Hellride comes to you with Quentin Tarantino's name plastered on the box. I remember going to see Hostel 2; some old dude got up and stormed out about halfway through, muttering to himself, "Tarantino will put his name on anything." I disagreed with the old dude, and by the way, why would you go to Hostel 2, knowing full well what kind of film it is, then storm out in mock disgust? Anyway, Tarantino's imprimatur and the trailer for this film, this "Hellride," made me think it would be Grindhouse 1.5, an updating of an old exploitation genre, with cool characters and snappy dialogue. The only problem with this film is Larry Bishop. The fatal problem with this film is that Larry Bishop wrote, directed, and stars in Hellride.
Larry must have known that he couldn't keep up with Michael Madsen as the Gent, so he created for Madsen so one-sided and lame a character that Bishop's character, "Pistolero," looked even more the hero. Ditto Eric Balfour, David Carradine, et tu, Dennis Hopper? Vinnie Jones? Really? Everyone except Bishop is slumming in this film.
It's your basic 12 year old male fantasy: Loud motorcycles, girls, gun violence, knife fights, the good guys are always solidly one crucial step ahead of the bad guys. Bishop plays the "pres" of the gang, of course, an ugly, rather brutish guy who gets all the girls and kills all the bad guys. This film is one of the most self-aggrandizing, fantasy fulfillment, I'll-never-get-that-105-minutes-back, bullshit movies I have ever seen. It's not even funny-bad, it's just lame-bad.
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