Text size:

'Hell Ride'

Rating:

BY RAFER GUZMÁN | rafer.guzman@newsday.com

August 8, 2008

' Hell Ride," a low-budget spaghetti-biker movie, may have historical significance for connoisseurs of Z-grade garbage, whose unofficial president, Quentin Tarantino, executive-produced this film. Its writer-director is Larry Bishop, a veteran actor of 1960s youth flicks like "Wild in the Streets" and "Chrome and Hot Leather." Those were the days when Z-grade garbage, with its transgressive sex and violence, still meant something (insert wistful sigh here).

But now lurid filmmaking is everywhere, from second-tier cable channels to the Internet to the multiplex. Tarantino enlisted Bishop (son of Rat Packer Joey) to bring some authenticity to "Hell Ride," and it worked: This is an authentically bad movie.

Bishop himself plays Pistolero, president of the Victors biker gang, who's out to avenge the grisly murder of Cherokee Kisum (Julia Jones). Riding at his right and left handlebars are The Gent ( Michael Madsen, flaunting a frilly tuxedo) and the young newcomer Comanche (Eric Balfour), ready to battle the rival 666ers gang, headed by Billy Wings ( Vinnie Jones) and the smooth-talking Deuce ( David Carradine, whose single five-minute scene is the film's only highlight). Dennis Hopper grins his way through a bit part, and Laura Cayouette stars as one of many women whose main function is to wriggle around and talk dirty.

It all sounds like more fun than it is. Bishop, despite his appealingly leathery skin and scary blue eyes, is dwarfed in stature and skill by his fellow actors, and his script is disappointingly unfunny. Even the gratuitous violence is mundane: cut throats, flaming bodies - the usual. As for the climax, you've rarely seen one less climactic.

Bishop's worst decision was swiping the theme song from "C.C. & Company," a laughably lame 1970 biker movie starring Joe Namath. It only serves as a reminder that almost anything would be better than "Hell Ride."

(R)

PLOT A group of bikers battles another group of bikers.

CAST Michael Madsen, Dennis Hopper, Larry Bishop, Laura Cayouette

LENGTH 1:25

PLAYING AT Area theaters

BOTTOM LINE Unexciting, unoriginal and unfunny, " Hell Ride" is a lesson in how to make a bad movie.