Michael Madsen plays The Gent, and writer-director Larry Bishop plays Pistolero, the gang's leader, in "Hell Ride."

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Does it count against you when you actually set out to make an awful movie?

It should.

"Hell Ride" is a biker exploitation picture, the sort of movie you'd have seen in a drive-in or "grind house" in the 1970s. It has lonesome highways and roadhouses, road-worn hogs and high-mileage actors riding them, guns and crossbows and longneck beers and naked, nubile women offering themselves to the homely guys, talking dirty and wrestling in Wesson Oil.

What's not to love?

This is a star vehicle for a "Friend of Quentin" (Tarantino), Larry Bishop, the 50-something son of the last and least of the Rat Packers, Joey Bishop. A former comic teammate of Rob Reiner, he has a lot of friends in the industry, which is why he gets to make movies like this and "Mad Dog Time."

Sporting a tan-in-a-tube and dyed goatee, Bishop plays Pistolero, leader of the Victors, part of that infamous "1 percent" of motorcycle "clubs" composed of murderous thugs. Pistolero has had a mission for the past 32 years. He's been safeguarding a key that a woman whose throat is slit in an opening scene wants him to hold for her son. Pistolero remembers this because he hears and sees Cherokee in his dreams. In his dreams, her throat isn't slit. And she's buck naked.

The Victors have other problems, loyalty issues within the gang and a threat from The Deuce (David Carradine) and his murderous sidekick, Billy Wings (Vinnie Jones). Pistolero will need the help of The Gent (Michael Madsen) and Eddie Zero (Dennis Hopper, who has to ride a bike with a sidecar, these days) if he and his gang are to survive.

The acting is bad enough that when a decent player — Madsen, Hopper and especially Carradine — has a scene, you notice how awful everyone else is. The dialogue is laughably arch and repetitive for this "whopper of a chopper opera," David Mamet without the wit.

Tarantino took a producing credit on this but wisely, for once, elected not to act in a role intended for him in the movie.