"Ghost Rider" | A daredevil of a time or just plain exhausting?

Harsh toke, dude. The latest Marvel Comics flick sucks a major tailpipe.

The Ghost Rider is a C-list hero spawned in the early '70s, when biker movies were still a healthy genre and boys wanted to be Evel Knievel. He seemed like something an exec saw on a velvet blacklight poster in a head shop and decided, "Now this would make a 'hip' comic for those young people who have no respect." A biker with a flaming skull!

Three decades out of that context, without competent writing to adjust ... well, imagine you're in England and someone suggests a movie called "Vespa Vampire."

When young carnival stunt rider Johnny Blaze discovers his dad's dying of cancer, he sells his soul to Mephistopheles (fittingly, Peter "Easy Rider" Fonda) to get rid of it. Years after screwing over the young sap, the Devil returns to collect: Blaze becomes his bounty-hunter, with a flaming skull at night, pyrotechnic powers, a devastating "penance stare" for the wicked and a gravity-defying Hellcycle.

Wearing a distracting rug, Nicolas Cage misses the mark like the Snake River Canyon — and confuses the movie's vibe — by playing Blaze as a quirky, deadpan numbskull. He watches monkey shows, eats jelly beans out of martini glasses and reveres the Carpenters. (Cage had long been jonesing to play a superhero and was once set to be Superman. Maybe a bad trip like this will get it out of his system.)

Every supporting character phones it in: Eva Mendes, whose constant cleavage doesn't distract from utter vacancy as Blaze's TV reporter ex-girlfriend; Sam Elliott, who has reached his quota of narrator/grizzled-mentors and whose beard stubble almost connects with his eyebrows; Fonda, who looks zoned; and Wes Bentley ("American Beauty") wanly hamming it up as the Devil's homicidal son in raccoon eye-shadow.

Writer-director Mark Steven Johnson was also responsible for "Daredevil" (which looked better to me in 2003 than it does in hindsight and is reviled by other comic fans), and he wrote the soporific "Elektra." "Ghost Rider" isn't "Catwoman" bad — although Cage's "I will own this curse" speech is a howler. It has undeniable trash appeal and some far-out visuals: The Rider pulling a helicopter down with his chain, twisting in a fiery midair jump, giving the finger to cops (that is, The Man) as he speeds away from them — on water.

All of which would work better on black velvet.

Mark Rahner: 206-464-8259

or mrahner@seattletimes.com