Set in a busy rooming house in Montreal's impoverished East End, Pacemaker on a Sidecar follows the efforts of a gang of kids to take revenge on Polo, the local loan shark, to whom all the inhabitants are hopelessly in debt. The occasion is Polo's birthday celebration, an all-night orgy of drinking, singing, and vandalism, attended by the local gentry - crooks, pimps, whores, “ravenously hungry grotesques,” and friendly cops - all vying for Polo's attention. The kids themselves are obvious products of this environment, but they are rowdies with a purpose, “born losers” who are remarkably well-equipped to take on the world. Among them are Francine, a precocious little girl who wears a pacemaker, and Ti-Guy, her 13-year-old lover who has found a way to cash in on the cardiac equipment. Polo is played by Jean Lapointe, the comedian excellently cast against type in Michel Brault's Les Ordres (see March 16).