Well, Halloween Horrors are unfortunately all gone away. I know, a bummer. I didn’t get to as many reviews as I had originally hoped, but overall I think we picked up a few classics this time out. Hopefully everyone had a good time, and now I can post this review I have been sitting on for a month because I didn’t want to post it up with all of the Halloween festivities going on! Hell Ride! Maybe the most hated movie I’ve ever loved, take a trip to the IMDB to find out just what I mean. So be warned, I am apparently one of approximately nine people on this planet who really enjoyed this film apparently.
The Review: From the look of things, you’re about to read one of the few overtly positive reviews for Hell Ride out there. This is something that has come as a shock to me. After watching Hell Ride for the first time, I sprang up from my seat and hit the IMDB to learn as much about the film as I possibly could – only to stumble upon a wealth of anger from nearly ever user review I read. Where does this anger come from? Well, Hell Ride is a love it or hate it kind of film I suppose. Your enjoyment of the film is all relative to how forgiving a viewer you are as well as the circumstances involving your watching the film. I learned this the hard way when trying to watch the movie with my brother, who is far from a film geek himself. Hell Ride is a dialogue heavy film, and works in much the same style as Quentin Tarantino’s recent work – which is to say it is pretty over the top in that old “exploitation” film manner, but instead of scenes being punctuated with a line or two of “cool” dialogue like in the old days; every word out of every character’s mouth is either equally over the top and hip or an elongated monologue of hip dialogue. Around the time Pistolero’s spy girlfriend gives her monolauge to him about how he needs to, well, “eff” her (hey man, I try to keep it clean as a manner of professionalism) because he’ll never be able to get it up again once he hears the news – my brother had heard enough. He begged me to find something else to watch. His reason? The dialogue sounds like a theatrical play rather than something you would expect to hear real people say. This is a valid criticism, and unfortunately my brother wasn’t that eloquent with his opinion – but that was his point. He’s right in the fact that Hell Ride sounds nothing like anything you would hear in real life but I also think this is where the film is going to find its audience. Hell Ride is a movie’s movie and although it infuses some things from older exploitation classics, it is an entirely new and different kind of beast. A beast that owes a great debt to the vision of Tarantino and his Kill Bill films. My brother, who is far from a film expert of any sort even asked within the opening minutes of the film if it was actually directed by Tarantino – no doubt due to the black and white crisp photography of the opening as well as the witty banter between characters. It isn’t exactly a good thing when your film is so closely similar to another director’s particular style – but much like all of the shortcomings within Hell Ride your ability to forgive this will determine just how much you are able to enjoy the film.