MST3K Review

PREV Season Two NEXT

209 - THE HELLCATS (RHINO DVD & VHS)

Genre: ’60s Biker (1967, Color)

Synopsis: This movie, the last and the lamest of the Season Two Biker Films, opens during the funeral of a Hellcats biker as the other bikers put their spare knifes and spare change on the casket. But, apparently, the dead biker was going to become a federal informant when some dirty businessmen – or dirty cops or something – killed him. The dead biker’s girlfriend Linda and his brother Monte (played by Sidehacking Ross Hagen) get together and decide to pose as bikers to find the killer. So they ride to the Hellcat biker gang’s favorite hangout shack and, at that point, what meager semblance of plot the movie had soon evaporates. Instead of plot, we get ’60s style scenes of the Hellcats dancing and having a party in the shack. After dancing, everyone goes outside for some real fun: first they assault a painter and his model and then they have a motorcycle race that isn’t shown. They top off the fun with a motorcycle pull challenge in which Monte holds two motorcycles together for 15 seconds and wins a romantic night on a broken old mattress with a biker slut. Then we return to the plot... sort of. Another biker slut is killed when she crashes her motorcycle that also happens to contain some hidden smack in its headlight. When Kooky-the-biker goes to retrieve the drugs, he is apprehended by the... dirty cops(?) – or, better yet, gangsters! – in another sequence that leads nowhere. The “gangsters” then take Linda, the “mattress” biker slut, and Ross Hagen hostage. Ross and the biker slut are tied up on the floor but escape when they find a handy little drill lying around. But a “gangster” with an empty gun captures Ross again when he tries to rescue Linda. (Hey, Ross! See the little holes in the gun the guy is pointing at you? Those aren’t supposed to be empty!) The “gangsters” take Ross – I mean Monte – and Linda and throw them both in a garbage barge, where they fall on a huge pile of this movie. But the escaped biker slut gets back to the rest of the biker gang and so all of the Hellcats show up in the nick of time and beat up the “gangsters.” The freed Ross then takes on the head “gangster” and beats him up before he can get away. Finally, the police arrive and mercifully end this movie.

Host Segments:

Prologue: J&tBs all are sneezing with head colds
Segment One (Invention Exchange): Joel cures himself and the ’Bots with medicine that may cause flashbacks; Joel invents the Sign Language Translator; the Mads are still riding their hobby hogs that they invented in the Wild Rebels episode
Segment Two: Tom is typing in his diary and flashes back to the Season One William Shatner skit from The Crawling Hand
Segment Three: After having trouble with his tape recorder, Crow records his flashback to the Funny/Not Funny segment from Rocketship X-M
Segment Four: Joel is writing a letter to Sandy (?) that flashes back to the different Matting Shots segment from Jungle Goddess
Segment Five (End): Gypsy dictates his diary entry to Richard Basehart; a letter; Dr F and Frank push the button together

Stinger: Weird trumpet guy screaming something unintelligible as he climbs out of a ditch

Don’s Review: This is one awful movie! This plotless wonder is easily the worst of the three biker films seen in Season Two. There are so many scenes that make no sense in a plot point of view, that it actually made me yearn for the less confusing Sidehackers or Wild Rebels instead! The riffing by J&tBs is decent in this episode, although the awfulness of the movie still comes through strongly (this movie doesn’t really get tedious, though – just really, really frustrating instead). And the host segments are odd, with all of them featuring sitcom-style flashbacks to older host segments (even one that’s from Season One with Servo’s old voice). The best of the host lead-ins to the flashbacks is the one by Crow in which he has trouble working his tape recorder and accidentally plays a recording of his own theme song for Hellcats. This episode is worthwhile, but I really wish Rhino had released the much better biker episode Wild Rebels instead.

Don’s Rating: