Stone Cold is so committed to its action-movie stupidity, I think it deserves a place in the So Bad It’s Good pantheon with Road House. The script is absurd. The dialogue bounces from bland to bizarre. The action is so ridiculously over the top, and sincere, that it beggars the imagination. One big problem is the enormous plank of wood in the center: Brian Bosworth.
Buy Stone ColdBosworth was a first draft pick for the Seattle Seahawks who… was popular and disliked, I guess. I don’t know football, so I won’t pretend. But he had enough notoriety that Hollywood thought he would make an action star. And they put him in the best ’80s movie made in 1991.
John Huff, maverick Alabama Cop, is introduced stopping the most over-the-top grocery robbery ever filmed. The robbers probably had to spend more in ammo for their submachine guns than they could hope to get from the till. Huff dispatches them with ease and a smirk. After the cops arrive, we discover Huff is suspended (we never find out why) but he’s the top cop for busting motorcycle gangs. So, the FBI coerces him to go after Chains Cooper, the leader of the notorious Brotherhood.
The Brotherhood has, for reasons unknown, been killing Baptists ministers. The scene where this happens is hilarious – in the middle of a Baptism, the biker strolls right up to the Baptismal font and blows the minister away with a shotgun. He flies through a stained-glass window, where the rest of the biker gang is waiting, apparently in appreciation.
The story is an absurd mess. Drug deals, murders, and crosshairs on a gubernatorial candidate are at the center. And giant slab of mulleted meat Brian Bosworth goes “undercover” in the middle of it. He’s a black hole of charisma.
Thankfully, he’s surrounded by a murderer’s row of superb character actors who elevate this nonsense into some kind of performance art. And nobody pulls more weight than Lance Henriksen as Chains Cooper. He’s a grinning psychopath who laughs constantly at his own lines. Which make no sense, though Henriksen himself wrote them.
“We’re going to get into each other’s heads, man!” he tells Bosworth when they first meet.
“This is either gonna be the biggest pork chop I ever ate, or my bulldozer.” I do not know what this means, but Lance says it with complete conviction. The Brotherhood is a bizarre underworld society with constant violence and sex. It also commands complete loyalty from its adherents. A family, they say.
I remember as a youth watching the Today show, and seeing Bosworth being interviewed about the film. He was proud that he had all the vulgarity removed from his own dialogue. That did not stop everyone else from cussing like it was going out of style. There’s copious nudity and swearing and so much violence, the film almost got an NC-17 rating.
The saving graces of this stupid film are the performances (by everyone but the Boz) and the production values. Director Craig R. Baxley was a last-minute arrival, and he is not much of a stylist. But he has a deeply impressive stunt background. He’d worked for decades in stunt work and coordinating, including the whole A-Team TV series. His last job as a coordinator was Predator. He knows how to frame shots, move the action, and get his money’s worth out of his action sequences. They are constantly on point, bloody, ruthless and so much fun. And this 4K UHD release looks flawless to me.
Stone Cold is not a good story. Brian Bosworth did not become a star for a reason. But so much about this weird film is so propulsive and dumb and entertaining that I kind of love it. It doesn’t have a terribly coherent story. There are payoffs at the end that don’t have real set-ups. There’s no emotional journey for the main character to go on. That would have required an actual actor.
Stone Cold has myriad flaws, but it’s so immensely entertaining in its crass stupidity that I can’t help but recommend it. It was a dinosaur even when it came out, a mid-’80s action movie released in the early ’90s. But it’s anything but generic. Lightning paced, at a brisk 92 minutes it never wears out its welcome. The weird biker world it invents, the strange side characters, and particularly Lance Henriksen’s mad-man performance give it so much character. It’s not good, but it’s kinda great.
Stone Cold has been released by Kino Lorber on 4K and Blu-ray. This release includes both discs. Audio extras include two commentary tracks, a new scene specific commentary by director Craig R. Baxley, and one by critics Mike Leeder and Arne Venema.
On the Blu-ray, there are several video extras. The sole new video extra is “Cold as Ice”(34 min), which is an interview with actor William Forsyth. Archival videos include “The Boz Goes Hollywood” (19 min), an interview with Brian Bosworth; “The Brotherhood” (12 min), an interview with Lance Henriksen; “Breaking Free” (14 min), an interview with Arabella Holzbog; and “Playing Straight” (9 min), an interview with Sam McMurray; and some promotional material.
