What is it with these micro budget regional horrors that makes 'em so indefinably compelling? To me at least, the territories located a few left turns and a lot of country road away from standard issue teen slaughter fare can be remarkably interesting places, or at least a good deal of fun and Ghost Riders is no exception. It has one of those "sins of the father shall be visited upon the son" type set ups, here the sin in question is a vigilante hanging perpetrated by a priest on evil wild west era scuzzball Frank Clement, who naturally returns to life a hundred years later for a bit of the ole gun blazing vengeance, along with a few cronies. In the firing line are Jim and Hampton Sutton, descendants of the earlier hanging priest, a couple of Hampton's buddies and of course a pretty and easily led young lass researching Texan history. Now before you start to wonder, this one doesn't go down the zombie cowboys or even ghost cowboys route, these baddies are pretty much just flesh and blood types, they don't even have period garb. They do fire guns and act capably menacing though, and so the second half of the film is somewhat exciting in a low rent kind of way, as our protagonists are hunted by impassively deadly foes. What the film never attains though is fear or wonderment, it is in fact barely a horror film at all, whilst despite its western theme this one could just as well have say, drug dealers as the baddies and aside from the clumsy final moments it would make little difference. So you might wonder who this is aimed at, and outside of those who will watch anything, it's a little hard to tell. I had a pretty fun time though, it's a film that scores by its very mundanity. The central characters are all relatable types, well maybe not Hampton, him being a slightly troubled Vietnam veteran, but he is still likable. Meanwhile Ricky Long does typical early twenties type OK and even looks to be around that age, while Arland Bishop plays the token idiot of the piece without being too irritating. The ordinariness, the way the characters get along, it ends up being a fair amount more sympathetic than a lot of 80's junk and hence the more fun in the second half when the action really gets going. The film may open with a fun cheap western shootout but the first half is pretty typical scene setting "suspense" building stuff. Cool shots of a spider snacking, I could have done with more like that. More walking around, stock footage padding and whatnot, though the scenery is nice I would have liked something a bit more off key. This probably just stems from having watched The Prey too many times though
Anyhoo, I don't exactly recommend this one, but if you have a lot of time on your hands you could do far worse. Worth around a 5.5 for 80's junk-hounds, rounded up to a 6 for IMDb.
