wife May who was reduced to insanity after being raped.
- Roaring Rampage of Rescue: By the villains, for once. Michael's final assault on the villa is to retrieve his brother Johnny. But he got carried away and ends up accidentally crushing Johnny to death with a stolen tractor.
- The Siege: The film's final battle, which has Guo Jian-Zhong facing an entire horde of biker punks, alone in his badly-damaged villa. Which he succeed, thanks to plenty of impromptu booby-traps he utilized for the finale.
- Trash the Set: The set being the vacation villa belonging to Guo Jian-Zhong. Throughout the film, the biker punks rips off plenty of planks from it's walls, sets it on fire by throwing torches through it's sides, then breaks all the doors and windows while trying to attack the women, and in the finale it gets a tractor driven through it's front doors. The film ends with a lingering shot of the wrecked villa's interiors, filled with a dozen corpses including those of Michael and Johnny, and Guo Jian-Zhong comforting May in the middle of all that mess.
- Unwilling Suspension: In a rare example of the hero doing this to the villain, in the finale Johnny is hoist to a ceiling by Guo, when the latter uses him to lure Michael and the rest of the bikers into attacking.
- Violence is the Only Option: Guo Jian-zhong the protagonist is a simple businessman looking for a peaceful retreat on a holiday, but against the bikers, especially after they gang-raped his wife to the point of insanity, he realized the best way to deal with them is by slaughtering them by the lot.
