Release Year: 1974
Country: Australia
Director: Sandy Harbutt
Starring: Ken Shorter, Sandy Harbutt, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Vincent Gil, Helen Morse, Roger Ward, Dewey Hungerford, James Bowles, Deryck Barnes, Garry McDonald
Cinematography: Graham Lind
Editor: Ian Barry
Rock & Roll: Billy Green
Producers: David Hannay, Sandy Harbutt

First up before we start, I have to give you a quick lesson in Australianese. It’s simple. We don’t have ‘ers’ – we have ‘ies’. For example if you like Star Trek you are a ‘Trekkie’ not a ‘Trekker’. If you drive a truck, you’re a ‘Truckie’ — and most importantly, as it relates to this film, if you ride a bike, you are a ‘Bikie’ – definitely not a ‘Biker’. Got that? Cool, then let’s roll.

Stone is a film that is a bit of an enigma. On one hand it’s a piece of trashy Ozpoitation which looks to follow on the coattails on Easy Rider. Then on the other hand it’s a film that truly defines Australia’s cultural identity and place in the world at that time. No, Australia wasn’t a country of Satan worshiping bikies, but there is an undeniable correlation between the film Stone and the changing views of Australians.

To that end, before we look at the film it’s worth a quick overview of what Australia (or at least pockets of it were) and how they came to be. Firstly, in 1972, after twenty-three years of conservative ‘Liberal’ rule (in Australia the Liberal Party is the conservative party), Gough Whitlam’s Labour Government was voted to power. This was a huge catalyst for change. Whitlam took office determined to implement a wide range of reforms. This ‘change’ wasn’t widely welcomed or appreciated and Whitlam’s time as the leader of the country didn’t last long. Some conspiracy theorists have suggested that the CIA was pivotal in Whitlam’s undoing. Later, on Tuesday November 11th, 1975, the Governor-General of Australia, Sir John Kerr, dismissed Mr Gough Whitlam as Prime Minister. The dismissal is considered the most dramatic event in the history of the Australian politics. Put simply, the Governor-General, an unelected vice-regal representative had removed from office a democratically elected government, which held the majority in the House of Representatives. But enough politics.

The next catalyst for change was the relentless escalation of the Vietnam war. The original film poster for Stone featured a skeleton’s head wearing an ANZAC style slouch hat and the name of the motorcycle gang in the film is ‘The Gravediggers’. Digger is a colloquial term for an Australian soldier, therefore the name of the gang let’s you know that most of its members are ex-soldiers (Vietnam vets).  Australia didn’t have the draft — it had conscription. It was essentially a lottery (known as ‘The Birthday Ballot’) for twenty year old males, based on a person’s date of birth. If your number/date was drawn you were forced into compulsory National Service and were obligated to give two years’ continuous full-time service, followed by a further three years on the active reserve list. Back then the legal voting age was twenty-one (it’s now eighteen), so the conscripts didn’t even have a voice politically. So ‘The Gravediggers’ are basically a group of guys who have had their life fucked up by the war and have found it hard to fit in socially.

On top of that, they weren’t embraced by the community when they returned from the war either. Australia was particularly ‘anti-Vietnam’. In 1966, when US President Lydon Johnson visited Australia, protesters in Sydney chanted ‘LBJ, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?’ Then carried their protest further by lying down in front of the car carrying Johnson and New South Wales Premier Robert Askin. When the driver inquired what he should do, Askin allegedly answered “Run over the bastards!”. At the very least, Vietnam made in very hard for people to accept the old ‘sweetness and light’ fabricated world of the ’50s and ’60′s.

Australia’s revolution wasn’t ‘peace and love’ — although I expect the American version wasn’t either. In the late ’60s and early ’70′s Australia was changing. In was in a constant state of upheaval. And it was behind the times. Communication wasn’t what it is these days, and it took a couple of years for a fad to reach the country and then sweep across the land. Back then too, fads didn’t just last a season — with the slow trickle of influences from overseas, a fad or movement could last quite a few years. When flower power or hippie-dom swept Australia it was the ’70s. And possibly the ‘love’ and ‘flower’ elements just weren’t applicable to our environment.

Now you may be saying, that surely this only applies to certain underground elements in the community? And you’d be right, but at the same time, the underground also had a firm foot in the mainstream. This is illustrated by the fact that around this time a dispute between commercial radio and the British and the ‘big’ Australian record labels resulted in a ban of all the big musical acts. The record labels were demanding royalties on each record played, but radio argued that they were providing free promotion of their artists. Anyway, this meant that only lower profile Australian music was played on radio. This paved the way for the ‘underground’ to permeate popular culture.

Enough rabbiting. The flick starts on the shores of Botany Bay. A politician is giving a speech about pollution and ‘destruction of the environment by irresponsible industry’. Sounds like it could be ripped from today’s newspaper headlines. A group of protesters supporting the speaker have gathered in the park and a listening and cheering appreciatively, when The Gravediggers motorcycle gang pulls up. The Gravediggers don’t really mean much harm, they are simply there for a good time and to politely heckle. They don’t have an issue with the politician — they have issues with society in general. One of The Gravediggers, Toad (Hugh Keays Byrne) is wigging out, man! He’s working through one bad acid trip. Feverish and sweating he wanders off.

Perched on the roof of a building overlooking the park is a gunman. His target is not the pack of unkempt bikies, but the politician. Meanwhile, in his drugged out stupor, Toad has made his way up onto the roof behind the sniper and he witnesses the hitman in action, as he shoots and kills the speaker. Noticing Toad, the hitman then tries to take him out, but too late. Toad has turned and fled. But the killer gets a good glimpse of Toad’s motorcycle jacket and knows which gang he belongs to.

After the credits we see a hand sketching a wire across a road at head height. The next user on this road happens to be a member of The Gravediggers. The bikie takes the corner and rides into the wire, losing his head. Next, another Gravedigger loses his life when his bike explodes as he tries to start the engine. A third bikie is killed when he is run off a cliff by an unseen driver. This third death results in the famous scene where a processions of bikies travel from Gosford to Sydney. At the head of the column, ensconced in a coffin, mounted on a low-bike, is the deceased Gravedigger. They proceed to the cemetery and bury the poor sod standing up.

Afterward the gang adjorn to a pub to drink, rant, rave and misbehave. And then along comes Stone (Ken Shorter). Stone is a cop. Granted, he is not your everyday cop. His hair is long — tied in a cute little ponytail — and he rides a bike. But he doesn’t look too much like a bikie. When we first meet him, he is all dressed in white, with a poppy in his left label. He rides to the pub and demands to talk to The Undertaker (Sandy Harbutt), the leader of The Gravediggers. Stone wants to find out who is killing off members of The Gravediggers. The bikies figure they don’t need his help. They can take care of themselves. They are about to give Stone a right proper hiding for his trouble, when the hitman turns up once again — to take out a few more Gravediggers. He is on a rooftop once again, outside the pub, and armed with a crossbow. He fires off three shots in quick succession, but due to Stone’s quick actions, they do not find a target.

After the incident, The Undertaker agrees to let Stone ride along, undercover, for a while, to see if they can ferret out the man who is trying to kill them. From here, the film changes tone. Stone quickly is assimilated into the bikie community, and slowly he begins to understand and respect their lifestyle. Yeah, at the heart of this film there is the old ‘fish out of water’ story, and in that sense, there are no real surprises to this film. But here the film isn’t about story anyway. It is about ‘culture’

The thing with Stone that makes it so important is if you pull apart the elements that make up this film, you can see it’s cinematic progeny throughout the next twenty years (or more) of Australian film production. If you look at the bikie and road element, you can see the direct influence in films such as Mad Max, The Road Warrior and The Chain Reaction (AKA: Nuclear Run). Which in turn spun off into films like Turkey Shoot (AKA: Blood Camp Thatcher / Escape 2000), Deadend Drive-In (AKA: Dead End), and Salute of The Jugger (Blood of Heroes). If you look at the crime element, which granted, isn’t really expanded upon in Stone, but it’s the beginning of a trend in Australian cinema, you can see the offshoots in films such as Ghosts of the Civil Dead, Stir, Fortress, and even Chopper. And I don’t think it is such a huge leap to compare Stone with Nick Cave / John Hillcoat’s Kangaroo Western, The Proposition – the primary difference being (apart from The Proposition being a historical piece) is that in Stone the central unit is a motorcycle club, whereas in The Proposition it is about family. But both feature main characters that have to go in ‘undercover’ into a disenfranchised community and solve a problem. And that’s just the influence in Australia. This is not the time for a discussion about violent post-apocalyptic Italian barbarian films!!!

The acting in Stone is, at times, pretty deplorable, but the film does mark the early appearances of some familiar faces in Ozploitation. And the film was quite a hands on affair for many of the performers. Sandy Harbutt, who plays The Undertaker was also the film’s director, producer, preduction designer and wrote the lyrics to one of the songs. Helen Morse doubled in wardrobe. Vincent Gil, who plays Dr. Death was one of the grips. Gil would turn up as The Night Rider in Mad Max, and also appear in Snapshot with a very young Sigrid Thornton. Roger Ward, who was a wrestler prior to moving in films, plays Hooks. Ward carved out a career playing beefy crazies. He appeared in Mad Max, The Man From Hong Kong, The Chain Reaction, Turkey Shoot, and er, Quigley Down Under. Then, of course there’s Hugh Keays Byrne, who plays Toad and sets the events of this film in motion. Byrne appeared in Mad Max, as The Toecutter; The Chain Reaction, Salute of the Jugger, and quite a bizarre turn in Les Patterson Saves the World. Stone proved to be quite a fertile training ground for a new wave of Australian performers.

One thing that is often brought up when looking at any Australian film featuring cars or motorbikes, is how the vehicular culture is dictated to by the size of the country. Yes, Australia is a big country with vast distances to be traveled across, however I do not really think that distance is really the cause or influence that makes us a country of car and bike obseesed fangin’ hoons. Stone encapsulates this perfectly. The Gravediggers are pretty much city bound. There are no excursions into the outback or on country roads by the characters. And in reality that is pretty much as it is. The car clubs, the bikie clubs, the illegal street racing all take place in the cities. The country does not have a poulation or the infrastructure to support a nomadic lifestyle. As an example, if I may be self indulgent for a moment – a few Christmas’ ago, I was traveling with the family to some relatives for the gathering (I make it sound like something from Highlander, don’t I?). We were running late. It was three in the morning on Christmas Day and we were traveling on the Hume Highway (it is Australia’s largest highway linking Melbourne and Sydney). What do you think happened? Yep, a mob of bloody kangaroos jumped out in front of the car. I know you shouldn’t swerve, but I tried to steer around them and almost avoided a collision. Almost! I clipped one with the right hand front corner. The Kangaroo was sent flying into the middle of the road, where seconds later it was collected on the bullbar of a semi-trailer that was ploughing through and not stopping for anything. I pulled over. The right front fender was mangled; the bumber bar was twisted, and a flood of water was pissing out onto the road. Now this is not a great thing to happen at any time – but on Christmas morning – oh, man! Anyway, we were lucky enough to get a NRMA guy out there from the nearest town (forty minutes away). When he arrived at the scene, he looked at the mess and simply said it would be at least a week before he could get parts. And this is the crux of my story – outside the big cities, the population is not large enough to support such communal vehicular adoration. No support – no parts. I think Mad Max is to blame for this misconception about the highways and byways of Australia being flooded with hotted up cars and bikes. It just doesn’t happen. You can travel on a major arterial road (like the one between Adelaide and Sydney) and not see another car for two hours. Mad Max was shot on remote backroads because it was safe and controlled and suited the slightly futuristic story George Miller was telling. It was not a reflection on true Australian culture. Stone, on the other hand is – particularly when Stone has to prove his worth by engaging in an illegal street race against a gun rider from the Gravediggers.

I think that Stone is a remarkable film. Sure, it can be looked on as purely an exploitative bikie flick — as I mentioned, one that rides on the coattails of Easy Rider. And if you look at it that way, then fine – you’re right, but the film represents so much more — from the changing landscape of Australian, both socially and politically to the birth of Australian cinema. Yes, there were Australian films before Stone. Very Australian films such as Wake In Fright, Nic Roeg’s Walkabout or The Adventure of Barry McKenzie — which was a dig at ockerism, but ended up being embraced by the very same people it was ridiculing. But these films seemed to be so deliberate in their examination of an aspect of the Australian lifestyle that they seemed to miss the point (or possibly were not keeping up with the changes in society). But Stone, barely acknowledges that it is Australian and concentrates on telling it’s story. In that way it captures a more authentic snapshot. I know it seems like a contradiction to suggest that Stone, a film about a motorcycle gang that lives outside the boundaries and laws of normal society, is an accurate reflection of society at the time. But I can assure you that more people were wearing denim with long hair, listening to blues-boogie music, questioning authority and attitudes than there where people strolling through the great red desserts or traveling to England to spread Oz Culture (the only ones who went to England in the early ‘70 were the artisans and actors — they didn’t really represent the majority of the great unwashed population).

But at the end of the day, watching a film is a rather singular experience. Sure you can watch a film with friends and share ‘certain’ events, but how a film affects you is based on the sum of your life experiences. As an Australian, and having grown up through the seventies, I relate to much of what is presented on the screen — even though the amount of times I have ridden a motorbike could be counted on one hand. So I am biased. I suspect that viewers, especially from the US and UK will not feel as at home with their viewing of this film, and therefore will not find it as rewarding. It’s just a biker film (no it’s a ‘bikie’ film). It has to carry itself with its cinematic and story elements and these, to be honest, aren’t the film’s strong suit. The film has a trippy opening, and ponderous middle and small scale action ending with an unconvincing, but bloody twist at the end. If that sound like your cup of tea, then hop on board.

Oh, for the record – on that Christmas morning, before the car was towed away, the NRMA guy thought he should at least have a quick look under the hood. Upon inspection, he found that because I had swerved, the kangaroo did not in fact hit the radiator. He destroyed the water bottle for the windscreen washers. The serviceman found he could rip off the offending fender and disconnect the washers tubes. The car sure looked ugly, but it was roadworthy and we could go about our holiday. So at four-forty in the morning we continued our trip. I am hardly ‘The Night Rider!’