STONE (1974)
Run Time: 2:12:00
Director: Sandy Harbutt
Author: Sandy Harbutt, Michael Robinson
Key Solid: Deryck Barnes, Sandy Harbutt, Hugh Keays-Byrne
FILM MAKERS
This low funds impartial “Ozploitation Bikie Flick” (Australian biker movie) wasn’t a lot on the time. Made a bit too late, and on the fallacious facet of the planet to hitch the American outlaw biker obsession, to not point out being slammed by the critics, it wasn’t till a number of years later (1979) when slightly film known as Mad Max got here out and Stone was rediscovered. Now critically acclaimed, although hardly ever seen. It’s thought-about the “Bikie Bible” and an Australian 70’s traditional.
Directed by Sandy Harbutt, Stone tells the story of The Grave Diggers. An outlaw, Satanist bikie gang of renegades using Kawasaki 900s, together with the legendary Kawasaki Z1 (900), which can be being picked off one after the other in elaborate methods by a mysterious killer.
SUMMARY
The opening scene reveals the gang hitting up an indication to avoid wasting the surroundings. Toad (Hugh Keays-Byrne, aka ‘Toecutter’ from ‘Mad Max’) wanders across the crowd tripping on acid, when a sniper begins capturing, killing gang member “Go Down”.
Using 400 deep, all of the native gangs collect for a unbelievable bikie funeral procession (extras for this scene included members of the Sydney Hell’s Angels) for Go Down. Arriving on the cemetery, Undertaker, the gang’s chief provides the service and Go Down is buried standing up so he “received’t need to take any shit from the Evil One”. The Grave Diggers refuse to speak to the cops who query them to assist discover Go Down’s killer. Telling them to piss off, they head for the bar.
Stone (Ken Shorter), a straight capturing however hip, bike using cop rolls as much as the bar later that night time on a Norton and after some fuss, convinces the Grave Diggers to let him trip with them undercover to seek out out who the killer is. Leaving his posh lady behind, Stone heads off down the coast to the key, seaside fortress the place the gang is hiding out. The lair is a den of iniquity. Intercourse, medicine, pinball, even a man sleeping in a coffin by a beer fridge… However, after drag racing Pungent, Stone is shortly accepted and is inducted within the Grave Digger ritual of donning a grimy membership jacket and having his ear pierced by Toad with a syringe, in order that he can put on the symbolic skeleton earring.
Asking round to seek out leads on who would need the gang useless, and pondering will probably be an extended checklist, Stone is shocked to seek out that the gang’s solely enemy appears to be not the rival gang The Black Hawks, however as a substitute, the native heavies who’ve the entire space mobbed up and have been making an attempt to set the Grave Diggers as much as preserve them off their backs. Attempting to incite a gang warfare, the heavies go away Go Down’s helmet for the gang at a neighborhood bar “enhances of the Black Hawks”. Enraged that Go Down has been dug up, they tear off to the cemetery…and stroll proper into an ambush.
Photographs ring out. The Undertaker is killed. Toad is shot and realizes that he knew who the killer was all alongside however had been on a lot acid that he thought he had been hallucinating. A bloody battle ensues and the killer is caught by the gang, however Stone, nonetheless the civil servant, holds the gang off at gunpoint. Refusing to allow them to care for enterprise their approach, he takes the killer in.
“They acquired one thing going for them…A type of a way of honor…That I’d like. They simply up and do the type of issues that a variety of different individuals would love to have the ability to do….Yeah, I just like the ol’ Grave Diggers…I’d be glad to see them anytime.”
Again at residence. Enter the grave Diggers. Stone goes to shake fingers however they lunge, beat him to a bloody pulp, take again his vest, tear out the skeleton earring and go away him for useless in his girlfriends arms. Hysterical, she tries to name the cops however Stone whispers by way of the blood and lacking enamel… “no cops, no cops”. Fade to black. Lower to bikies using into the dawn. Cue music. Roll the credit. – Cina Meccanica
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Watch ‘STONE FOREVER’ the 1999 function Documentary on the making of ‘Stone”.
