Stone - 1974

Stone is a film I knew very little about other than it was part of the wave of 70s Australian film partially funded by the government and paving the way for what many of us now call Ozsploitation. Stone was hardly the first Aussie exploitation flick but it looks as though it might be the first outlaw biker movie produced Down Under. As such it was marketed as a precursor to Mad Max after that movie made such a huge splash internationally - Stone was sometimes marketed as a follow up to Max despite preceding it by several years as the truth should never get in the way of a good marketing scheme. So to some extent I was expecting a fairly rough, possibly post-apocalyptic, bleak exploitation jam and instead got something closer to Australia's answer to Easy Rider. Stone is the only film writer/director/star/producer/production designer Sandy Harbutt made and it's clearly a very personal vision and one that defied my expectations. One of the taglines for Stone said "take the trip" and it truly is a journey into the counterculture with the GraveDiggers motorcycle club and the titular rebel-cop Stone.

The first 15 minutes of the film are equal parts challenging and relentless eschewing any kind of conventional wisdom on how to open a movie. There's a political assassination, disorienting POV shots from a member of the GraveDiggers who is tripping hard, throbbing electric drone tunes, a series of biker murders, and eventually a biker funeral procession consisting of hundreds of bikes - all without real dialogue or officially introducing any characters. One of those biker kills involves a guy doing an absolutely insane motorcycle jump off of a cliff side into the ocean - it definitely commands your attention. Once we get to the semi-satanic biker funeral we start to learn more about the individual GraveDiggers and their personalities and then 25 minutes into the film proper we're introduced to Stone - a cop who's flowing locks and motorcycle enthusiasm make him the natural choice to embed with the Diggers and solve the mystery of who is killing them and why. That mystery is investigated but a lot of what follows is Stone proving himself to Undertaker - the leader of the gang played by Harbutt - and the rest of the pack while they share their freewheeling lifestyle and philosophy with him. While they are ostensibly a satanic outlaw gang - the GraveDiggers hijinks aren't too nefarious and consist mostly of brawling, racing, strip poker, and smoking grass. In a memorable scene - reportedly achieved in a day-long shoot involving actual weed - Stone and the gang get high, vibe with each other on the freedom of motorcycling and doing your own thing, and then go for a sunrise skinny dip on the beach. These guys are hardly arch-villains. Even the locals who think the GraveDiggers can be a nuisance also recognize they're a curiosity for the straight crowd - a kind of local attraction in their way.

In the end - the conspiracy behind the murders is unraveled and Stone has to decide between upholding the law as is his charge or embracing the code of the outlaws and face the consequences either way. However the real strength of the film is spending time with Stone and the GraveDiggers - Toad, Dr. Death, Midnight, Hooks, and Undertaker - many of whom are played by actors who would turn up in later Australian films like Mad Max, Turkey Shoot, The Man from Hong Kong and others. I have never been a massive biker movie enthusiast but I really did have a good time with this - it's true that a lot of the runtime is dedicated to scenes of motorcycles driving around but that's kind of the point and it's helped by the pounding, proggy rock music provided by Bill Green, later known as Wil Greenstreet. While the film isn't a completely bleak, Outback scorcher like some that would follow it the ending does get satisfyingly grim pulling us back down to earth after our oceanside, sunrise reverie. Stone is an interesting moment and inflection point in Australian genre film but it really stands on its own and it's a shame Sandy Harbutt never made another film despite its domestic box office success. Of course part of Stone's success is its place in time - long gone are the days when someone would give some quasi-hippie filmmakers a pile of cash to go get drugs and cameras and hire actual bikers payed off in beer to film the scene and see what happens. It's that vitality and sense of danger that make this one worth seeking out.