Ever sit down and watch a film only to find you’re totally overcome with the sensation that you’ve seen this story before? That’s the overwhelming emotion that I get from watching DEATH VALLEY. The film—which made it’s film festival debut back in 2004 but is just now seeing the light of DVD store shelves—is a cut and paste story of backwoods survival. Only this time, there are no woods…only desert.

Originally titled Mojave, DEATH VALLEY (catchy upgrade don’t you think) is the story of four friends who set out into the California desert for a weekend rave only to run afoul of a group of redneck bikers. When the friends try to defend themselves against an attack—killing one of the gang in the process—they find themselves squarely on the receiving end of the biker’s wrath.

DEATH VALLEY immediately conjures up a barrage of other genre films, from Al Adamson’s 1969 biker flick SATAN’S SADISTS to DELIVERANCE and even Penelope Spheeris’ late 80’s punks-in-the-desert flick DUDES. It just all seems tired in concept and with a lesser cast behind the film it probably would have come off as a muddled mess of the film, inhabited by a bunch of overacting goons. However, Writer/Directors David Kebo and Rudi Liden have managed to cast a pretty solid assortment of characters to populate their dusty revenge thriller.

While it’s not exactly the A-list on parade here many of the faces associated with this production will exact a degree of “hey I know them from somewhere” recognition. On the side of the good guys, we can see a Pre-BORDERLAND and Post-CABIN FEVER performance from Rider Strong as the rich friend who hopes his daddy can get them out this mess. Eric Christian Olsen of DUMB AND DUMBERER infamy stars as Josh the voice of reason amongst the pals and the one who wasn’t planning on coming along in the first place (isn’t that always the case). The lone female character and the catalyst for the films only really dramatic arc is played by Genevieve Cortese (TV’s WILDFIRE). Over on the other end of spectrum, we meet generally funny-guy performer Vince Vieluf (RAT RACE) as one of the greasy trigger-happy bikers and the highly underrated Dash Mihok (I AM LEGEND) as their psychotic leader.

The fact that all of these actors can commit completely to the story and provide compelling performances is really what sells a film that could have been just as bad as any number of low and micro-budget films that are tilling the same soil. The screenplay is by-the-book so don’t expect anything new or engaging to be revealed over the course of the film. The direction is totally serviceable to the story and the action keeps the production moving along at a nice pace. As in most revenge-style road films, most of the deaths involve car crashes and gunshot wounds so if you’re thinking that DEATH VALLEY might be serving up some minor torture-porn like Zev Berman’s BORDERLAND you want to look elsewhere—everybody in this film dies of a nice and normal murder scenario.

With a cast and crew that deliver on most accounts, it’s hard to find any real complaint about what DEATH VALLEY has to offer. None of the characters are overly annoying (which I actually find to be a rarity in most genre films) and the screenplay while pedestrian in its plot is hardly puerile. In the end, the film—buoyed by the cast—keeps interest up all the way to the final frames and that must say something since if you’ve seen enough movies than I can assure you, you’ve seen this one before.