10 Things You Didn’t Know About First Blood

When you scour through the past 70 years or so of filmmaking, there are a few action movies that really stand out. Not because they have the craziest fight scenes or best performances by an actor. What’s most impressive is how only a handful of movies inspired decades worth of actors and directors. One of the films that jumps up to the top of the list is First Blood. The story of Vietnam vet John Rambo didn’t begin in Hope, Washington but it’s where we as film lovers are introduced to one of the greatest characters in action history. I’m hoping that I found a few things for you to enjoy.

This is 10 Things You Didn’t Know About First Blood…

1. Development purgatory: There had been 26 different scripts written for First Blood before Stallone came onboard to take a crack at it. The novel had been written in 1972 by David Morrell and told the story of a young hotshot Vietnam veteran who ended up butting heads with an aging Korean War vet Sheriff of a small town. Most viable leading men in Hollywood had already passed on the movie and at least 6 big time directors had chosen not to make the film. Eventual director Ted Kotcheff had spent months working on the script before it had moved studios. Years later, Kotcheff was asked which film he would want to direct and he brought First Blood back out. It was offered to Stallone and he agreed to it within 24 hours.

2. The frontier: By Sly’s own admission, he regretted accepting the role of John Rambo and it wasn’t until he was walking on set in the Canadian town of Hope that he was truly invested in the character. It was an old mining town where many of the locals had lost their jobs and were initially excited about some moneymaking opportunities with the film crew. The locals would later become less cordial with the cast and crew as the production wore on and there were many fights between unemployed locals and crew members in a few of the small town bars.

3. Sly gets injured: There were quite a few injuries on set. Sly cracked some ribs on the tree fall scene, nearly lost a finger due to a squib while running into the cave to evade the National Guardsmen, and constantly fought hypothermia as temperatures dropped well below 0 on most days. Winter in Canada is a tough place to survive, even for John Rambo. The firehose that Rambo was sprayed with was so powerful that it knocked all of his prosthetic scars from his body and a full two hours had to be spent re-applying them.

4. Kirk Douglas: Legendary actor Kirk Douglas was originally going to be playing Colonel Sam Trautman but when he showed up on set with a seriously re-written script, the mood quickly changed. Douglas had given his “ok” on the final script but his newly written one had changed the roles of Rambo and Trautman to the point that the Colonel would now essentially become the hero of the movie after killing Rambo. They gave Douglas one more day to think about whether or not he wanted to work on the film and he flew out the next day.

5. Crenna to the rescue: Days before filming was set to begin and a major star of the movie had just left. They contacted Richard Crenna’s agent and offered him the role. He had been working on Broadway and was able to get on a plane a be in Canada for filming in less than 72 hours. Crenna had been playing the role of a homosexual doctor for a while so some of his lines were delivered in a more effeminate way before the intervention of Stallone. In the end, Crenna’s performance and his partnership with Sly would lead to his character being used in each of the next two Rambo films.

6. American Frankenstein tale: The way that John Rambo is portrayed in the movie is very different than it was written in the original novel. The John Rambo in the novel is a young, brash, and vendetta-fueled character that murders quite a few people over the course of the story. Stallone, who had re-written much of the script, thought of John as much more of a Frankenstein’s Monster in the sense that he was created and essentially abandoned to fend for himself.

7. Dennehy and the rest: During the climax of the film, Brian Dennehy falls through the ceiling after Rambo pumps enough rounds into it to take down a T-Rex. The stunt man falling through the roof isn’t the one we see land on the table below. Dennehy did his own stunt of landing on the table and got a few broken ribs for it. Another stuntman was pretty severely injured during the dirt bike chase as well. The Sheriff’s car flips over but by total accident. The driver ended up suffering a broken back. Sly also legitimately broke the nose of actor Alf Humprey’s during his escape from the jail. There’s a reason it looked so real on screen.

8. All about timing: They had a really hard time cutting the film down. We usually hear about these new movies that have cuts lasting 4 hours and directors never seem to want to cut any of their precious shots out. Well, Ted Kotcheff and his people went through the opposite. They couldn’t put together a cut of the film that made sense to them so they created a 40 minute one and showed it to the studio execs. They ended up liking it and the producers and crew learned that sometimes less is better. It’s basically the reason that Sly Stallone’s Rambo only has like 10 lines.

9. Jerry Goldsmith and the art of no music: There are certain times in movies where the viewer needs to be more immersed in a scene. That might mean that we hear the raspy breathing of a character or quietly listen as the wind gently blows overheard. Jerry Goldsmith has worked on more movies that I care to mention but often times during First Blood, it’s the music that he doesn’t put into the scenes that makes the difference. Next time you watch it, look out for some scenes where Rambo is escaping the police on the dirt bike and you can almost feel the intensity of the chase. You can hear the tires squeal as gravel sprays all over the wet road. It’s delightful.

10. Korea vs. Vietnam: A big part of the book that didn’t make it into the film is the conflict between the Sheriff and Rambo when it comes to their military service. In the book, the Sheriff is a decorated Korean War veteran. Many people know the Korean War as the “forgotten war” while the Vietnam War was a part of the daily life for many Americans. Sheriff Teasle was way more of a badass in the book and Rambo was more of a punk who took pleasure in the violence that he inflicted on the small town deputies. I think that Sly and company saw the potential for the character after a while and made the decision not to have the protagonist of the movie be such a douche.