Michael Madsen in Hell Ride Courtesy of Dimension Films

READ MORE: Michael Madsen at Cannes
READ MORE: Boarding Gate review

At the midnight premiere screening of Hell Ride at this year's Sundance Film Festival, the Egyptian Theater was packed to the rafters with grindhouse fans waiting to see director-writer-actor Larry Bishop's first return to directing since 1996's Mad Dog Time (with which starred Richard Dreyfuss and Jeff Goldblum). Buzz about Hell Ride has been simmering among exploitation movie enthusiasts for years — ever since word got out that Quentin Tarantino had offered to ride along as executive producer. Arranged through a mutual friend, Tarantino had contacted Bishop to say he was a huge fan of his motorcycle movies from the late '60s. He organized a special screening of The Savage Seven, Bishop's flick from 1968 in which a gang of mad bikers wreak havoc through a Native American reservation, and it was there that Tarantino convinced to him write the ultimate badass biker flick.

Inspired by Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns and John Wayne's cowboy flicks, Bishop first wrote a novel about a biker who watches as his woman dies at the hands of a Satanic biker gang and then sets out on a revenge rampage. The four-hundred-page novel was later edited and retooled into a working script. Aside from the lead character Pistolero (christened by Tarantino and played by Bishop), Michael Madsen was the first actor to climb aboard Hell Ride in a role tailor-made for the Kill Bill and Reservoir Dogs star. Incongruously dressed in a black tuxedo, his character, The Gent, teams up with Pistolero and Comanche (24's Eric Balfour) to take on the leaders of the murderous biker gang.

The gravel-voiced actor spoke exclusively to Premiere about spending 25 days on a Harley-Davidson as The Gent and playing opposite a woman for once in Oliver Assayas' Boarding Gate, on release this week. Hell Ride is set to hit theaters on August 8.

It is rumored that Larry Bishop had been working on the script for about five and a half years. Were you involved close to the beginning stages?
Actually, Larry has had it forever. I have only been involved with it for about four years. I met Larry while making Kill Bill and that was the first time he brought it up to me. He asked me to play The Gent and [from there] it took four years to get the project made. It is one of those pictures that I think eventually everybody is going to hear about. I think it is going to have the kind of cult — I don't know what that word means anyway — but I think it is going to have a good following. I think it is going to be very well respected and I think it is going to make a big noise. It is a great tale and it is a badass biker movie.