The Last Riders (1992)

When his family is murdered, Johnny (Erik Estrada) gets revenge on the ones who did it — his former biker gang The Slaves and the corrupt cops who lied and claimed Johnny sold out the gang.

So why would I watch this?

Mimi Lesseos.

As Feather, she starts this movie wearing a yellow bikini and strutting down Venice Beach with a boom box to deliver drugs from the aforementioned dirty cops to the biker gang inside a psychic bookstore, who all try and assault her because this is a biker exploitation movie, which goes one further by having her start throwing dropkicks in a street fight and taking the drugs and the cash before saying, “You guys wanted to get fucked? Well, you just did.”

Well, the Slavers need to make this right, so they break into the cop’s house and kill everyone — including Feather, so boo, I’m out of this now — and Johnny decides he needs to leave town until the heat dies down, working in the garage of his friend Hammer (William Smith!) and falling for Anna (Kathrin Lautner), who is taking her daughter Samantha across the country to also start a new life.

Everything is as nice as marrying an ex-con biker on the run in Las Vegas can be until the cops — led by Davis (Armando Silvestre, who was in a ton of awesome Mexican films) come back and shoot up their trailer home, killing both Anna and Samantha, so Johnny and Hammer set the whole thing — loved ones inside — on fire and watch it burn.

Johnny then kills every single Slaver and when we get to the final confrontation with their leader Rico (Angelo Tiffe) and once that guy finds out Johnny is innocent, all is forgiven. Really? What?!?

It ends with this dialogue:

Johnny: Here are my colors, Rico. Burn ’em. And piss on the ashes.

Rico: Stay in the wind, Johnny. In the wind.

I really need to dig deep into the films of PM Entertainment because this movie is wild.

There’s also a long scene where Mimi pro wrestles a dude in the backyard that feels very much like apartment wrestling in Sports Review Wrestling or The Wrestler. There’s also a Greek chorus provided by a Vixen-esque girl group called The Sheilas who comment on the action throughout, including a montage where Estrada throws cops off roofs and sets wrongdoers ablaze, accompanied by flute solos. And the guy Larkin in this movie is played by Gary Groomes, who was pretty much blacklisted from Hollywood after playing Dan Aykroyd in Wired.

Syria-born director Joseph Merhi owned a chain of pizzerias in Las Vegas before directing video store junk — in the best of ways — like L.A. CrackdownL.A. HeatL.A. ViceL.A. Crackdown 2L.A. Heat the TV series and Midnight Warrior. He co-wrote the script with Ray Garmond and Addison Randall, who wrote some movies I’ll definitely be tracking down like ShotgunEast L.A. WarriorsL.A. Wars and Da Vinci’s War.

Man, L.A. was on fire in the 80s and 90s.

You can watch this on Tubi.

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