Stone Cold (Craig R. Baxley, 1991) Review

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“Welcome to my slaughterhouse!” There's an out-of-control biker gang menacing the people of Mississippi and there's only one man brave enough to go undercover, the type of man who has not a dog, but a giant lizard for a pet, the sort of burly slab of beef that has no qualms about walking around in an alarmingly skimpy pair of underpants, the very breed of man who straddles a rumbling road hog and states the bleedin' obvious as if it was profound revelation – his name's Huff, Joe Huff!...

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“Screw that business, man!” Stealing its opening sequence practically wholesale from the 1986 Sylvester Stallone action fest Cobra – crazed gunmen laying waste to a convenience store only to be taken down single-handedly by the hero – Stone Cold gets off to a familiar, but nonetheless blistering start. What's even more entertaining, though, is that unlike many other action movies featuring rogue cops dancing on the line of acceptable behaviour, Joe Huff (Brian Bosworth, The Longest Yard) begins the movie already on suspension!

“If I get any germs on me I'll be eating the whole spectrum of antibiotics for a week.” Naturally, trouble always seeks out a troublemaker, and it's not long before the FBI – in the form of germophobe Lance (Sam McMurray, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation) and ill-tempered Cunningham (Richard Gant, Jason Goes To Hell) – are knocking on Huff's door with a mission in-mind, or else his brief suspension will be extended to six months without pay. How does that work when it comes to departmental jurisdiction and union rules? Don't know, don't care! The Brotherhood biker gang, led by charismatic but chaotic Chains Cooper (Lance Henriksen, Near Dark), are on a rampage gunning down religious figures and judges, and now they're taking aim at Brent Whipperton (David Tress, Missing in Action), the District Attorney with aspirations for the State Governorship. Suffice it to say, these beer-swilling, leather-vest-wearing menaces to society with links to the Mafia are quite the uncouth fellows.

“Truckers get their rocks off by watching the girls dance.” And so Joe Huff – now under the moniker of John Stone – enters the Brotherhood's orbit, at the humorously-named strip club Tit For Tat, with all the subtlety and panache of a brick soaring through a shop window. Striding in chock-full of bad attitude, Huff befriends good guy biker Gut (Evan James), thoroughly pisses off the hair trigger box of danger that is Ice (William Forsythe, The Devil's Rejects), and captures the interest of gang leader Chains. Becoming a prospect for the gang, Huff launches into their world of sweaty, bearded, macho bar fights, motorcycle drag races, and a version of the William Tell routine that involves cans of beer and casually-aimed but incredibly precise automatic weapons. These guys are no joke, but can Huff get the evidence needed to bring down this crazed gang?

“I will peel your skin off with a knife dipped in shit.” The character of Joe Huff/John Stone makes for a curious action hero. While he has the muscles and lantern jaw, he's also got an outlandish taste in leather jackets (see the opening scene) and sports a mighty blonde mullet that is seemingly the result of breeding a Mohawk with Vanilla Ice. It's also strange that, unlike Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and Willis, Brian Bosworth gets almost zero one-liners to spit out, save for a corny 'clean up in aisle four' retort that has been scraped-up cold from the playground floor. On the other hand, he does leave behind a trail of bullet-riddled bodies and fiery plumes from countless explosions, but in-so-doing this one man wrecking ball fails at almost every single goal he had. It really is quite incredible! All that collateral damage and with practically nothing to show for it.

“Let's send this prick to Valhalla.” But refined nuance is not on the menu here, only giant cuts of red meat and, in the case of Huff's lizard, a smoothie made from, among other ingredients, Snickers bars, potato chips, bananas, and eggs (shells and all). This is the kind of movie where, if someone is told to switch a television off, they just punch a fist through the screen. Indeed, this is also the kind of movie where sexy biker chicks shower completely out in the open when they're not playing pool with chest-popping gusto, where a stripper's back door would be poking your eye out if not for a skimpy g-string, and where a drive-by shooting is considered so passé that only a drive-by grenading will do! This is the last produced screenplay of Walter Doniger, who was best known for writing and/or directing classic westerns and gangster movies and TV shows from the 1940s through 1970s. Masculine subject matter, sure, but not quite this sort of fare – the kind of stuff that caused Executive Producer Michael Douglass to request his name be removed from the film.

“It's better to be first in Hell than second in Heaven.” In lesser hands this burly bro-down could have easily turned out to be a real dud, but thanks to its assortment of high quality character actors and assuredly muscular direction from Craig R. Baxley (whose main career involved stunt work on iconic properties like Predator and The A-Team), the somewhat obscure action bonanza that is Stone Cold proves to be big, ballsy fun straining at the seams with thrusting action. Indeed, there are genuinely impressive stunt sequences throughout, including the sight of a real helicopter flying at speed only a couple of feet above the main road running through a small town.

“Guess who, buddy – Angels don't die!” Are there flaws? Sure. But when you're having this much unadulterated fun – and with not a single pane of glass in the entire movie safe from someone, or something, crashing through it – the mere notion of failing to entertain the audience is lifted overhead by neck and groin, like so many biker goons, and flung through, well, the nearest window. Indeed, anyone who routinely uses (without a shred of irony) phrases like 'mansplaining', 'manspreading', and 'toxic masculinity' is almost guaranteed to have their head blown clean off by this ramrod of throbbing macho chaos.