Stone Cold: This 90s banger gets a killer 4K
Man, I miss this era of action movies. Anyone who grew up in the same era I did will know what I’m talking about. The second half of the eighties and the first half of the nineties were positively overloaded with killer action movies. This—after all—was the heyday of the giants like Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, JCVD, Steven Seagal, and many more. Action movies just killed in that era, with them expertly assembled and—more often than not—totally balls-to-the-wall in ways modern movies wouldn’t dare. They were excessive, but they were also a blast to watch with friends, without a drop of pretence to them.
The Cult Appeal of Stone Cold
Such is the case with 1991’s Stone Cold, a movie that tanked in theaters in 1991 but became a cable TV staple throughout the nineties. It was an attempt to launch Brian Bosworth, one of the most famous (or infamous) college football players of all time (The Boz), as a Hollywood action hero after his NFL career petered out. Produced by Michael Douglas’ company, The Stone Group (who also did Double Impact), it centers around an Alabama cop named Joe Huff, who goes undercover in a biker gang run by the messianic Chains (Lance Henriksen), who are moving into drugs, guns, and even terrorism. They are bad dudes.
Pure, Unapologetic Mayhem
Running a brisk ninety minutes, Stone Cold doesn’t seek to reinvent the genre, being unapologetically cliché. But the insanity of the carnage gets ramped up to such an extreme degree that by the end—when the bikers take over the Arkansas State Capitol building—you can barely believe what you’re watching.
A Chaotic Production That Somehow Worked
Stone Cold was a notoriously fraught production, with a good chunk of the movie being scrapped when it was forced to change directors mid-shoot. Stuck with a script that didn’t work, all of the elements coming together should have spelled disaster—but oddly, everyone involved was able to pull together a banger of an action flick. The new director, Craig R. Baxley, was very talented at staging carnage (Action Jackson is a minor classic), but what really makes the movie work is that he apparently left it to co-stars Henriksen and William Forsythe (who plays the biker group’s enforcer, Ice) to rework huge chunks of the script and collaborate with Bosworth on his performance. They also hired legit bikers to fill out the gang, which gave the movie unexpected authenticity.
The 4K Release and Behind-the-Scenes Insights
This is all explained on Kino Lorber’s awesome new 4K disc, which is about as definitive as you’re likely to get. The special features producer, Heather Buckley (a friend of the site), managed to score sit-downs with all the major members of the production.
Brian Bosworth does a good job giving context to where he was in his career at the time, explaining how badly his NFL dreams fizzled out and how unsure he was that he could lead a movie. Of everyone, he rues the fact that the production woes involved removing his character’s backstory, turning him into more of a rock ’n’ roll playboy in the “Boz” image rather than giving him a chance to stretch. Lance Henriksen remains justifiably proud of the film and his performance, even noting that he met his future wife on set when she was hired to trick out his motorcycle. Forsythe gives context to what he and Henriksen were up to during the shoot, explaining that even though they knew it was never intended to be high art, they were determined to be legitimately great in the film—and they absolutely pulled it off.
Why Stone Cold Still Deserves More Love
In fact, I’d wager Henriksen’s Chains is one of the best action movie villains of the era, and it helped elevate him from cult status to more mainstream work, with him landing Hard Target and Millennium not long after.
Despite its cult status, Stone Cold still feels like a movie not enough action fans have seen—likely due to the fact that it doesn’t star an established icon of the genre. Bosworth does a great job in his first lead (he’d go on to a long DTV career), and the action—particularly during the apocalyptic climax—is killer. This 4K is a must-own (buy it HERE).
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