B-Moive Marathon: Stone Cold

Stone Cold has to be on of my favorite movies of all time. I was introduced to it a few years ago by a friend in film school at University of Colorado and have sworn by it since the first time I saw it.

We we're in a group production class together and spending an intense amount of time on writing and shooting a short film for nothing. Literally less than $100 was spend on what we ended up making, which didn't turn out to be very good, but it was a good experience at the time. To blow off steam that semester, in addition to drinking copious amounts of beer, we would watch this movie.

From the opening scene the madness ensues. Large and cheap-looking-but-you-know-they-were-expensive set pieces dominate most of the action in this movie; a grocery store, a motorcyle chase, the seige of the capital of Alabama, a biker rally complete with beer can-handgun William Tell, a Viking Funeral pyre with a motorcycle (and dead biker) on it and a fucking pet gila monster make this the greatest fucking movie of all time. Period. Point blank.

Oh, and it stars Lance Hendricksen. Yeah, Bishop from Aliens. Not to mention the stunningly homo-erotic yet obtusely sexless performance from former NFL burnout Brian Bosworth. At the helm of this monstrously ridiculous spectacle is former stunt coordinator and seasoned B-movie director Craig R. Baxley (who presumably was only able to get Hendricksen to do this because of their Aliens connection).

Suffice it to say, the practical special effects in this movie are so gaudy and over-the-top that you lose track of how many stunt dummies they blow up, throw from helicopters or hit with cars (both of the latter also involve explosions).

And then there's The Boz. Not only did he ride his custom made motorcycle with his own skull with flaming mullet emblem airbrushed on the gas tank (the same patch is found on his biker jacket), but he stoops to deadpanning some of the most ridiculously ill-concieved b-movie dialog, like explaining to his straight-laced partner that (in a strip club) "truckers get their rocks off watchin' the girls dance."



There are other great lines too: "Tell Chains to keep his castles out of my sandbox," "He's either gonna be my bulldozer, or the biggest steak I ever ate."

Great homo-eroticisms like "Is that a piece in your pants?" and later in the same scene, refer to the Boz's time in the pen: "Pretty boy like you must've done some real hard time."

To balance that out, there's copious amounts of R-rated nudity. Who knew biker gangs insisted on public showers for their old ladies? Coupled with all the ridiculous violence, Stone Cold is one of the most amazing cultural documents to emerge from this country in the last two decades.

Srsly, do yourself a favor and go watch this movie. Previously only available on video tape and bootleg DVD (Thanks Thomas for letting me steal that from you), Stone Cold got its very own fancy DVD release last summer. Its on Netflix, too.