STUNTS. And ROCK. Together at last, in a movie to which Michael Bay might totally spank it morning, noon, and night.
STUNT ROCK's appeal is pure, unfettered by story: the cliff-diving...the ziplining...the human torching...the human torch ziplining off a cliff. The squibs, the rappelling, the motocross, the upside-down biplane commandeering, the jumping from the roof of one high-speed Cadillac into the backseat of another, the martial art of soda bottle-breaking, the man-to-tiger combat, the explosion after explosion after explosion - all in fearless double and triple split-screens to maximize said purity of appeal.
This movie relies heavily on clips from Grant Page's actual career - I'm guessing most of the budget went to clearance rights. One such clip - from MAD DOG MORGAN (1976) - features Page as part of Dennis Hopper's (onscreen) nightmares. You're probably thinking that the nightmares of Dennis Hopper must be pretty cinematic, and you are so right about that: Page emerges from a lake completely aflame, flies vertically through the air up a cliff and jumps into Hopper's face, scaring the bejeesus out of him and making our viewing party gasp-clutch-pearls screaming "OMG IT'S DENNIS HOPPER!!!!!" It was obviously cliff-jumping-on-fire footage run backwards, and it was equally obviously AWESOME.
While most of the stunts do involve 1970s style cliff jumps, fire, and cliff jumps on fire, there is also some indescribably shredtastic footage of stunts from the 1920s - highwires over New York City, headstands on skyscraper cornices, dudes jumping from rooftop to rooftop over thin air. All in black-and-white, all from back in the day when there was no such thing as greenscreen, when these sorts of activities were that much more dangerous. So just think about that for a moment.
While Page is busy jumping off the Paramount watertower (oh yeah, a plot point, but just the one - he moves to Hollywood to stunt-double on a show called "Undercover Girl"*), Sorcery is tearing up the studio and the stage with their King Of The Wizards Vs. Prince Of Darkness show. Have you ever seen a wizard on fire? Look no further. Sorcery, for real, opened for Van Halen's very first show, opened for Black Sabbath after that, and offers fat, deep early metal grooves that will rock off socks that you don't even wear, like before you even think about how cold your feet are and wouldn't it be nice to...IT'S SORCERY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The stage shows - all three nights of them - are full of magic illusions conducted with somewhat undersized props. Also, fire. Did I mention that there is a lot of fire in this film? One could almost call it symbolic of...itself. In the third show's finale, Page successfully helps Sorcery unite STUNTS and ROCK 4-ever by getting tied to a thing onstage and set on fire (again), then disappearing!, only to somehow sneak to the back of the house and zipline over the crowd in a STUNT to rejoin, onstage, the ROCK. And, happy ending. Especially for Michael Bay.
PS Grant Page is still tearing it up. DOUBLE DEVIL HORNS = TOO MUCH METAL FOR ONE HAND.
*unfortunately not about asskicking private investigator female-identified drag kings but at least it does involve skintight gold lame jumpsuits.
Special thanks to John and Amanda for hosting, specialer thanks to John for letting me wear his spare STUNT ROCK teeshirt, and specialest thanks to Brian for mentioning this movie in the first place. At El Cholo. In the booth where Monte Hellman wrote TWO-LANE BLACKTOP.
No comments:
Post a Comment