Hell Ride (2008)

Director:

Larry Bishop

Writer (WGA):

Larry Bishop (written by)

Genre:

Action | Drama | Thriller

Tagline:

The rebellion against all there is

Plot:

The story deals with the characters Pistolero, the Gent and Comanche and the deadly, unfinished business among them. |

Plot Keywords:

Pistolero | Biker

Cast

Larry Bishop	...	Pistolero
Dennis Hopper	...	Eddie 'Scratch' Zero
Michael Madsen	...	The Gent
Vinnie Jones	...	Billy Wings
Eric Balfour	...	Comanche
Kanin J. Howell	...	Opium
Michael Beach	...	Goody Two-Shoes
Cassandra Hepburn	...	Lana / Pistolero's Old Lady / Exotic Beauty
Leonor Varela	...	Nada
Laura Cayouette	...	Dani
Julia Jones	...	Cherokee Kisum
Francesco Quinn	...	Machete
Alison McAtee	...	The Swede
David Grieco	...	Dr. Cement
Theresa Alexandria	...	Carmen

MPAA:

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

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

USA:R

Filming Locations:

Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Dimension Films

Trivia:

Larry Bishop, a biker-movie veteran, and Michael Madsen met while working on Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004) and decided to do this movie together.

complete incompetent garbage

The final Sundance movie I saw should have rocked. The full-to-bursting Egyptian theater midnight premiere of 70's biker movie staple Larry Bishop's Hell Ride was attended by luminaries such as Quentin Tarantino (executive producer), Michael Madsen (Co-star) and, right in front of me, Dennis Hopper (another Co-star). I was pumped. Sadly, Hell Ride wasn't just the worst film of the festival: this is film-making at its most garish and incompetent. Another exploitation re-boot funded by the Weinstein brothers reveals Bishop to be a genre fossil who should have remained buried. He writes the third-rate Tarantino pastiche of a screenplay, directs with no sense of form or tone, and stars as Pistolero, the leader of the motorcycle gang The Victors. A messy jumble of flashbacks, hallucinations, nude women, and revenge gobbly gook, Hell Ride lays claim to making the biggest mistake an exploitation film can make: it is boring. Tarantino has the writerly gifts to make exploitation tropes fresh and post-modern. His older protégé is a hack, trying desperately to capture Tarantio's effortless way with dialogue to embarrassing effect (watch, and cringe, as Bishop and a busty woman flirt for ten minutes with lines peppered with "fire-man" analogies). He wastes people you shouldn't waste, like Madsen, Hopper, Eric Balfour, and David Carradine. The parade of under-dressed, underdeveloped women are reduced to whores who live to serve the bikers in dozens of bars scattered across the desert. Every scene is a repetitive variation on meager themes-and whenever Bishop writes himself into a corner, someone else is killed, or a pair of t*ts saves the day. The chemistry between the stars and crew was palpable on stage at the Egyptian. Too bad this garbage is their progeny. ZERO STARS