The Hellcats

I've seen a lot of these 1960's biker movies. They are one of my favorite movie genres. Only a few left that I haven't checked out. If you check my other reviews, you'll see this to be the case.

This one is a complete mess, but if you're looking some primo ATMOSPHERE, this clunker has it in spades. Plenty of filthy bikers, hot biker chicks (including Cyclops, the bad-ass chick with an eye patch!), drinking Miller high Life, selling dope, and like most biker films, implied rape.

But if you want a good plot, 'fraid you're too square for the room, fella. What plot there is involves Ross Hagen (late of The Sidehackers, The Devil's 8, and Speedway, plus an infinite number of TV guest shots...and still acting, bless him! UPDATE 2012: Ross was still acting when I wrote this review, but he is no longer with us, R.I.P.) as a gormless straight who "goes undercover" and infiltrates a sleazy biker gang to get his own personal brand of revenge. (A tired plot device shared with several other 60's biker flicks, including the Mini Skirt Mob, Hells Angels '69, and my personal favorite, The Tormentors.) See, his brother got offed by these unshaven scumbags and he's gonna take them down! Payback is a bitch, man. He's joined by his brother's foxy, but not too foxy, fiancé. They're just waiting for the right moment to get their revenge! Meanwhile, they ride around on bikes, fist fight, and drink Miller High Life.

There's some other nonsense regarding dealing large quantities of narcotics and the police attempting to keep an eye on the gang's nefarious activities. Of course, these plot threads, threadbare as they are, join up at the end. Or do they? The plot is so weak it was kind of hard to tell exactly what was going on. In fact, the cruddy VHS dub I had featured muffled sound, making most of the dialog hard to fathom.

I have to say I gave this movie a 4 because I thought the music was pretty cool; some actual '67 garage band cuts, plus some really lovably overdone canned production background music that was probably left over from 77 Sunset Strip. Plenty of bongos in evidence. There was even a soundtrack LP released, which I believe somebody recently reissued in the past couple years. "Groovy, man."

So there you have The Hellcats. No plot at all, but plenty of Sixties biker gang atmosphere and neat music. If that's enough to intrigue you, give it a try. If you haven't seen any of these Drive-In motorcycle movies before, start off with a better one like THE WILD ANGELS, or better yet, THE TORMENTORS, which is utterly preposterous, but hilariously so.

Budget Steve McQueen (AKA Ross Hagen, of "Sidehackers" fame) romps his way through this tour de force as an undercover agent infiltrating a motorcycle gang in the hopes of avenging his brother's murder. And the very fact I could glean that much information by watching this movie is amazing given the complete lack of plot coherence (what am I saying? I mean complete lack of plot!) in this movie. Well, OK, I'll come clean. I cheated - I read the back of the video box.

Although not as pointlessly violent and nihilistic as "Sidehackers", "Hellcats" is a squalid film, showing the sixties in all its greasy grimy trashy squalor. This film and others like it are useful antidotes for the prevailing baby boomer nostalgia that would characterize that decade as one of peace, love, idealism, and truly selfless devotion a to great causes serving all of humanity. Let's not kid ourselves - the sixties reeked! Just ask Budget Steve! He was there! Right, B.S.?

By the way, it was interesting to see all the Coleman Francis alumni here, particularly the film's producer, Anthony Cardoza as a hapless artist.

A very lame attempt to show what the motorcycle culture of the late 1960's was like, the Hellcats was just plain bad. The audio was very hard to hear, the plot meanders aimlessly, and most of the time doesn't make sense. About the only redeeming feature for me was the hot babes in skin-tight clothing. Ross Hagen lives out a fantasy of his by getting to "bed" several women in one movie.

The idea may have looked good on paper, but the execution was awful.

Avoid this one unless you're watching the MST3K version.

Before watching the MST3K version, I prepared myself to watch the original trailer and uncut version on the same DVD. The movie proper is meandering concerning plot, dialogue, and especially action scenes especially when a bike race is only heard while we're seeing close-up after close-up of what seems like bored spectators. There's also a couple of drunken/stoned orgy scenes that was probably the main reason for The Hellcats existence. You see some excitement at the end but by that time you'll simply be glad when it's all over. So unless you're curious about these late '60s drive-in fare, I wouldn't recommend this movie. Just the MST3K version will do for me which I'm going to review next...

I watched this travesty of a movie on MST3K and I can tell you, even Joel and the robots can't save this mess of a movie. The movie starts with a little blurt of a plot about an undercover police officer who gets killed. The killed officer's brother and wife decide to infiltrate a biker gang to find who killed the officer. This all takes about 15 minutes to set up. The next hour will be filled by terrible "motorcycle riding" scenes (definate filler) a pointless booze, drug, orgy type thing, a stupid booze, drug, orgy picnic, a motorcycle race (where you don't get to see the race, just the spectators), a fight scene that may well have been choreagraphed by a retarded todler and finally a teensy bit of resolution for the "plot". The only thing I could think about during this movie is how much I wanted some of the copious amounts of booze they were inhaling, it would have made the movie hurt less.

It's worth watching if you feel like getting very drunk and laughing, but for just straight watching it's no Space Mutiny or Gamera.