Stone Cold

Stone Cold – Reviewed by Skids Poppe

Okay. I changed video stores because I just couldn’t handle another film like Nomad Riders (see last issue Oh Faithful Readers). I get to this new place and I’m looking around, this guy comes up and says “Can I help you?” I figure I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and tell him what I’m looking for. He points me in the direction of Stone Cold, a brand new release fresh from the mines. I take it and read the back. We’ve got a renegade cop posing as an outlaw biker to bring a couple of cold-blooded killers to justice. Sure, it sounds like my kind of film, but I’ve been burnt before. What the hell. You can’t go through life scared of video tape boxes, can you?

Am I glad I watched this film. First off, Brian Bosworth (Some ex-jock who got tired of being banged around on the football field and wanted a stuntman to take the falls for him) is the cop, code name: John Stone. He’s great. He opens the film by thwarting (I got a new dictionary for Christmas) a supermarket robbery while still on suspension. And he does it without firing a gun. His weapon of choice? Canned food. I’m loving this.

Now comes the meat of the story. The FBI (Far Below Intelligence) wants Stone to infiltrate (It’s a Webster’s Collegiate) the evil biker gang called The Brotherhood. He agrees and the rest is pure action. Chains, the leader of said Brotherhood is a David Duke wet dream come to life. He’s got swastikas all over the place, is selling drugs through a Mafia connection and has his ‘club’ set up as a new religion. Let me tell you. I wanted this guy to die. The filmmakers did their job well. They’ve given us bad bikers and good bikers. Even a member of the gang tells Chains after he shoots two Nasty Guardsmen neatly packed in shipping crates: “Killing in cold blood is wrong. This isn’t the outfit I joined.” We’ve got everything we could want, men fighting men, topless women, some great explosions and morals to boot. All right, so I get a twinge of pain when I see a perfectly good Harley get blown to bits, but it’s all for the sake of art, right?

So, I hear you asking, what didn’t you like, Skids? (You, in Pomona, I heard you the first time!) I didn’t like the 900 number ad at the beginning of the tape for a contest which promised the winner a trip to Hollywood and a dinner date with Mr. Bosworth. This rampant commercialism by puss-headed promo punks (ooh, alliteration) who think we have nothing better to do than spend $1.95 for the 1st minute/$1.45 each additional just to possibly win an imitation leather jacket, makes me want to vomit. Do you think these people have any idea what new headers cost for a ’45 Indian? I think not.

All in all, my recommendation is rent it, watch it, return it. You won’t be disappointed.

Skids Poppe appears courtesy of the Literature is Dead Society, of which he is on the Board of Directors.