The Last Riders has Erik Estrada as the co-head of a biker gang (along with Angelo Tiffe), who, in trying to retrieve some stole drug money, kills the thieves, only to discover one of them is a dirty cop. Dirty or no, the full weight of the LAPD is coming for him, so he needs to give up his gang colors and go on the run. The first place he runs to is old buddy William Smith, who owns a garage in a small town in southern Nevada. He's happy to have Estrada work there and live in a trailer outside of town, and Estrada's happy to settle down, especially when a single mother (Kathrin Middleton) and her daughter (Minnie Madden) show up and need car repairs. But as he starts his new life, it wouldn't be a PM flick if his old life didn't come back to haunt him.
And boy does it come back to haunt him, which makes for an interesting movie story-wise. In most PM "hero's family is killed and now he's out for action-packed deadly revenge" movies, the family gets bumped off in the first act, and we don't get to know them too well, we just take it for granted that bumping off someone's family's bad, and then from there the hero starts the revenge process in the second act, and gives the baddie their ultimate comeuppance in the third act. Here, the first act is retrieving the drug money, and the second act is him falling in love with Middleton's character and starting a life with her, before she and her daughter are gunned down in the trailer. It's almost like the filmmakers were enjoying watching Estrada and Middleton's characters fall in love, and someone was like "hey guys, we need to get to the revenge part of this, the movie's almost over!" It creates that tonality issue we'd see a lot in early PM, where if you're watching this as a one-off in the early 90s because you found it on cable or at your local video store, you're probably not impressed, but in the context of a bunch of these you're excited to go along for the bonkers PM Entertainment ride. We also get some of the names we've come to know and love, like Cole S. McKay on stunts, Joseph Merhi directing, and Rick Pepin's cinematography. In that sense, you probably need to watch some of the better of these PM films before you get stuck in on this one, and even then, it's low on the list for me; but lower on the list PM is still not a bad way to kill 90 minutes if you're a PM Entertainment fan.
We're now at 58 PM flicks on the site, and what's interesting about this one, is it's their 22nd movie and came out in 1991, but feels like an earlier spine number joint from 1989 when they were still getting the hang of what PM would eventually be--which I guess isn't so crazy an idea when you consider 1989 and 1991 are only a couple years apart, there could be that overlap as they were still figuring out what worked best. And I'm not sure what the best PM moment in this was for me. Maybe when Estrada blows up the trailer with his deceased wife and step-daughter's bodies inside, while he and a tearful William Smith look on. No calling the cops, I imagine the Middleton's ex-husband would like to know what happened to his daughter, even if he was the jerkoff Middleton said he was, but nope, in the world of PM, the fiery funeral is all you need. From there, as he's getting his revenge, the bartender at their biker bar tells him she has feelings for him, and hey, he's back on the market now, even if the remaining embers of his dead wife and step-daughter's bodies are still smoldering near Lake Mead, why not go for it? And I guess that's what I think when I see another PM flick on Tubi, "come on, Matt, why not go for it?", because these things only work in the world of PM--and I don't even know if they work there either, or it's more the fact that they don't work that's so much fun.
One of the more fun aspects of the film was the band at the biker bar that performed over a couple of the montages. They were called The Sheilas, and their sound was in the mold of Pat Benatar's stuff, which is plenty fine for me. Even more fun, the first song featured a flautist. We're not strangers to the flute here at the DTVC, plenty of 80s exploitation films shot in the Philippines made ample use of the flute, perhaps because Italian directors thought jungles and flutes went together like peanut butter and chocolate, but we never actually saw the flautist getting after it like we do here. I never thought of it before, but yeah, a flute solo is exactly the music I need when I'm watching a shot of a biker gang back-angle parking their hogs against the curb. Now, if you're thinking flute music, Jethro Tull probably comes to mind, but can I throw out another name for you? Jazz flautist Ragan Whiteside is one of the best out there, in particular check out her cover of Little River Band's "Reminiscing," great stuff.
Corey Doctorow came up with the term "Enshittification" to describe how tech companies lock users in and then make their products as shitty as possible while extracting as much money out of them as they can. He's said on multiple appearances that he's okay with the term being used beyond the tech space, so I'm going to point out how this movie shows us the ways that so many things we took for granted in the early 90s have been enshittified now. Start with Las Vegas. In the early 90s it was a place where people with not a lot of money could go and have a fun time. Remember the Roseanne episode where she and Dan went with Tom Arnold and Sandra Bernhardt, and Roseanne got drunk and heckled Wayne Newton because she thought he was an impersonator? They ain't goin' to Vegas now, and even when I went in 2013 I could see it changing, nothing was cheap like it was in the early 90s, and in the 10+ years since, it's only gotten worse, as they'd rather cater to whales like Dana White compensating for inadequacies with six-figure blackjack hands than working-class stiffs looking to escape their troubles for a few days. From there, look at Estrada's job as a mechanic. The first thing William Smith would ask him today is, "how good are you with a computer?" And is Smith going to be able to pay him enough to support his new wife and step-daughter, even if they're living in a trailer by Lake Mead? Even Estrada going to the grocery store, it was like "oh man, the grocery store experience was so much nicer back then!" No memberships, no fugazi sales, Pepsi and ConAgra didn't own everything, Estrada paid a living wage so he can buy food, the grocery store workers paid a living wage too. Things aren't only worse now than they were in 1991, they're worse now by design, and have been for a while.
Finally, what the hell are we doing in that picture above? The cap, the mustache, the T-shirt, even the little cigar, and this guy is hanging out at a biker bar no less! You can't recreate this guy today, he'd either be dripping in irony, or imitated by a younger person who's still not generating the look organically. These weren't just decisions that were made in the morning as this man was leaving the house, these were completely legitimate decisions that no one he encountered that day would've looked askance at. And could there have been another beer that he'd be drinking other than Miller Lite? He's not quite what I would call a Cocaine Dad, which is a term I used for guys my dad's age who were born in the late 40s/early 50s, but when the late 80s/early 90s came, couldn't come to terms with the fact that they were getting older, so they pushed beyond their relevance and tried to look the part of someone ten years younger than them--and while they may not have all partaken in some nose candy, you wouldn't have put it past them either. This guy above has no use for terms like "relevance," he's completely authentic--I mean look at him, he's genuinely into the flautist performing her solo, even if he won't remember it tomorrow. Here's to you that guy in the picture above, you're one of the greats.
And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Tubi. As I said above, I think you'll get more enjoyment out of this after you've seen a lot of the better PM films first, but as a free streamer it does the trick.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102275
And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.
