The acting stinks. The dialogue is corny. Director Larry Bishop tries too hard to pay homage to Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez through utter sycophantic camera mimicry. Yet why was I so in love with "Hell Ride" as soon as the credits ended? Probably because even in spite of the caveats, or maybe because of them, I thought "Hell Ride" was a gut munching, nut stomping, ass kicking piece of wannabe orgasmic grindhouse entertainment with a slick style that you rarely get to see anymore. Yes this is grindhouse and yes, this is great neo-grindhouse, a biker revenge flick that spews from every crevice what we love about flicks like "Northville Cemetery Massacre" and "The Wild One." Sure, in the end Larry Bishop wants to be Tarantino by directing the affair with tongue planted in the cheek of his ego, but I had such a blast watching the killer performances and smug dialogue that I couldn't help but walk away with a big shit eating grin and, yes, even a hard on by the way Bishop reclaims what was so much fun about exploitation flicks. The men are tough nail eating bastards, while the women are ridiculously sexy and pure objects of lust and nothing more.

Typically a forgettable presence in film, Eric Balfour is a real stand out as the Comanche, a man whose own experience with beauty in bike and woman form left him a bitter young man seeking the men who killed Cherokee and ruined his life. Larry Bishop plays it basically as Bishop, a man of few words who saunters in to every scene with a surly manner that keeps his character of Pistolero a wonderful highlight as the anti-hero… or villain. What Bishop aspires for with “Hell Ride” is the “Sin City” Frank Miller motif by staging every character as a true source of evil, except that the characters we follow are a little less villainous. And as per typical biker flicks, there’s Dennis Hopper, a “Kill Bill” twist with David Carradine, and a lot of what makes biker flicks so lovable. As a dead sub-genre, Bishop works at reviving it by exposing us to everything great about the grindhouse niche, and he almost succeeds in providing a great argument for its return. It’s not a perfect film, but damn it, I had so much fun, and that’s all that counts.

Talk about an underused villain, it’s a shame that Lucas isn’t the only one who doesn’t know a good thing. Director Bishop is often much too enamored with Pistolero and the anti-heroes to actually focus on the primary source of troubles which is Billy Wings. For all his potential, Vinnie Jones is sorely misused and barely gets much of a chance to shine in the climax at all. Speaking of convoluted, talk about impossible to follow. It’s a biker movie, “Hell Ride” should not be so ridiculously difficult to follow. It’s about revenge, and betrayal, but damned if I could make heads or tails of the damn thing. Most times I sat simply leaving it up to Bishop to guide me to the punchline and then sometimes I wondered what the hell he was high on. What was the point of the acid trip? And what was the big deal about the confrontation between Pistolero and The Gent in the end at the cross roads? Was the Comanche the son of Cherokee? Damned if I know and damned if I’m willing to believe that Bishop has the hubris to assume people would want a complex plot for a biker flick.

Director Bishop's guilty pleasure throwback to the biker flicks of the grindhouse era is sheer excellence mixed with a healthy dose of stupidity, a revenge and biker warfare bonanza that will appeal to the folks who loved masterpieces like "The Warriors" and "Switchblade Sisters." Bishop knows what audience he's appealing to with "Hell Ride" and he
wins me over three fold with energy, charisma, and a story that hurts so good. This movie kicked my ass.