Glancing at the poster for "Hell Ride," you'd think it was the second coming of some long-lost 1968 biker flick, some Roger Corman-produced exploitation nasty like "The Wild Angels" or "Chrome and Hot Leather." But no, this is a homage to '60s biker flicks, produced by trash-movie sommelier Quentin Tarantino, and written and directed by Larry Bishop, a guy whose career actually survived starring in many of those old '60s flicks.
The Bishop-Tarantino connection formed on "Kill Bill Vol. 2" (2004), where Bishop played an obnoxious strip-club owner. Tarantino proposed a biker revival, and Bishop obliged, stacking the cast with fellow biker veterans Dennis Hopper and David Carradine, as well as Tarantino alumnus Michael Madsen. Bishop — son of rat-pack comedian Joey Bishop — takes the lead role for himself, and it's rather amusing to hear a West Coast white-trash biker talk with a nasal East Coast Jewish accent.
The "plot" has something to do with rivalry between two drug-dealing biker gangs, the Victors and the 666s. Bishop plays Pistolero, the leader of the Victors, who — along with his compatriots The Gent (Madsen) and Commanche (Eric Balfour) — is trying to get revenge for the murder of his girlfriend, Cherokee (Julia Jones), way back in 1976. Opposing him is Billy Wings (perennial hard man Vinnie Jones), a crossbow-wielding biker with the 666s, and aging ex-biker The Deuce (David Carradine). Somewhere in the middle is Eddie Zero, a bar owner played by Dennis Hopper, who gets to revisit all his "Easy Rider" mannerisms, baby.