Larry Bishop's Hell Ride is unabashedly silly fun, a flashy, flippant, bloody and at times very weird pseudo biker flick. It's not.. The greatest flick and it's not even that good, but it's worth a gander just for the rogues gallery of exuberant tough guys on parade through a pulpy, chauvinistic tale of betrayal, revenge, sex and befuddled Shakespearean hell's Angels antics. Director and star Bishop is buddies with Quentin Tarantino (who can forget his grouchy cameo in Kill Bill 2?), who gives this flick in the form of executive producer. Not to make fun of the flick, but it's almost like Mel Brooks made a biker movie; it's relentlessly silly and lingers around forever with macho posing and mindless banter, until it straightens up its act in the eleventh hour for a surprisingly poignant bit of vengeance. Bishop plays Pistolero, leader of a gang called the Victors, at odds with their evil rivals, the Six-Six-Six's. Michael Madsen is a hoot as his lieutenant, The Gent, sweet talking his way through the flick in an oddly ruffly wardrobe choice that works because, well, it's Madsen. Rookie member Commanche (Eric Balfour) is an eager beaver with mysterious ties to the 666's elusive, villainess chieftain, The Deuce (salty dog David Carradine in one of his last roles). Also involved is volatile ex member Eddie 'Scratch' Zero (Dennis Hopper), and incredibly vile 666'er Billy Wings (Vinnie Jones). Seeing Jones describe what each of his multicolour wing tattoos mean to an uncomfortable hooker is equal parts gross, hilarious and unsettling. Both gangs messily work their way up to eventual confrontation and settling of differences via the gun, the bike and the profane spoken word. It's ludicrous, off the wall, and hit and miss, but if you're into the cast and genre, you'll have fun.

I wasn't hoping for much before deciding to watch Hell Ride. I saw the ratings and I was pretty sure that it was going to be bad. The reason I wanted to give it a try was because it had a great cast and it was produced by Quentin Tarantino. Sadly, these two things did nothing to make the film better, and it turned out to be a lot worse than I had ever expected.The film is written and directed by Larry Bishop, who stars as the main character. It's hard to point out on which front he's failed more. The directing makes the film look like a juvenile parody of everything Tarantino has ever done. Nearly every scene comes across as clichéd and very pretentious. Unfortunately, Bishop's storytelling skills aren't much better. Most of the time the plot is hard to follow, and sometimes even non-existent. The characters aren't much better. They are extremely shallow and speak weird lines that are supposed to be quirky, but are not. This makes the dialogue some of the worst in motion picture history.But probably the most amazing thing about this film is the acting. With people like Michael Madsen, Dennis Hopper, Vinnie Jones, and David Carradine you would expect some decent performances. But sadly, nearly every actor in this is terrible. Madsen looks like he isn't even trying, but just wants to act insane. Dennis Hopper is criminally underused, and gets no room to shine. Vinnie Jones just overacts in every scene and does a terrible accent. Only David Carradine comes close to giving a good performance, but he doesn't have much screen time and has to utter ridiculous lines. On the plus side none of these actors are as bad as Larry Bishop. Throughout the whole film he seems desperate to show us that he is a really cool tough guy. But he only succeeds in proving that he has no acting ability, no charisma, and no talent overall. His performance is like watching a poor man's Sylvester Stallone who is trying to do a Tom Savini impersonation.After watching this film I was left with an empty feeling. I didn't feel any emotion, but I knew that this was a terrible movie. You could summarise Hell Ride just by saying it's a complete waste of time. There are hardly any redeeming features. The directing is terrible, it's badly acted, and the story is boring and nearly non-existent. It's best just to stay away from this rubbish.

Quentin Tarantino's directorial career has been in steady decline ever since Pulp Fiction, but I still reckon it's a pretty desperate move to deliberately help others make crappy films just so that your own work looks better in comparison. And yet that is the only reason I can come up with for Tarantino producing biker flick Hell Ride, written, directed by, and starring Larry Bishop.A blatant attempt by Bishop to emulate QT's 'homage' style of movie-making, this embarrassingly inept piece of garbage uses every faux-grindhouse gimmick going in an attempt to be as cool as possible, but fails spectacularly thanks to a messy script that is virtually incomprehensible, a cast who fail to appreciate just how inane the movie's tongue twisting X-rated Seussian dialogue is, and abysmal direction from Bishop, who is as equally useless behind the camera as he is in front of it.As tough gang leader Pistolero, the perma-tanned Bishop is clearly having a good time, taking every opportunity to romp with big breasted bimbos a fraction of his age (assorted strippers and sluts, and a barmaid with some serious camel-toe), and co-stars Michael Madsen and Vinnie Jones look more than happy to have been asked along for the ride (Madsen should be pleased that he still gets acting gigs, period!). It's a shame, though, that those watching this crud won't be having anywhere near as much fun.

If you are easily offended by nudity or swearing, maybe you shouldn't watch this. Actually you shouldn't watch this period! On the other hand it is one of the last (if not the last) movie you can watch the late Hopper and the late Carradine together in one movie. Of course there is one scene with Carradine that might make you cringe, especially if you know the circumstances of his own death.But there is one other thing that might leave you baffled. It's the story. The fact that you might not be able to follow it through from start to finish. It doesn't even matter that you have a "McGuffin" in there (a very obvious one). What you do get, is a very confident and good Michael Madsen (QT producing might have again brought out the best in him, with a scene on a tree that does look very ad-libbed).Overall this movie does have a fascination to it (a weird one, that has nothing to do with all the female nudity, though this might make the movie either more or less appealing to you). Not good, but not a bad one either ...