Behold! Demolition Man's Naked Sylvester Stallone Prop Has Appeared In An Aussie Antique Shop
No, you're not hallucinating that headline. An important, infamous, and dare I say iconic piece of movie history has resurfaced after several years; a dummy in the likeness of Sylvester Stallone that was used for the 1993 film "Demolition Man." Even more miraculously, it doesn't even look that worn down despite its age.
Okay, so here's the scoop. On August 27, a woman named Bea Bellingham entered the New South Wales-based antique store, the Katoomba Vintage Emporium, with her husband. She told Newsweek in an interview that she had gone downstairs to check out the rest of the store's inventory when she found the twisted dummy, propped up on a dolly in the middle of the floor. Bellingham had posted the photos on her Instagram Stories, which were quickly screenshotted by people on the internet and posted on social platforms like Twitter and Reddit.
During the '90s, prop versions of Sylvester Stallone's cryogenically frozen character in Demolition Man hung from the ceilings of Planet Hollywood restaurants.
Now a defrosted John Spartan has surfaced in an Australian country town. pic.twitter.com/skOpt2e3ys
— Adam Howes (@Howsito) August 28, 2022
Speaking of the latter network, a local user known only as u/UrbanBanger had heard of the Sly Stallone dummy and went to investigate it for themselves. According to a comment they posted, the dummy cost around $6,000 AUD, or around $4.1 thousand in USD.
Let us explain
It's pretty strange that an uncanny dummy of Sylvester Stallone has ended up in an Australian antique store. However, there is some important context to understand behind this bizarre piece of news. According to The Economic Times, Stallone was one of the first celebrities to invest in Planet Hollywood, the kitschy movie-based restaurant chain that opened its first location in 1991. It was notable not only for its part in establishing the concept of the "theme park restaurant" alongside names like Rainforest Cafe, but for the massive collection of memorabilia that each location houses.
I assume you know where this is going. Multiple replicas of the "Demolition Man" dummy were made in order to shoot scenes where Stallone's character, John Spartan, was shown to be in cryostasis. After filming on the movie was complete, the actor found new homes for the dummies across different Planet Hollywood locations. One of these locations was in Sydney (via Real Commercial), which opened in 1996 and closed just six years later.
Unfortunately, the boom that the restaurant experienced slowly but surely deflated. There are only six locations still operating worldwide, including a revamped New York City location due to open later this year. At least one of the Stallone dummies is still on display as of 2014, according to a Trip Advisor post on its Disneyland Paris location. However, given the former prominence of the chain, it's very likely that there are other dummies out there looking for a new home.