It should be said that I watch a lot of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I think almost every film buff does. If you don't know, the movies are typically cheesy, low budget b-movies from the 1950s-1970s. They're not good movies (though a few make the exception), they're just laughably bad. This is what I thought would be the case with Sidehackers otherwise known as Five the Hard Way. I didn't expect it to be that good. But what I saw was probably one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I'm not even kidding. It was horrible. Not even the riffs could save it, and I've never seen a movie like that before. Even with something wretched like Manos: The Hands of Fate, Joel and the bots could still make it funny. With this, that almost doesn't happen. I'm not even saying that the riffs are bad. The biggest problem is that the movie takes itself way to seriously. Coleman Francis movies also took themselves too seriously, but whereas those movies would annoy you with their pretentiousness at the 10 minute mark, this film does it immediately. I don't know how to describe it. It tries to shove senseless violence into the plot without anything that even makes a good movie. So the best way to describe this movie is that it feels uncomfortable. Unsurprisingly the violence doesn't make it enjoyable because it's not done well and there's nothing of any substance to even it out. And I watched a censored television version so it was probably worse than that. Overall the movie is just depressing throughout. I really don't recommend it on any format but if you do watch it make it the MST3K.
Review of Five the Hard Way
