Hell Ride

"If you make a biker movie and your family is still talking to you,” says director/star Larry Bishop in Hell Ride’s "making of” documentary, "you haven’t made a biker movie.” Indeed, if there’s one thing that the biker movie legend (his credits include such grindhouse potboilers as The Savage Seven and Hell’s Angels Unchained) delivers with this "ultimate biker movie,” it’s a liberal dose of the gleeful decadence that made the old exploitation films of the ’60s so popular. Hell Ride plays like a celebration of brotherhood, gunfights, silicone breasts and the act so referred to as "eatin’ pussy.” For about half-an-hour that’s enough to sustain it. Bishop plays Pistolero, the leader of the Victors, a rough-and-tough biker gang made up of some of the paunchiest middle-aged toughs to ever ride choppers. Pistolero and company wage war with the 666s and together these various gangs and allies include Vinnie Jones, Michael Madsen, David Carradine and Dennis Hopper. That’s a lot of testosterone. The film loses momentum as it goes along and even at a scant 83 minutes this hog runs out of gas way before it crosses the desert. Perhaps the novelty of seeing a modern-day biker flick can’t sustain a feature-length running time; Quentin Tarantino’s grindhouse simulations work so well because he transcends the material with irony, while Bishop simply delivers a traditional biker movie. Bishop tries his damndest to emulate Tarantino, using stylish cinematography, a faux-Morricone musical score and overcooked macho dialogue but one can’t help but wish to see what Tarantino might have done with the same material. (Hell Ride, incidentally, comes under the Quentin Tarantino Presents banner, which is fast becoming the most useless endorsement in modern cinema). The extras on the DVD include a red-band trailer (which is more fun than the movie itself), a commentary by Larry Bishop, Michael Madsen’s video diary and, most amusingly, a short documentary called "The Babes of Hell Ride.” If nothing else, Larry Bishop sure lets you know where he stands.