The Vintagent Classics: Stone

SUMMARY

The opening scene shows the gang hitting up a demonstration to save the environment. Toad (Hugh Keays-Byrne, aka ‘Toecutter’ from ‘Mad Max’) wanders around the crowd tripping on acid, when a sniper starts shooting, killing gang member “Go Down”.

Riding 400 deep, all the local gangs gather for a fantastic bikie funeral procession (extras for this scene included members of the Sydney Hell’s Angels) for Go Down. Arriving at the cemetery, Undertaker, the gang’s leader gives the service and Go Down is buried standing up so he “won’t have to take any shit from the Evil One”. The Grave Diggers refuse to talk to the cops who question them to help find Go Down’s killer. Telling them to piss off, they head for the bar.

Stone (Ken Shorter), a straight shooting but hip, motorcycle riding cop rolls up to the bar later that night on a Norton and after some fuss, convinces the Grave Diggers to let him ride with them undercover to find out who the killer is. Leaving his posh girl behind, Stone heads off down the coast to the secret, seaside fortress where the gang is hiding out. The lair is a den of iniquity. Sex, drugs, pinball, even a guy sleeping in a coffin by a beer fridge… But, after drag racing Stinky, Stone is quickly accepted and is inducted in the Grave Digger ritual of donning a filthy club jacket and having his ear pierced by Toad with a syringe, so that he can wear the symbolic skeleton earring.

Asking around to find leads on who would want the gang dead, and thinking it will be a long list, Stone is surprised to find that the gang’s only enemy seems to be not the rival gang The Black Hawks, but instead, the local heavies who have the whole area mobbed up and have been trying to set the Grave Diggers up to keep them off their backs. Trying to incite a gang war, the heavies leave Go Down’s helmet for the gang at a local bar “complements of the Black Hawks”. Enraged that Go Down has been dug up, they tear off to the cemetery…and walk right into an ambush.

Shots ring out. The Undertaker is killed. Toad is shot and realizes that he knew who the killer was all along but had been on so much acid that he thought he had been hallucinating. A bloody battle ensues and the killer is caught by the gang, but Stone, still the civil servant, holds the gang off at gunpoint. Refusing to let them take care of business their way, he takes the killer in.

“They got something going for them…A sort of a sense of honor…That I’d like. They just up and do the sort of things that a lot of other people would like to be able to do….Yeah, I like the ol’ Grave Diggers…I’d be glad to see them anytime.”

Back at home. Enter the grave Diggers. Stone goes to shake hands but they lunge, beat him to a bloody pulp, take back his vest, tear out the skeleton earring and leave him for dead in his girlfriends arms. Hysterical, she tries to call the cops but Stone whispers through the blood and missing teeth… “no cops, no cops”. Fade to black. Cut to bikies riding into the sunrise. Cue music. Roll the credits. – Cina Meccanica

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Watch the FULL FILM for free!

Watch ‘STONE FOREVER’ the 1999 feature Documentary on the making of ‘Stone”.