Coming to DVD Tuesday, March 25
Cast:
Miguel Ferrer as Jefe
Katharine Isabelle as Kerry
Laura Mennell as Tessa
Brent Stait as Bob
Brendan Penny as Danny
Directed by Penelope Buitenhuis
Review:
Hard Ride to Hell has just about everything a horror movie might want: Black magic, naked sacrifices, padre mumbo jumbo, cannibal bikers, a chick that hides the entire movie (Katharine Isabelle who is totally underused), chainsaw church, broken glass bottle dancing, pregnant demon chicks (complete with gnarly water breaking), a horrific eye prosthetic, a lame light show and a traveling knife salesman hero.
Add in the kitchen sink and you just might have something here. While not a bad horror movie, Hard Ride to Hell isn’t a good horror movie either.
The good news is that they actually gave the film a bit of a budget to film outside, in a ghost town and along various stretches of highway. There is also plenty of gore, blood, body parts, throat ripping and flesh eating happening pretty much the entire film.
The bad news is that the plot is completely nonsensical. A former priest (Miguel Ferrer) dabbled a bit in black magic and got a little too happy eating the flesh of young, nubile women so the order threw him out. Not content with being an outcast he amped up his black magic ways and became immortal bringing a crew of immortal bikers along for the ride. Now, they spend all their days kidnapping women and either eating their flesh or trying to conceive a demon child.
Why? Well, when you have the rest of time on your hands, why not. Actually, it has something to do with ruling the world (at least I think it does, this point of fact is never really explained very well).
Of course, along come a few unlucky travelers that just happen to stumble onto one of their flesh eating/conceiving ceremonies and they become the targets of the unholy bikers. Luckily, they have a traveling knife salesman who’s pretty handy with a knife and any other sharp objects he runs across. They also have an ally in an old priest with an amulet (that is also evil but not as evil as the unholy bikers) and can somehow be used against them.
Really it gets all batshit crazy at this point because blood is flying everywhere, one of the unlucky travelers gets bit a dozen times and a knife to the back and lives, one of the chicks gives birth to some mutant baby, more black magic mumbo jumbo happens and perhaps the apocalypse is about to happen. Sounds like a good time, right?
It isn’t because everything is so mashed together and absurd you don’t know what the hell is happening only that the last few people in the film are getting chewed and digested.
Stay for the gore as it happens in ample amounts but leave your brain at the door.
