The Direct to Video Connoisseur

I'm a huge fan of action, horror, sci-fi, and comedy, especially of the Direct to Video variety. In this blog I review some of my favorites and not so favorites, and encourage people to comment and add to the discussion. For announcements and updates, don't forget to Follow us on Twitter and Like our Facebook page. If you're the director, producer, distributor, etc. of a low-budget feature length film and you'd like to send me a copy to review, you can contact me at dtvconnoisseur[at]yahoo.com. I'd love to check out what you got. And check out my book, Chad in Accounting, over on Amazon.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Stone Cold (1991)

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This film's omission from the DTVC has been simply because I didn't do my homework properly. This movie made under the 10 million at the box office, and I usually set as my threshold for inclusion. Now my other threshold was if I could've taken a date to see the film in my local area, and technically I could've, because this did show in my theater. Just the same, the fact that it meets one of the two criteria, and I've had so many requests for it, make me feel compelled to post it.

Stone Cold is a take off on an old movie called The Hellcats where the Boz goes undercover in Mississippi to take down a biker gang. The biker gang has turned into a full fledged criminal organization run by, of all people, Lance Henriksen. That's pretty much the long and the short of it. Oh yeah, and the Boz has what might be the greatest mullet ever!

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First off, I think I really know now why there was such an outcry in the late 80s early 90s about violence in movies, because this fucker was violent. And I'm not talking Schwarzenegger taking down 50 armed stuntmen in blazers toting fake uzis, I'm talking a room full of women and children in a courthouse slaughtered with the hero coming in way after the fact like it's no big deal. You also got burned faces and fingers being chopped off in motorcycle spokes. I really don't know why any of that was necessary, unless you just really wanted to piss off Tipper Gore.

That's not to say this movie wasn't great. The Boz killed it. Who knows what Henriksen was doing as a biker gang leader, because he was way more believable disguised as a priest at the end of the movie. But it delivered in spades on everything else. The Boz sending a motorcycle through a building into a helicopter hovering outside was fantastic, and pretty much par for the course. My favorite part was, and I know I'll get this wrong, when The Boz's partner wanted him to quit so they could arrest the gang with what they already had for evidence. The Boz says "What if I told you I could get both: Chains and the Mob. I need three tons of P2P, transportation, and an agent with the balls to pull it off", to which his partner says "Do fries come with that shake?"

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After seeing this again, I know how wrong I'd been in not posting it sooner, especially when compared with a sack-of-asscrack like The Operative. The Boz needs to be rocking a mullet and beating the crap out of people. There are no two ways about it. This movie invented the Nobel Prize in mathematics winning formula, now it's just a matter of other film makers learning it. It's not rocket science. The Operative, no; Stone Cold, yes! Oh yeah, and his character needs to have logged more biker related arrests than any other cop in Alabama.

I decided to devote a separate paragraph to the amazing ape drape exhibited by the Boz here. I've never been to the Louvre, but I have to feel like seeing the Mona Lisa in person is like seeing the Boz's beaver pelt. The way it exudes business in the front, then cascades into party in the back. The sheer pride with which he rocks it, how he even thinks he's cool-- nay, beyond cool, a trendsetter-- for having it. No, I don't think Barry Melrose could pull off the Boz's mullet in Stone Cold, and I think that's why the Boz deserves so much credit for it. He's what made that mullet awesome. Oh, so awesome.

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Lance Henriksen as a biker. What can I say? What would you say? Yes, maybe? Why not go all the way and cast Jeremy Irons? When, as a biker, you look more convincing disguised as a priest, I'd say you didn't pull off the biker well. That's probably why the Boz found it so easy to infiltrate the gang. They were like "Christ, if Henriksen's a biker, this Boz guy must be one too." Shit, maybe Al Roker's a biker. I say for Stone Cold 2, hire Regis Philbin to run the biker gang. It works for me.

This movie is certainly not DTV. You can tell by the quality of the film (I mean the actual stuff it was shot on, not the movie itself) that this was a major studio release. Just the same, it was a flop, it was pure cheese, and it's so funny. It's in the spirit of the blog, and I think that's what counts. If you haven't seen it, rent it. It's a pretty fun time.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102984/

3 comments:

  1. A glorious day here as this finally gets it's due. Nothing but love all the way around here. You know the pet iguana was all the rage in flicks there for a minute. Prayer Of The Rollerboys had another shining example of this brief phenomenom. Not to mention the greatest Haim performance ever in a non-Feldman related capacity.

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  2. I'd forgotten about Prayer for the Roller Boys. I was thinking Fast Getaway with Cynthia Rothrock was another great Haim sans Feldman feature. Both only available on VHS, unfortunately.

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  3. One of the alltime heavyweight champs of B, no, C movies. When Chains kills his girlfriend after discovering her betrayal with The Boz, then throws his head back and bellows "I need a new bitch!"-- I mean, that's right up there with "Frankly, Scarlett" and "You can have my answer now, Senator." Isn't it?

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