This is a film about Grant Page (as himself), Australian stuntman extraordinaire, who we catch up with as he attempts yet another death-defying feat. This time he is going to be fired like an arrow from a bow over the side of a cliff, but first he tests the ropes by performing a so-called "death slide" down them to the sea below, and once that is over and he is satisfied, he goes ahead with the main event, which he pulls off with his customary skill. But Grant is headed to Los Angeles to take part in a television series there, and while he is in The United States he plans to catch up with his cousin, who happens to be in the rock band Sorcery...
You have to assume that no such relationship existed, however, as the storyline in Stunt Rock was about as flimsy as the stunts were convincing, and were merely a frame to hang the escapades of the legendary Page and the less legendary Sorcery upon. It was a film from Brian Trenchard-Smith, who had an equally cult reptutation amongst a certain kind of entertainment fan, specifically those who liked exploitation movies from Australia which was what he specialised in, and with that "does exactly what it says on the label" title, if you appreciated his anything goes for effect, including insanely dangerous activity stylings, then this was your kind of movie.
The odd thing was, though, that without an actual thriller plot to hang all this around, it didn't come across as quite as exciting as it should have done. It's all very well seeing a stuntman standing in for the star in some car chase or high up item of action, but when those same stunts were presented as documentary footage, and we had interviews with Page as himself to reassure everyone that he was going to be fine, you tended to admire the efforts rather than have an emotional investment in them. In fact, in too many places this resembled one of those space-filling documentaries that used to show up on Saturday afternoons detailing how various daredevil endeavours were achieved.
You know, stuff like jumping out of a plane while handcuffed or something, in which the talent lands safely and all is well: there's escapologist Chris Chalen included here as he is chained up and chucked into a swimming pool, again, impressive but nothing you wouldn't see on a typical variety show of the day. That was not all the apparently impossible acts that were on show here, as we moved to the "rock" part of the title and Sorcery took to the stage, somewhere between Alice Cooper and Spinal Tap as they played their music straight-faced as a couple of magicians, dressed up as Merlin and some kind of devil, went through a series of undeniably skillful tricks to offset the hair metal grinding along behind them.
If David Copperfield had had a penchant for heavy rock, then Sorcery would have been his favourite band, put it that way. So what you have is a selection of numbers from their stage show alternating with clips of Page pulling off incredible tricks of his own, and a story that struggled to bring them both together through the interviews. These guys were not much for acting, so you could tell when they were sticking to the script and when they were being genuinely quizzed about their vocations, and there was but one proper star in all of this, a gold-jumpsuited Monique van de Ven who is supposedly the lead actress in the TV show Page was contributing to. Just try and work out exactly what the plot of that show was from the scenes we see being shot, incidentally. If you fancied seeing Australia's most famed stuntman smashing through windscreens and hanging off ropes hundreds of feet up in the air, this delivered, but you might have preferred a better narrative to latch onto.
