Runaway production has been Hollywood's nemesis for decades, as producers skip to Toronto or Vancouver to save a buck (lately in porn there's an odd reverse-runaway as Quebec's Sweet Sinner productions are all made in California). RIDE HARD, RIDE WILD pretends to be Scandinavian and nobody's fooled.
The dialog is all post-synced to simulate dubbing (of course, even STAR WARS has this aspect, though its level of craftsmanship is light years away from this stinker) but key cast members are extremely familiar soft porn faces, giving away the game. Apparently Lee Frost and crew made this and THE CAPTIVES in their spare time. Frost denied authorship when interviewed (see Temple of Schlock blog) and foolishly hides behind a screen credit of "duibbing supervisor".
It's about rivalry between professional bikers, who race in the film's adequately delivered action and stock footage. John Keith, not funny for a change, is the hero while Ray Sebastian is his nasty adversary in a game of cat & mouse off the dirt track that involves plenty of sex.
Casting attractive Diane Clark brings the crude film up a notch and another soft-core regular Donna Stanley adds to the prurient quotient. But as usual with maestro Frost, it is the combination of action with sex footage that gives RIDE HARD enduring interest.
The film's musical track, likely pirated, is quite interesting, ranging from Canned Heat to various moody forms of modern jazz.
Main mystery remains why anyone (Frost included) would want to pass off a drive-in-targeted action plus sex movie as Scandinavian. Sure, Sweeden and Denmark had quickly become synonymous with sex films and forbidden fruit during those transition years from soft-core to hard-core porn, but even the rare actioner exception like THRILLER was several years off. Exhibitors would associate foreign English-dubbed action movies with syndicated TV packages, not the type of thing they would book.l Shooting it MOS, dubbing satisfactorily in post-production and releasing the result as an all-American movie should have been this film's fate.
