Madman Entertainment
R4 DVD
Stunt
Rock is another ozploitation classic from Brian Trenchard Smith.
It
seems that Smith developed quite a liking for his stuntman Grant Page and
decided to use him as the nexus of many of his B grade films. Obviously it is a cheap way to make cult
films if you can combine your stuntman with your lead actor and use old footage
and interviews along the way !
Starting
with Deathcheaters, Page was turned from stuntman into actor, which proved
difficult as he really couldn’t act even if his life depending on it ! In Stunt
Rock Trenchard Smith pulls every trick in the book, he creates a minimal plot
and packs it with all manner of stock footage and every conceivable stunt
created by Page, even including a couple where Page was injured! Ahh, the joys
to exploitation cinema.
The
plot, as it is, centres on Grant Page travelling from Australia to Los Angeles
to complete a series of stunts for a television series. His first stunt, a car accident, lands him in
hospital but against his doctors orders he leaves the hospital (rather
unofficially, out of a fifth story window) and gets back to work.
As
he performs his stunts, he makes friends with the star of the series and with
Lois Wells, a newspaper report trying to understand his craft. She provides the
possible romantic interest to add some pizzazz to the plot.
Along
the way he meets the glam rock band Sorcery through a friend and this allows
Smith to show an inordinate amount of their live show to help fill out the 90
minutes of the film.
The
film really is padded out with a ridiculous amount of stock footage showing
stunts by Page from such films as Mad Dog Morgan, The Man from Hong Kong and
Gone in Sixty Seconds. These are shown at every opportunity and related to the
script by minimal links, occasionally they are edited with split screens and
other innovations to make them seem creative !
There
is even a segment showing the history of stunt work and some interviews and pep
talks by Page on stunt work. While these are vaguely interesting, it shows just
how disorganized the plot truly is, it meanders all over the place and seems to
have no idea at all what the film is actually about or where it is going.
To
make sure it doesn’t end up looking too much like a documentary (and it
certainly seems to head in that direction) Smith adds the little known
Seventies glam rock band Sorcery into the mix.
They are typical glam rockers with a penchant for occult themes and
magic stage antics, the one thing they seem to have trouble doing is
singing—they seem to scream and wail and be constantly off key.
Their
songs really are terrible (their classic number woman seems to have all of five
words in the whole song) and their stage antics in which a wizard does battle
with the devil are painfully amateur even for the glam rock era.
The
combination of stunts, glam rock, bad acting, more stunts, stock footage and a
plot which is nonexistent makes this an unbeatable work of cult cinema.
Silly,
inane and yet brimming with action, this is Ozploitation cinema at its most
ridiculous.
This
is a superb release from Madman Entertainment and also includes the film The
Stuntmen by Brian Trenchard Smith.
This review will appear in Volume 2 No.2 (2009)
of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.
If you came to this page directly (and
missed our menu), click here
to go to the Synergy Magazine front page. (http://www.synergy-magazine.com)