I really want to give you a sense of how overinflated the cool factor of writer/director/star Larry Bishop is so I want you to imagine that you've cast yourself in a porno that you're making and the co-star in your sexual escapades is yourself and years from now when you're unable to sleep you can always pop in this old chestnut and pleasure yourself to sleep. "Hell Ride" is, in short, a vanity piece for a man who has nothing to be proud of. Larry Bishop film's looks like a relic from the 70s. It stars a couple of relics from the 70s who happen to be in their 70s (David Carradine, Dennis Hopper), but alas the villains are unfortunately not known by the moniker 777ers but rather as the 666ers. The good guys are a biker gang known as The Victors, but the real victors are people who don't watch this movie.

Back in 1976, a woman named Cherokee Kisum (Julia Jones) was murdered in cold blood by the 666ers led by Deuce (David Carradine), but represented by and large by the psychotic Billy Wings (Vinnie Jones) who dispatches his victims with a crossbow or spear gun. Sometimes they slit throats and light fires too in case you missed that part a couple of sentences back.

In the present day, a Victor named Saint Louie is dispatched in much the same way as Cherokee Kisum so the remaining members led by Pistolero (writer/director/joke Larry Bishop), The Gent (Michael Madsen, who is much less drunk here than he was while filming frankly better Uwe Boll movies) and a young upstart by the name of Comanche, but named Bix (Eric Balfour) set off with the rest of the gang to even the score.

The plot is for the most part a straightforward revenge affair, but the film employs flashbacks to conceal information that isn't very surprising. But with Bix being about eight years old in 1976 how are we to believe that Balfour is playing forty, he's barely over thirty. Also is Kisum Bix's mother or older sister because her age at time of death also makes the matter confusing. Some of the soft spoken dialogue I could barely hear on my laptop may clarify the matter, but it makes little difference when considering the sum of the film's failures. A few of the Victors are revealed to be traitors and executed with all deliberate speed and when we're first introduced to Dennis Hopper's Eddie Zero, he looks to be a 666er but it's all a put upon. One of the chief annoyances (beside Bishop's penchant for atrocious dialogue, but we'll get to that) of "Hell Ride" are the constant double crosses and p-ssing contests between the characters that are never adequately explained but Bishop tries justifying things by having the Gent tell Pistolero that he has an annoying habit of keeping things concealed from him.

There is also a buried treasure in the movie. And some talk meant to amp up the mystique of Comanche. A couple of things that Larry Bishop is pretty good at: vagaries and cryptic pointless double speak.

One of the things that Larry Bishop is worse at than making a movie full of violence, breasts and bad words that's titillating is actually giving his characters things to say that don't constitute only as tough guy posturing or Mike Myers' and Quentin Tarantino mingling their affinity for bad words and bad sexual puns. Pistolero and some mysterious sexy lady named Nada (Leonor Varela) riff on the word fire in one of two conversation where she basically begs him to f-ck her good. She talks about his fire hose, he talks about his fire hose, he says he's fireproof and she says he's fire retardant because he won't have sex with her- if this sounds bad out of context it would sound immeasurably worse if I were quoting it. Either way, Varela is really sexy and her English sounds better here than in "Blade 2" (irrelevant almost, but I was surprised that there was no trace of an accent being that "Blade 2" was the only other movie I've ever seen her in and she had one there), but she's also the only person in the film who comes across as legitimately good. Every line reading, every gesture brings the film not only a much welcomed sexual charge but a sense of vitality that it is otherwise always missing. In Varela's hands the dialogue is merely bad not outright atrocious. Varela sexes the picture up so much, that I'm glad I can follow this film up with Penelope Cruz in "Elegy." Maybe it's wishful thinking, but Varela here reminds me of Penelope Cruz in "Volver" and with another Cruz film to look forward to is it asking too much that I luck into two performances in a row that can just sex things the f up?

I think I deserve it after sitting through "Hell Ride."

Recommended: No