In the interests of full disclosure, I should say at the very outset that I know David Rosiak, whose name you see up there after “Written by”. In fact, you may well know him, too: he works here.

I have known Dave going more than a decade, since we both wrote for a whole other online endeavor and bonded over a mutual love of things comic-y--even despite the fact that he is so misguided as to be a dyed-in-the-cape DC fan. In fact, there is little, when it comes to the world of entertainment, on which Dave and I do agree. Our e-mails range from the incredulous (“Dave, how could you say that about Tim Burton?) to the disdainful (“Rach, how can you not love American Splendor?) to the cajoling (so, how’s that article coming there, slick?), and neither of us is ever willing to give ground.

And one of the major points of disharmony in our interests lies in the ooky, icky, gory, creepy and in all ways disturbing field of Horror. (HINT: Dave’s the one who likes it.) Me, I like a horror novel, or even a horror comic, but you will very rarely see me in a horror movie, and certainly not in one that requires an extensive knowledge of gaping-wound prosthetics from its makeup department. Oh, I’ve had to sit through more than one slasher flick or suspenseful blood-soaked thriller in the interests of either research for an article (the After the Falls are terrible for making me do this) or as part of my occasional girlfriendly duty, but by and large, I avoid any movie that is advertised with a black poster on which blood is dripping from a knife. Or in which blood is dripping from anything. (Unless it involves vampires. I dig me some vampires. Which is another subject on which Dave and I disagree.)

So, when I sat down to watch Hard Ride to Hell, the hotly-anticipated DVD movie made from Dave and writing partner Matt Chernov’s script, you can imagine that I wasn’t doing it out of any love of the genre or a burning desire to be squicked out. Indeed, had I not known Dave, there is probably no way that I would have thought: “Hey, I know! Demon-worshiping bikers who eat people! That sounds like a fun night in!” And that would have been a real shame. ‘Cause Hard Ride to Hell… well, sure, gruesome and horrific and ghastly and wrong, but also really, really enjoyable.

Really.

The film opens with a flashback and some subtitles: a Mexican grandfather and a young boy (of whom, one suspects, more anon -- and one would be right) encountering a crazed, bloodthirsty woman and a callous, sinister man in black who talks of things like needing an heir and putas who are too weak to do the job. There’s a talisman of some kind there, too, which one also kind of expects to see again at some point. (And… yep.)

Cut to present day.

Young marrieds desperate for a baby following a miscarriage are on the road in a Winnebago with their best friends, off to do some volunteer work under the auspices of Habitat for Humanity. There is Tessa (Laura Mennell), the woebegone would-be mother, her supportive husband Danny (Brendan Penny), his kid brother Jason (Sebastian Gacki), wise-cracking best-friend Dirk (Brandon Jay MacLaren), and Dirk’s sassy squeeze (Katharine Isabelle). I, meanwhile, have fallen almost immediately in love with witty, rakish and nuanced journalist Dirk, and so begin to fear for his life.

They’re en route to a campsite in rural Texas when they see the remains of a creepy burnt out wreck of a car and discover there is no service on their cell phones. They also meet a traveling knife salesman (Brent Staite). Who used to be Special Forces. Which is lucky. ‘Cause after a drunken night of debauchery, Dirk goes off to answer the call of nature in the woods surrounding their campsite and happens upon much greater debauchery being conducted by our old friend, the man in black, and his merry band of women-abusing, demon-worshiping bikers.

And then comes the people eating!

This is where I put my hand to my mouth (‘cause if there’s anything I hate, it’s people eating!), eyes wide and breath taken, as I feel my heart leap into my throat… where it takes up residence for the rest of the movie. Because, of course, the demon bikers discover Dirk spying on them, chase him back to camp, and then it’s just go, go, go… wait a bit, Katharine Isabelle’s trying to raise someone on the CB radio, but oh, no, the bikers are onto her… go, go, go… wait a bit, time for some exposition and we see that Mexican kid all grown up, and the talisman is there… go, go, go... wait a bit, is it maybe all over? Everything okay now? Nope. Stop.

I’m left gasping just thinking about it.

This movie is full of simply horrible, horrible sights. People eating people, people throwing up in other people’s faces, limbs getting severed, walking across broken glass, a Cesarean section in the middle of a dusty street... ooh, it is gruesome. Director Penelope Buitenhius (I’m kinda freaked that a woman directed this, which probably makes me a bit sexist, like people who assume Dr. Someone will be a man) does a fine job with a not overly generous budget, and leaving aside some dodgy CGI, really brings on the ugly with the bloodletting, body mangling and general dismembering of her small but plucky cast.

The few questionable casting choices -- and some even more questionable clothes -- mar proceedings hardly at all (the worst offender, Brendan Penny’s Danny, is pretty non-essential), and, happily, there’s some major talent in this mix that more than makes up for his stilted deficiencies. Miguel Ferrer’s delivery of his unabashedly evil manifesto is so matter-of-fact that it is positively chilling, and Brandon Jay MacLaren delivers Dirk’s crackling one-liners with great timing and a wicked twinkle. Brent Staite is wonderfully incongruous as salesman-turned-slayer, Bob (it’s a little like if Michael Scott suddenly discovered his inner-Winchester)… and this should be impossible, but Laura Mennell is even more riveting and beautiful when deranged and drenched in blood than in her pretty pastels at the start of the film. Oh, and if the uncredited Bernice the waitress is familiar, it’s because Glynis Davies has been in everything filmed in Canada, including as the young Catherine Langford on SG-1.

But the real star of this movie is Katharine Isabelle.

Exuding star quality even when in tearful hiding, Isabelle lights up the screen with her performance, and lightens up the dark happenings with her well-placed absurdity. She shifts from brazen to gentle to shocked to panicked to grieved to hopeful to relieved to suspicious with an effortless grace; Dave was kind enough to show me the original script after I had watched this movie, so I know that her character was originally two separate people, and if anyone deserved the extra screen time, it is Isabelle.

Meanwhile, her fate… kinda brilliant. As is the rest of this film. It’s all satire and homage and heart-thumping twists, and often very, very funny.

Now, for the hardcore horror enthusiasts out there, I know taking my word for that may seem a little like taking the opinion of incomparable New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane on High School Musical 3: he is hardly the target demographic, and I and my weak stomach are hardly Hard Ride to Hell’s. But while I am by no means Horror Girl, I do know what I like, and this, I liked a lot. It was clever. It had style. It held me absolutely spellbound; this is the first time in living memory that I have watched a horror movie on DVD and not found some lame excuse to leave the room. Usually, I’m all, “Oh, this music is getting kind of foreboding… oh, dear, there’s the chainsaw… y’know, I think I left the iron on. At my friend’s house. Across town.” But here, although I will confess to having watched more than one scene through splayed fingers, I couldn’t bear to miss a moment of the action, couldn’t wait to see where Dave and Matt were going to take me next, and that is as high a recommendation as I can give.

I could’ve done without the people-eating, though.

  -- Rachel Hyland

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