The bridal shower approaches, and MST3Knitathon, my attempt to knit this blanket and have it blocked and dry in time for the shower while marathoning the fan-voted top 100 episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 continues with:
A list of the Top 100 Episodes of MST3K was compiled based on a survey taken of backers of the Bring Back MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 campa
37. Episode 202 The Sidehackers
Content warning: violence against women (abusive relationship and murder depicted, rape and murder implied offscreen)
Summary: Sidehacking is a kind of motorcycle racing where a passenger stands on an attached platform and uses their body as a counter-weight, holding onto a bar and leaning into extreme positions to help the motorcycle bank turns. It never took off.
The memorably named Rommel is an accomplished side-hacker who unfortunately comes to the attention of J.C., an exhibition motorcyclist who brings his bike to the garage owned by Rommel and his friend, and immediately becomes obsessed with adding sidehacking to his act by getting Rommel to join his performances. J.C.'s girlfriend sees hooking up with Rommel as a way out of her abusive relationship, but when he insults her while turning her down, she tells J.C. that Rommel assaulted her, and J.C. gets his gang of hangers on to beat Rommel up and murder his fiance Rita. A heartbroken Rommel embarks on a quest for revenge, but dies in the shootout just as his buddy brings the police to their location, ensuring J.C.'s arrest as a soft-focus montage implies that Rommel and Rita are reunited in death.
Note: Mysteriously, Rommel insists that they bring no guns while storming J.C.'s hideout. Normally when the good guys do this it's to establish that they are not intending to commit any murders (even if some people may die in the fight). But Rommel expressly says that his intent is to kill J.C., so why he doesn't want to use guns is baffling.
MST3K lore or notable moments: There are a few here, from Cambot's rare participation in the film segment when it puts a scorecard frame around the scenes of side-hacking to an initial segment where the bots actually want to be allowed to stay up and watch the movie with Joel. But famously, this episode is a watershed moment in MST3K history:
During the infamous local television KTMA "Season 0" days, supposedly the riffers actually were improvising live a lot of the time, and this accounts for the slower pace. Things started getting more professional when the show switched to cable, but Season 1 is still transitional enough that Joel has recommended new fans skip it. By the start of season 2, they were pre-scripting their riffs through multiple watch-throughs, but they were not yet prescreening movies in full before adding them to the schedule. For The Sidehackers, they got to the scene of Rita's graphic rape and murder too late to deselect the movie, and had to cut the scene entirely, having Crow announce, "For those keeping score at home, she's dead now." From then on, MST3K prescreened all of their movies.
What do I think about its place on the list? Yes, this movie is the one I was vagueing about all the way back in episode 100, when I said that there were worse biker movie episodes higher on the list than Wild Rebels. At the time that I wrote that, I remembered not really liking The Sidehackers very much, but it’s a much more fun episode than I remembered. The side hacking is interestingly strange, the way everyone reacts to Rommel like he’s a god among men when he is literally just some guy is delightfully bizarre, all the sketches are fantastic, the rare Cambot interaction was a welcome surprise, and the riff was hilarious. (Joel’s Patton impression, “Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I’ve read your book!”, is one of those rare running gags that gets funnier every time.) I think the last 20 minutes of the film with the big, confusing fight scene where you barely know who anyone is is such a slog (even with the riff) that it retroactively colors my impression of the whole episode. So this was a great episode! Like the last one, I don't really know if this is a top 50 episode (though if the ending of the riffed film was less of a bummer, it probably would be), but it is a top tier. (It's also way closer in quality to Wild Rebels than their difference on the list would imply.)
