CUNNING STUNTS, (no Spoonerism intended), A CUNNING STUNT MASTER, ROCK AND ROLL, AND THOSE WILD AND WACKY DAYS OF ‘OZPLOITATION’ MOVIES THAT WERE ” NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD”…

Here’s the opening scene from a screenplay for a World War II movie…

EXTERIOR CLIFF TOP SUNDOWN

Superimpose title: CRETE, GREEK ISLANDS, 1941.

A Messerschmitt strafes an Australian Army truck as it hurtles up a steep wooded incline towards the cliff edge 200 yards away.

The bullets strike the gas tank and the back of the truck explodes in a fiery cloud.

The driver, a gallant Australian Warrant Officer, an army pack slung round his neck, dives from the vehicle. In the same shot, the truck smashes into a tree, exploding again many times from multiple angles.

The AWO picks up the precious pack. It contains the ‘Macguffin’, the secret key to Allied victory in World War II. He must get it to the commando waiting in a Zodiac, riding the waves at the base of the cliff ahead. He quickly scales a tree to avoid detection by the pursuing Germans.

A Wehrmacht motorcyclist and a machine gunner in the side car pause beside a tree, scanning for their target. AWO drops down out of the tree, chops and kicks them out of their seats, then guns the bike up towards the cliff, smashing through bushes.

Platoons of German infantry are rushing up the cliff in pursuit, their schmeissers blazing.

Bullets chew up the nearby ground as the AWO lays down the bike to skid to a halt inches from the cliff, where his abseiling rope is tethered ready for the final stage of his escape. He snaps the rope into the karabina on his body belt with a single loop and positions himself for his slide down the cliff.

Suddenly, a German soldier with a flamethrower runs out of the bushes. A cloud of napalm hits the AWO in the back, lighting up his army greatcoat as he freefalls 300 feet down the rope.

The plume of flame is huge, but the air rush keeps the flames from spreading onto his skin as he reaches a velocity of thirty miles an hour, with the rocky shore below fast approaching. Grabbing the rope with padded gloves, he decelerates just in time.

Wham! Still a hard landing. AWO shakes off the pain, sheds the blazing overcoat then takes the precious pack to the water‘s edge. Just a few feet away, the getaway Zodiac is riding the current, piloted by a lone commando.

As AWO prepares to jump, a shark’s fin slowly cuts through the water between him and the waiting vessel…

OK, so jumping the shark is a little over the top, even for me…

But I offer this amalgam of favorite WWII action clichés as being representative of the range of challenges, creative and industrial, that a director of action movies faces. Precision driving, leaping from a blazing vehicle, martial arts combat, extreme motorcycling, abseiling while a human torch–these are many chapters in the stuntman’s handbook. To realize them all on the screen would normally require the director to select a team of stuntmen, each a specialist. And each one would have to be a passable double for the hero.

On the other hand, you could just hire Grant Page. He’d even fight the shark for you.

You can see a lot of Grant’s work on display in the imminent Magnet release NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD, opening in various theatres across the USA on Friday July 31st.

It’s a Furiously Fast mordantly Funny Fantastic 100 minutes. Quadruple F’s on my dial don’t come every week.

It’s about big screen movies, so try to catch it on the big screen It rocks. Click here for the trailer:

For Los Angelino gluttons for genre punishment, you could try a Grant Page Friday Night Double.

First go to the Nu Art on Santa Monica. See NQH. Its writer director Mark Hartley will be on hand for Q & A at the 7:30 and 10:00 PM screenings on both July 31st and August 1st.

Here’s Mark and I having WAY too much of a good time at last year’s Fantastic Fest in Austin. Then, it’s hard not to have a good time at Fantastic Fest.

Then you could hop across town to the New Beverly Cinema on Beverly Blvd. and attend the Midnight Show of STUNT ROCK, my tribute to stuntmen in general and Grant Page in particular.

Regrettably I will not be there. I’ll be in Tasmania getting ready to shoot my next epic.

However Grant’s STUNT ROCK co-star Margi Gerard (AKA Margaret Trenchard-Smith Ph.D) will introduce a sparkling brand new 35 mm scope print. Click on the DVD sleeve for the trailer.

Enjoy!