Showtimes & Tickets Enter Zip Code:

HELL RIDE
Written & Directed by Larry Bishop
Produced by Michael Steinberg, Shana Stein & Bishop
Released by Third Rail Releasing
USA.  83 min.  Rated R
With Larry Bishop, Michael Madsen, Eric Balfour, Vinnie Jones, Michael Beach, Cassandra Hepburn, Leonor Valera, David Carradine & Dennis Hopper

It’s ironic that the current King of Homage, Quentin Tarantino, was not only an executive producer and presenter for Hell Ride, but at one point was to act in a key role. But this film is, in short, a way not to pay loving tribute. The director, Larry Bishop, a veteran actor of several B movie biker movies from the ’60s and ’70s (The Savage Seven, Angel Unchained), doesn’t know how to direct or to tell a coherent story.  

What I could make out of a story in Hell Ride’s hodgepodge is this: Pistolero (Larry Bishop), old-time biker and leader of the gang the Victors, is out for revenge because of some sort of horrendous act that happened in 1976 and/or a murder of one of his gang by the hand of the 666ers. Then there’s some business about possible double-crosses with the Gent (Michael Madsen) and Comanche (Eric Balfour), and a thought-to-be-dead biker Eddie “Scratch” Zero (Dennis Hopper, biker movie legend from Easy Rider) reappearing to aid the 666ers. Not to mention the ladies in the bunch like Cassandra Hepburn playing “Pistolero’s Old Lady,” and….

I can barely even go on describing it because, as part of Bishop’s design, story doesn’t really matter in the scheme of things—this despite the fact that there’s particular emphasis placed on details like Pistolero’s 666-page book The Rebellion Against All There Is, title cards introducing every seemingly relevant cast member, and that, according to the press notes, the story of Hell Ride is condensed from a 400-page novel by Bishop! If you can even follow much of what happens from scene to scene, more power to you. By the time the last third came around, I was checking my watch too much to care.

Which is a shame since a good, crazy homage could come out of those hard-boiled, lamebrained but entertaining biker movies from the likes of Roger Corman and the AIP film company, shot cheap and quick as a reaction to the surge in Hell Angels activity in the ’60s (and often paying tribute to B Westerns with motorcycles in place of horses). But in order to make a good homage one already has to be a good director (for all its potential faults, last year’s Grindhouse was helmed by talented people). Bishop’s tact here is to throw up his middle-age burnout on the screen for all to wallow in as women half his age bizarrely throw themselves at him (with the occasional one leaving him for dead—he strangely seems to survive without a scratch). Though he puts the footage through horrid filters and color desaturation, he somewhat follows the genre’s credo of the three B’s: bikes, beer, and booty.

The film’s a disappointment if only because it could have worked as a “so-bad-it’s-good” movie. Bishop himself is an irritating presence as an actor (he was very good in his one scene in Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vol. 2 as Madsen’s strip club boss); Madsen mugs through practically all of his “performance,” which seems to be there just so a biker can be seen wearing a tuxedo; and Hopper, and especially David Carradine, sleepwalk through their roles. To top it all off, Bishop throws in references to Sergio Leone spaghetti Westerns in the most hackneyed form (men out for revenge, lots of excruciating violence), with the music pounding away bad rip-offs of the classic Ennio Morricone scores. At the end, I was reminded of a line spoken early on by Pistolero about “a nihilist dream come true.” More like a nightmare: trashy and ultimately boring. Jack Gattanella
August 8, 2008