“I just wanted to see if you were hippies or werewolves.”

Drake’s rating: It’s got Tommy Kirk as a biker. Let’s face it, we’re in Bad Movie Hell here.

Drake’s review: Boy, I’ve seen some bad, bad movies in my time, but Ride the Hot Wind is just a special kind of dreadful. Even leaving aside the cheapness of this flick, the lack of acting talent and the amateurish direction, it just starts off on the entirely wrong foot by basing the lead character, Gregory Shank (Tommy Kirk, Village of the Giants) on a real life war criminal — and then making him the protagonist.

You read that right: Our erstwhile “hero” is a war criminal.

Frankly, I’m not sure who thought that this was a good idea, but I hardly think I’m alone in saying that it’s really, really not. I watched this flick because the idea of Tommy Kirk in a biker flick is so outrageously outlandish that I had to see it to believe it. And, sure, that devil-may-care approach to bad movies has landed me neck deep in cinematic garbage on more than one occasion. But I think it’s fair to say that there are also times when I’ve managed to find, if not a hidden gem, then at least a piece of coal that’s dense enough to scrape a decent review out of.

I’m just not sure this is one of those times.

So, after being rightfully convicted of war crimes during the Vietnam War, Shank is court martialed, tossed into prison, and released. He then wanders his way into a job. That job lasts until Shank’s boss finds out who he is and unceremoniously cans him. Then his girlfriend figures it out as well and drops Shank like a hot potato. Jobless and aimless, Shank scrapes up just enough scratch to buy a bike, which in 1973 means he’ll become an outlaw biker. Look, I didn’t make the rules, that’s just how it was.

And sure, that’s not his intention, but at a bar he runs into a rowdy band of bikers and, after knocking one of them out in a fight*, he joins their motley ranks and takes to the open road. Well, first they go to the beach so Tommy Kirk can make out with a girl while the waves crash around them like it’s 1962 again, but THEN they take to the open road. For about two minutes. Just long enough to get to a town that’s the size of a truck stop so they can engage in some small-time criminal activities and draw Shank further into the life of an outlaw rebel.

Then it’s back to the open road and conflicts with Johnny Law. Shank tries to keep the gang from indulging in their heinous activities, but it’s a losing struggle and they’re all soon on the run and heading towards the inevitable low-budget drive-in movie finale.

Ride the Hot Wind was directed by Duke Kelly, who teamed up with Kirk two years later to shoot My Name is Legend, a Western so bad it was never even released. Which really should have been the case with this flick, but it somehow limped onto the drive-in circuit nonetheless where it was ignored by horny teens and critics alike before dropping into that abyss of cinematic trash that yours truly is so often found wallowing in.

Ride the Hot Wind is a bad idea encased in a shoddy package and led by a Tommy Kirk who looks like he wishes he were anywhere else. And I totally understand that, because while watching it I had the same feeling myself.

*No, I know. But we’re supposed to be suspending our disbelief here.

Intermission!

• We’re 18 minutes in and there’s been very little plot progression and entirely too much of a shirtless Tommy Kirk.
• That “office” looks like the cheapest room at the Motel 6.
• Tommy Kirk perfected his “hang dog” expression for this flick.
• The bikers are having a beach party! Now this is more Tommy Kirk’s speed.
• No one in this movie can act. NO ONE.
• Jerky camera motions are not a cinematic style.
• Hey, a sympathetic cop! Maybe he can set Shank straight and… Oh. Never mind.
• Man, I have got to get out of the ‘70s. I’m starting to see everything in shades of polyester…