Thursday, April 2, 2020

#AtoZChallenge Bikers

In the 50s and 60s you had a lot of popular movies with motorcycles in them like Rebel Without a Cause and Easy Rider.  So of course they had a lot of imitators too.  Biker gang movies were popular B-movie fodder around that time, so naturally some of them were on MST3K.

There were at least three of them that I've seen on Pluto TV.  They're pretty much interchangeable in my mind.  I mean I couldn't hardly tell them apart.

Side Hackers:  This one stands out only because it involves this weird "sport" of "side hacking" where people ride motorcycles that have a weird kind of sidecar someone rides on.  They go around a track in a normal dirt bike race style.

Anyway, the movie involves Ross Hagen as some side hacker who gets into a rivalry with some biker gang.  They kill his woman and then he assembles a team to take them down.  In the end he and the bad guy kill each other.  The End.

Hellcats & Wild Rebels:  These are pretty much the same movie.  Some guy goes undercover with some bikers.  One features Ross Hagen (again) only this time he's avenging his brother after he comes home from Vietnam.  The other the cop is the wheelman as the gang robs some crappy little banks.  That ends with a shootout in a lighthouse, which is kind of cool.  But again, which one is which?  I couldn't tell you.

Stone Cold:  Unlike the others, this was from the early 90s.  It's on Rifftrax, not MST3K.  But the plot is similar to Hellcats & Wild Rebels:  an undercover cop infiltrates a biker gang.  In this case the cop is played by former college star and NFL bust Brian "the Boz" Bosworth.  The biker gang leader is played by Lance Henriksen, who tries to kill a judge for some reason.

The movie is pretty funny because of the ridiculous clothes and hairstyles and stuff.  For some reason the Boz has a pet iguana that I guess is supposed to show how bad ass he is.  Or something.  Unfortunately this one isn't on Amazon Prime much and not on Pluto TV so I haven't watched it many times.

1990 Bronx Warriors:  This 1982 movie is basically an Italian ripoff of The Warriors.  In the "future" of 1990 the Bronx has become No Man's Land for...reasons.  If there was some disaster, the rest of the city looks fine.  No one really ever seems to mention what happened or why.  The plot is that a girl in Manhattan flees to the Bronx and is saved by a guy named Trash and his biker gang.  She's so happy to belong to someone (her words) that she sticks with him.  But when her father starts sending people to find her, Trash and company have to make allies with a gang led by former NFL player Fred Williamson, who you'll see again (twice) in an entry near the end of the challenge.  And they fight some other gangs and cops.  Hooray.

The ending is about like Side Hackers, where it doesn't really end Happily Ever After, though at least the "hero" survives.  Anyway, this is a cheesy copy of an already cheesy movie.  So, a lot of cheese.

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