cult film freak: MICHAEL NESMITH PRESENTS FRED WARD AS 'TIMERIDER'

Title: TIMERIDER Producer: Mike Nesmith Cast: Fred Ward, Belinda Bauer Year: 1982 Rates: **

Before executive producing REPO MAN, Micheal Nesmith not only produced but co-wrote and composed a crunchy rock guitar score for a low-budget time-travel flick TIMERIDER: THE ADVENTURE OF LYLE SWANN, starting out with titular dirt-bike champ Fred Ward's perspective of a desert race course that we learn... cutting to and from the interior of a nearby scientific center... has a metallic device set up to...

Long story short, Swann winds up a hundred-years back in the 1870's post-Civil War, making TIMERIDER that Western with a dirt bike movie co-starring Belinda Bauer as the Arizona past's tough Mexican firebrand Claire Cygne, who, less than an hour after seeing our muscular hero skinny dipping, gets his clothes off again for a literal roll in the hay...

Fred Ward as TIMERIDER

In fact, she's the only person unafraid of this strange man and stranger machine: Peter Coyote's gang of bickering outlaws and the residents of a small town with priest Ed Lauter and sheriff L.Q. Jones initially thought the red-suited/red-helmeted rider was the devil himself... until the good guys warm up and team up to rid the outlaws forever...

Unfortunately the final act is a dull talky standoff where the girl and bike are captured, and, once Swann gets both back, there's not much movie left... it's as if Fred Ward showed up to the Western set in his cool modern gear just to sit around and wait... Ultimately making TIMERIDER a time-waster i.e. wasting time on everything but the necessary action.