HardRidetoHell

Hard Ride to Hell (2010)

Let me give you guys just a bit of insight into myself. If your movie’s description starts off Bikers from Hell then you pretty much have me hooked. Sure so many of these movies aren’t very good, but damn it I keep holding out hope. Hard Ride to Hell is one of the few movies in this subgenre that actually rewards my diligence in watching them.

The story starts in what looks like the late 30s or early 40s. A young man and his grandfather end up in a town where something terrible has happened. The grandfather tells his grandson that it has something to do with black magic; right before a demonic looking pregnant woman takes a chunk out of him! Some riders show up and cut the out of the woman, but it is dead. Here we are introduced to the Miguel Ferrer’s character, the leader of the Satanists (here riding horses). The action moves to today where a group of kids in an RV (flashing back to Race with the Devil here…) run into the same group of Satanists, who are immortal and have traded their horses in for motorcycles. Add the plot point of one of the girls from the RV being the “chosen” who can carry the antichrist and a badass ex-military cutlery salesman and you have a movie!

Let me start right off by letting everyone know that yes Hard Ride to Hell is cheesy and silly. But that is one of the reasons that I had fun with it. The characters are very predictable and you just know who is going to get killed and pretty much in what order. The biker characters are very generic villains that jump out just when you expect them to and do every silly thing you’d expect (never ever put your chainsaw down!). On the other side the before mentioned cutlery salesman is inexplicably badass, but this is the kind of movie where you just go with it. The dialogue is filled with one snappy line after another, which works nicely in a movie that never asks the audience to take it seriously. Now I’m not going to say the movie was perfect. After starting off really well it slows way down when it tries to introduce the kids in the RV. It was at this point that I started to worry a bit, but at the 30-minute mark the bikers show up and the movie picks right back up with a manic pace that carries it to the end.

Speaking of the bikers I have to talk about Miguel Ferrer and his role as the lead biker/head Satanist. In spite of not being a huge fan of Night Flier I still dig Ferrer as an actor and it is really fun to see him chew up the scenery as an over the top bad guy. I’m thinking that the director and writer realized this as well since he is give ample opportunity to do so. Brent Stait is also great as the cutlery salesman turned savior Bob. Other than Ferrer’s biker character he has some of the best lines in the movie.

Finally I wanted to talk about the special effects. The movie doesn’t have a huge budget, but I was really impressed with how many practical effects they pulled off. You have limbs being chopped off, nasty looking neck wounds, a good amount of cannibalistic munching, and some chainsaw fun! Now I detected a bit of CGI assists in a shot here and there, but for the most part it is practical and lots of fun. I know I’m a bit biased against CGI, but damn it nothing beats well done practical effects. Other than the effects I’d have to say that the sound and picture are pretty good. The movie is set in Texas (and looks like it was shot there or somewhere in the southwest) and the locations are caught beautifully by cinematographer David Pelletier.

Hard Ride to Hell is a well made, acted, written, and directed movie that doesn’t reinvent the genre, but is a fun movie to watch. Can’t really ask for more than that. I recommend it.

3 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer