According to the backstory of how Hell Ride got made, it was a meeting between Quentin Tarintino and Larry Bishop, who played a batrender in Kill Bill v2, and was best known as a cult film star of several road and exploitation biker films from the late 1960’s and early 70’s. “It is your destiny to write, direct and star in a movie” Quentin is quoted as saying to Bishop. The Pulp Fiction director would also put his name on it as an executive producer. Actually, Tarintino should have considered taking his name off the film, unless he was simply giddy that his name is connected to a exploitation biker pic for the next generation. It doesn’t work. Hell Ride is indeed an accurate title- the ride is hell, that’s undisputed.

I could not figure out the plot of the film, but I believe that is secondary and intentionally weak. The main focus is to succeed in getting the maximum hard core carnage, how many naked oil wrestlers a filmmaker can get in one shot, and getting the only non-nude actress, Leonor Verela, to say so many times what has to be done to her for her to give out information on the rival, equally brutal biker gang. If the intent was to be a cheap, ultra-violent schlock romp, then Hell Ride should be commended. It says it will do a thing. It does that thing. Here’s the “evil” biker gang the 666′ers led by Billy Wings (Vinnie Jones), who likes shooting crossbows and telling strippers how he cut some woman’s heart out; here’s the “good” biker gang, led by Pistolero (Bishop), The Gent (Michael Madsen) and Comanche (Eric Balfour) who get into orgies, hunt for some key to a prize buried in the desert, and shoot characters before we get to know them. That last item was one of the bad highlights of Bishop’s previous turn as a writer-director, the dud Mad Dog Time, where the viewer was treated endless shootings of various underwritten and undeveloped characters played by any varied actors in glorified cameos.

That’s pretty much the same here. When Bishop realizes a character isn’t working as well as the wafer thin story allows, those characters get killed off no sooner as they are introduced. It’s tough to follow who is who, and if it wasn’t for Dennis Hopper, whose introduction put the comatose picture on an all to brief life support, and the usual Madsen swagger, the film would be unwatchable. I don’t understand why some of my online film geek peers championed such a film. I know this film goes for a Biker flick more so than say, Stone Cold did, the action picture from the early 90’s with Brain Bosworth, but at least that had some enjoyable action and a plot, and at times got just as hard violence dirty. It too had a severed head, if memory serves. As for the nilism of Ride, it is there at least briefly. See, I have found that in low budget exploitation pictures…if there is no story and there’s no good action, the naked whorehouses and oil wrestlers aren’t that far away.

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Hell Ride

Starring: Larry Bishop, Leonor Verela, Michael Madsen, Dennis Hopper, Vinnie Jones, and Eric Balfour.
Directed by: Larry Bishop