Volume 4, Issue 2: Fall 2008

Film Review

Hell Ride
Dir. by Larry Bishop
Dimension Films, 2008

Christian Pierce

My mother always told me “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”  Well simply put, if I heeded her advice in reviewing Larry Bishop’s Hell Ride (2008), my review would end here.  

Therein lies my dilemma.  With nothing nice to say, but in need of another 950 words before this review is complete, I guess I am obligated to relay a truthful opinion of this outlaw biker film. 

Hell Ride is produced by Quentin Tarantino and Dimension Films (a subsidiary of The Weinstein Company), the same players who reignited the B-film (low budget, often exploitative) torch in 2007 with the release of the Grindhouse series, a double feature consisting of Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror and Tarantino’s Death Proof.  The Grindhouse series emulated the exploitation films of the 1960s and ’70s, an era of cinema history that both directors hold near and dear to their hearts. 

Hell Ride is the latest installment in this homage to the past, not surprising when one considers the career of writer, director, and lead actor Larry Bishop (son of Rat Packer Joey Bishop).  Formerly a contract actor for American International Pictures (AIP), Bishop frequently appeared in prison films and outlaw biker flicks, such as The Savage Seven (1968), Angels Unchained (1970), and Chrome and Hot Leather (1971).  Bishop’s early work attempted to profit from the biker craze stirred up by the tremendous box office receipts of classic biker films such as The Wild Angels (1966) and Easy Rider (1969).  By working in such films Bishop should have received an education in biker film production, but based on the quality of Hell Ride, I can only assume he failed the class or forgot the lessons taught to him over the course of the past 40 years.

In Hell Ride, Bishop plays Pistolero, leader of the notorious Victors, a biker gang that stereotypically lives under the credo “Bikes, Beer, and Booty.”  This mantra, a staple of the genre, leads skeptical viewers to question whether a middle-aged cast could actually endure the rigors of riding a rigid framed chopper, the hangovers associated with hard drinking, and/or the hyper-libido of a barroom vixen.  Riding with Pistolero are The Gent, played by Tarantino cohort Michael Madsen, and Comanche, played by 24 contributor Eric Balfour.  Together these men make up an unholy trinity that other Victors follow like disciples.  Murder, mayhem, and gratuitous sex with youthful runway models clad in biker garb ensue wherever these men pull off the road.  Over time viewers discover that a gang war against the 666ers has ruptured into a blood bath after the assassination of a chapter member.  With rivals like The Deuce (David Carradine in a role that closely resembles his title character from the Kill Bill series) and Billy Wings (Vinnie Jones of Gone in Sixty Seconds fame), the Victors find themselves at odds with formidable foes hell bent on death and destruction.  Brandishing a handheld harpoon gun like a tattooed Captain Ahab, Billy Wings eventually incites a mutiny among the Victors, who begin to question Pistolero’s leadership.  The unholy three are left to avenge their fallen comrades and the patch they wear so proudly on their back.

As if the standard revenge theme was not enough substance for a predictable biker film, Bishop muddles the story further with a convoluted subplot that defines Pistolero’s relationship to Comanche’s dead mother.  Haunted by her ghost, Pistolero learns that the ties to Comanche go deeper than that of the club brotherhood, so the older (and arguably wiser) biker shows the impulsive kid how a gang war should be fought.  (Pardon me if I am a little cynical about the Father Knows Best meets the Hells Angels scenes.)  With the aid of retired Victor turned weapons wholesaler Eddie Zero, played by Dennis Hopper in a cameo role so big that it required a sidecar, what remains of the club hunts down Billy Wings.  We have all seen it before: stylized action albeit clichéd by today’s standards, culminating in a stand off recognizable from any Spaghetti Western of the late 1960s.

With acting as a flat as the heads on a vintage Harley Davidson, Hell Ride suffers from an incoherent narrative with trite and uninspired dialogue.  The veteran Bishop delivers meaningless lines between random hook ups with female counterparts some four decades younger.  Madsen relies too heavily on the suave yet psychotic attitude that made him famous in Reservoir Dogs (1992).  I wish I could commend Balfour for holding his own with a cast of living legends, but in his one scene with Dennis Hopper he pisses any and all dignity away.  If there is a redeeming quality to this makeshift motorcycle movie it may in fact be the bikes themselves, but here again we are only teased as few shots show the machines.  Instead, the camera hovers over the weathered faces of the cast in obscene and lingering close-ups.  To put it in plain English, the film is an all out lemon.

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