Episode 15: 202 - "The Sidehackers"

20 October 2011 Ryan Speck

15-sidehackers I thought that I knew a little bit about "The Sidehackers". For some reason, I was pretty sure that it was one of those black & white 1950's biker gang movies. I definitely never saw this one (and was probably getting it confused with "Wild Rebels" or "Daddy-O" or some such thing). Instead, this one is much more in the '60's "everybody's a bit of a cool hippie cat" vein, with the typical villain who's less like a gang leader and more like a scenery-chewing parody of Charles Manson or Jim Jones.

Oh, and how the scenery was chewed in this one. Michael Pataki ate everything on screen in his role as J.C. (I'm left to wonder if "J.C." stood for "Jesus Christ", what with "Nero" and "Rommel" already being in the movie. Tony Huston was definitely no great writer; he also wrote "The Hellcats", appearing later in MST3K's second season.) Not that anyone else did a particularly good job of acting in this one. The people who had no other credits to their names seemed to be much more staid and normal in their capacity to exhibit genuine human emotions than the people who went on to have long careers in episodic television and crappy movies.

As far as episodes went, it was a bit of a step back for the writing. "Rocketship X-M", as perfect as it was for the show, immediately showed the flaws in "The Sidehackers". As stated in the episode guide, this is the last episode where they only watched part of the film before accepting it for production. In the midst of the movie, there turns out to be a "brutal" (their word; I found it to be fairly tame and not even vaguely shocking) rape and murder scene, which they weren't aware of when they chose it. You'd think it was in the time between J.C.'s arrival at the cabin and Rommel waking up, tied to the wall, but it was in that really strange moment where the beaten Rommel arrives at his partner's house and then runs outside for no good reason. While watching his buddy's kids roughhouse, he flashes back to his girlfriend being raped and then accidentally killed. That scene and another shot of her body had to be excised from the episode. It feels, knowing that, like they never quite recovered the appropriate mindset to find the last half of the movie to be funny enough. There was a dour note constantly hanging over the whole production, as if they couldn't get it out of their heads. As silly as the whole movie was, perhaps it just wasn't as inclined to be comedic as "Rocketship X-M". Though at least you can see them really getting a handle on how to make more amusing host segments.

Still, this episode was head and shoulders above anything in the first season, and rarely was there a color film that was boring to watch on MST3K. Even if it lacked a bit in the joke department and the lines were not coming in as fast and furiously as they should have, the pathetic production values and absurd plot more than made up for it. This was another one that went down much more easily.