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STUNT ROCK (1978)
MADMAN DVD (region 0)
d. Brian Trenchard-Smith; pr. Martin Fink; scr. Paul-Michel Miechele Jr., Brian Trenchard-Smith; ph. Bob Carras; m. Smokey Huff, Sorcerer; stunt cord. Grant Page; cast. Grant Page, Monique Van De Ven, Margaret Gerard, Smokey Huff (86 mins)
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High-wired Stunts Bring Aussie Machismo to International Exploitation Cinema
Lead actor Grant Page lived a career on a highwire balancing acting with stunt co-ordination in the late 1970s boom period of Australian exploitation.
His best work combining both fields was for Aussie director Brian Trenchard-Smith in 3 features – The Man from Hong Kong, Deathcheaters and Stunt Rock. It was in this last film that his abilities as a likeable action hero who could do his own stunts was put forward amidst a barrage of 1970s heavy metal by band Sorcery and impressive editing. For Stunt Rock, Page and Trenchard-Smith let loose on Los Angeles where Page is trailed by a sinister, sexy seductress (former Paul Verhoeven starlet Monique Van De Ven) and a cult band. It’s unabashed Aussie machismo at its zenith and Trenchard-Smith handles it with his usual skill.
From The Gap at Sydney (the suicide landmark not the US chain store) to the USA, Page plays himself in this mix of documentary and fanciful plotting.
It’s a light, breezy and open-aired 1970s wish fulfilment fantasy writ large with the charismatic Page an amiable rugged Aussie man full of vigour and energy at that point in his career, the peak of his celebrity. Director Trenchard-Smith captures the energy and danger of Page’s exquisite and ornate stunt-work with mobile camerawork, rapid editing rhythms and experimental split-screen effects all to a head-banging heavy metal grunge sound. Although Sorcery are a way from Led Zeppelin, the film nevertheless integrates their music exceptionally well to make Stunt Rock a bizarre pop-culture amalgam of rock, stunt and celebrity.
It’s a case of a tough Aussie in the wicked city of LA as Page, the chick and the band interact in a plot that primarily exists to frame the stunt action with the semblance of continuity but is otherwise filler. But Trenchard-Smith is clever and expertly balances the line between documentary and drama, anticipating here the mock rock documentary of such as This Is Spinal Tap and gloriously Australianizing the stunt-based Burt Reynolds populism of Smokey and the Bandit and Hooper. But then Page does his own stunts and Reynolds doesn’t and the difference is in the real conviction beneath the energizing bravado that Page brings to the role. There’s a touch of the brash arrogance of Aussie macho pride about Page: just enough to make him amiable in a plot existing to showcase his stunt work.
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Brian Trenchard-Smith & the Self-Conscious Mythification of the Aussie action hero to rival James Bond
And showcase Page’s stunt work Trenchard-Smith does amicably. It’s as if after his James Bond no longer George Lazenby goes to the Orient adventure of The Man from Hong Kong the director was so enamoured of Page that he would seek make him the most super-heroic of stuntmen.
It’s the construction to make Page a living legend of 1970s rock culture that makes Stunt Rock such a distinctive slice of Oz exploitation. Neither a straight documentary about Page nor a fully-fledged fiction, Stunt Rock is a curious hybrid of fact and fabrication blended by exhilarating stunt work and well filmed in widescreen in a garage rock salute to the Aussie larrikin as international hero. That’s what Page provides so well in Stunt Rock – an Australian super heroics founded on the illusion of invincibility behind the stuntman as hero.
Indeed, the mix of fact and fiction, of realism and fantasy, recurs in films about stunt men as it was almost simultaneously to Trenchard-Smith’s fetishizing of heavy metal culture and stuntmen in Stunt Rock that acid-guru director Richard Rush was creating a post-modern paranoid trip in The Stunt Man. But Rush was all about metaphysical and Brechtian games with film construction whilst Trenchard-Smith is loud music and fast action and long-haired women. Stunt Rock presupposes MTV in a way and as a feature integrates performance rock videos into its generic hybrid. It’s noisy, fast and energetic and a stylish tribute to 1970s pop culture. Although it may be dated Ozploitation, Stunt Rock well deserves the designation of “classic” within its field.
According to the sparkling commentary track, director Trenchard-Smith “lured” his future wife Margaret into starring in this film, playing Page’s girlfriend: which is not to say that Stunt Rock qualifies as a relationship movie.
But the commentary track is always engaging and something of a reminiscence about what was making a “fun act” of a movie with a garage rock band then in its moment in the limelight. With its fine transfer, excellent special features package and insightful commentary, the Madman release of Stunt Rock is an excellent addition to the growing number of Australian exploitation films getting DVD release in the wake of the documentary Not Quite Hollywood.
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USA DVD PURCHASE INFORMATION: Stunt Rock
UK DVD PURCHASE INFORMATION: Stunt Rock [DVD] [1980] [US Import]
AUSTRALIA DVD PURCHASE: Stunt Rock
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