Strong and Moving!

Just perfect...

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Hard Ride to Hell is set in Texas & starts as a group of teenage friends travel through the open isolated desert wastelands in their camper van when they pull over for the night & meet Bob (Brent Stait) a travelling salesman who sells knives. Bedding down for the night the dopey Dirk (Brandon Jay McLaren) decides to wander off to go to the toilet & stumbles upon a gang of Satan worshipping bikers sacrificing some young girls & eating their flesh, the biker's hear Dirk & go after him. Dirk heads straight for the camper van & his friends which lead the cannibal biker's to them as well & they are all held hostage, beaten, tortured & killed. The biker's leader Jefé (Miguel Ferrer) is looking to father the child of Satan, the Antichrist himself & decides that the pretty young Tessa (Laura Mennell) will do so spares her & her boyfriend who sets out to fight back against the biker's & save himself & the love of his life but the biker's have dark supernatural power's that make them nearly impossible to kill...Co-written & directed Penelope Buitenhuis this supernatural horror action thriller isn't too bad but at the same time will struggle to be remembered as a classic, Hard Ride to Hell is passable low budget straight-to-video fare that is maybe better than usual for this type of film but that in itself isn't saying a lot. This runs a fairly predictable path, teenagers get stuck in the open desert & come under attack from some various threat, in this case Satan worshipping cannibal biker's. It moves along at a fair pace, it has a few decent moments in it, some gore, there's a bit action & some vehicle stunts but I found it quite forgettable & nothing special without being utterly terrible. The only real problem I had was that Dirk remains awfully calm considering he has had his arm cut off & I salute his ability to crack a joke at any given moment despite missing an arm & the fact that the biker's can only be killed inside a Church on Holy ground & just by some complete coincidence the survivors decide to hide & fight it out inside a Church yet not knowing about their weakness. Oh, & I don't understand why Jefé just doesn't kill Bob at the end when he has the chance but, you know, whatever.There's a bit of gore here, an arm is chopped off, someone is made to walk over broken glass, there are a few stabbings, some chainsaw mayhem at the end as hands are cut off & people are sliced open but like the rest of the film while it's entertaining enough it's forgettable & doesn't leave much of an impression. The supernatural & action aspects aren't particularly well balanced but at least there's something happening more often than not. This is actually quite similar in theme to the classic Race with the Devil (1975) but is maybe a touch more generic.Probably shot on a low budget this has decent production values & is reasonably well made. The acting is nothing special with Miguel Ferrer who played the guy in Robocop (1987) who gets kneecapped the only face I recognised, he gets to shout & say all sorts of evil sounding lines & has fun with it but like everything else about Hard Ride to Hell he's forgettable.Hard Ride to Hell is a better than average straight-to-video low budget horror thriller that is mildly entertaining for what it is but I would struggle to say that it's a classic or anywhere near approaching one. You could do worse but then again you could do better.

Riders of the Apocalypse, Desolatores, are Satan's followers, immortal, only needing to consume human flesh to attain their status with the dark lord, have been trying to find a woman to plant a seed so that the end of days can commence as a child is conceived. Miguel Ferrer is their leader, Jefé, once a Castilian priest, he found a temple of worship dedicated to the devil and discovered the means to eternal life. With others joining his side, Jefé may've found the woman he's been searching many years for, to bring darkness into the world, Tessa(Laura Mennell), traveling with her husband, Danny(Brendan Penny), Danny's brother(Sebastian Gacki), and their friends, Kerry(Katherine Isabelle)and Dirk(Brandon Jay McLaren). Terror will befall these twenty-somethings as Jefé and his evil companions prepare for the birth, having fun with these mere mortals in the process. They will get some help in a traveling knife salesman, Bob(Brent Strait). Bob equips himself quite well with his seemingly endless supply of knives, and even drives Danny's RV while trying to evade Jefé's biker gang, following close behind, eventually catching up to them. There will be a showdown in an abandoned Texas town's church, the fate of the world hanging in the balance. Tessa resists Jefé, at first, as he demands she carry his seed in exchange for her husband's life. Impregnated and carrying to term fairly quickly, Tessa's giving birth is a no-no, but Jefé will do whatever it takes to see that she does exactly that.The plot is so ludicrous that I think one has to shut their brain off and just watch HARD RIDE TO HELL for entertainment purposes only. It's loaded with sadistic ultra-violence because Ferrer and his men are so completely evil and cause such bloody destruction to the cast, including flesh-eating. Poor McLaren loses his arm, and is yanked from a speeding RV to the road by a hook while Isabelle's Kerry spends most of the running time in hysterics. Stait's Bob is a hoot, slicing and dicing a steady stream of devil-worshiping bikers throughout the movie. Ferrer seems to be at home playing vile, unsavory sorts and his Jefé is no different. Jason Logan is Tito, the priest at the end, with a powerful Mayan medallion his father left him upon death, who tries to assist Bob, Danny and company against Jefé and his goons. Lots of arterial spray, including one scene where Bob goes berserk with a chainsaw. Isabelle is a riot(maybe unintentionally)as the frightened-out-of-her-mind Kerry, not much help to Bob who tries to get her to help him out. Bob seems to be the only character able to do anything of merit against the villains of HARD RIDE TO HELL.

I frikkin' loved this movie. It's pure grindhouse schlock, and I say that with the utmost affection. You root for Bob the hero when he starts flinging knives like a circus star, you want to poke out Miguel Ferrer's other eye for seeming like he doesn't give a crap about anything, you smile wide when you realize the little by in the opening scene grew up to be the lone ghost-town priest in the final scene, you feel the quintessential crying girl's fear when she sobs all over the broken CB radio, and you may never want to eat apple pie again. My single favorite moment is when the girl's hiding in the confessional, and the hands trying to grab her get chopped off, flailing in front of her face as she screams -- knee-slappin' cinematic grotesquerie at its finest. I also loved the ending. You sort of expect loose ends to be tied (or chopped) off, so the notion of poor, beleaguered husband walking away with his red-eyed wife and antichristy stepson, you sort of sit there waiting for the sequel to start right after the end credits. (Hint, hint.)

Now here's a movie that captures the sort of drive-in, grindhouse feel that I like. In spite of its low budget, it's a pretty well-made, acted and written tale of a group of traveling friends who inadvertently come across a group of Satanic bikers in the middle of a sacrifice and soon find themselves fighting for their lives. You had me at the mention of Satanic bikers, but the movie itself is paced very well. It's bloody and moves quickly. There are some acting issues, but there always are with low budget DTV movies, and there's enough going on that it's not a problem. Major props for the use of mostly real special effects. There's a tiny bit of dodgy CGI, but it's way better than a lot of other low budget films. Also, the ending is a tad anticlimactic, but there's so much fast paced violence before it that it goes down easy. The characters are handled well, a group of kids doing Habitat for Humanity work as well as a traveling salesman who's pretty handy with a knife. Also, Miguel Ferrer is perfectly hammy as the evil biker leader and seems to be having a lot of fun in the role. Though it's got some similarities to a few other films, there's plenty of fun things to enjoy: Satanic rituals, unkillable bikers (one biker gets his face dragged along moving asphalt....great scene!) nudity, torture, stabbings, and women impregnated with demon children. This throwback could've easily played at drive-ins in the 70s. Not the world's greatest horror movie, but a lot better and more fun than most of the garbage that goes straight to video.