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HELL RIDE

Starring: Michael Madsen, Larry Bishop, Eric Balfour, David Carradine, Dennis Hopper, Vinnie Jones and Leonor Varela

Directed By: Larry Bishop

Rated R for strong violence, sexual content including graphic nudity and dialogue, language and drug use

By John Delia

Unless you are a hard-core biker, like a lot of rock music mixed in with violence, or are adamant about seeing every ‘grind house’ movie that hits the screen, don’t bother with this clunker. The poster itself provides a warning; “The rebellion against all there is.” The film has a jumbled plot, gratuitous nudity in almost every scene, poor acting and meaningless dialogue.

Please read this carefully, because if you go to see it, I think this is what it is all about. Members of the 666er biker gang slice and burn a young Comanche Indian girl to death. Thirty-five years later her son and her lovers who are members the rival Victors gang get even. In between there are a lot of flashbacks on the murder, needless character buildup, and a lot of biker killings.

There are very few good things about Hell Ride. The ‘grind house’ filming effect is good, and if you are a lover of the cinematic look, this will probably be a good thing. They kill off a lot of tough bikers, sometimes twice, and that may be a good thing. The acting of Dennis Hopper is a good thing, because without him the film would be totally intolerable. Some of the women in the film are beautiful, even though their acting needs to be polished up a lot.

Hell Ride tends to get away from itself and that’s probably the fault of the director. It looked like it was originally made as a full sequence movie with a reveal in the beginning and then played out to its showdown ending. But then it looks like the editor decided to snip and rearrange the scenes in order to try and delay the reveal and the obvious ‘twist’ ending. And finally, the acting leaves a lot to be desired unless ‘campy’ is an acceptable type of performance.

A BIG warning here, there is a lot of frontal female nudity, sexual content with dialogue, drug use, brutality, strong violence and gore. (And sometimes all during the same scene.)

FINAL ANALYSIS: Hell Ride dooms itself with a jumbled plot and very little substance.