“Roses are green... violets are red…”

Great, another biker movie from the 1960s. This can’t possibly be a good thing for my health. Well, let’s try and get this over fast. Here’s 1967’s The Hellcats, AKA Biker Babes. A movie that was originally supposed to be about lesbian bikers that was apparently rewritten.

Goddamnit.

Story
Well, there’s a crime boss named Mr. Adrian (director Robert F. Slatzer as “Bob Slatzer”) who uses a biker gang that hates him to run drugs for him (usually in broad daylight). An undercover cop investigating the crime ring is killed by a sniper and his brother, Army sergeant Monte (The Sidehackers’ Ross Hagen, who was also the voice of the retired badass gunslinger Landon Ricketts in Red Dead Redemption, which is a neat fact) and the dead cop’s girlfriend Linda (Dee Duffy) join forces and infiltrate the biker gang to get to the bottom of the killing. That’s pretty much the plot and most of the movie involves Monte trying to get in good with the gang and/or bang their women, and there’s some motorcycle driving and a whole lot of padding before the cartoonish ending. Hagen’s not terrible, but the movie sure is. Aside from Hagen, a few other actors/crew were also involved in Sidehackers.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Robert F. Slatzer the movie doesn’t do a whole lot during the duration. We get some biker partying shenanigans, some motorcycle stuff and eventually some stuff in Mr. Adrian’s very low budget offices. There’s really nothing going for it here aside from a really trippy opening credits background that is inappropriately cosmic.

There is however one scene that bears mentioning. A few bikers menace a painter and his model who are out in a park at one point. It comes out of nowhere, has no bearing on anything and is just a nonsensical temporary diversion that never gets mentioned or explained.

Writing
Based on the original story by James Gordon White and screenplay by Tony Houston/Huston (who worked on Sidehackers) & Robert F. Slatzer. Again, there’s not much here. Dialogue is boring, the characters stiff, underdeveloped, unlikable and usually have one character trait that is about all the characterization they get. There’s an eye patch chick, a bad poet, a guy who carries a trumpet around all the time, etc.

Sound
No original score, but we get some songs by Davy Jones and the Dolphins and Somebody’s Chyldren. Yeah, there’s a reason you’ve never heard of them.

Conclusion
Another sentence I never thought I’d write: Sidehackers was a better movie than this. The Hellcats suffers most from simply being really boring without enough action scenes to get you through. At least Sidehackers, with all of its nihilism and stupidity at least tried to mix things up a bit here and there with action scenes.

Not recommended.


Somehow the trailer manages to be both better AND skeezier than the movie itself.