10 Things You Didn’t Know About The Punisher (1989)

There is no denying that the Australian based Umbrella Entertainment loves them some action movies. Umbrella Entertainment also loves to throw in some special features on their Blu-ray releases. But for a non-Aussie like me, one of the best things about Umbrella Entertainment’s releases, many of them are REGION FREE! That means those of us who don’t reside in a land down under can enjoy these movies too!

My first Umbrella Entertainment purchase was 1989’s The Punisher, a movie that to the best of my knowledge has never received a Blu-ray release here in the United States.

The special features on the Umbrella Entertainment release include The Punisher Unrated Cut featuring audio commentary by Director Mark Goldblatt, an interview with Goldblatt (where he spends most of it sucking on hard candy or a throat lozenge of some sort), an interview with the star of the film Dolph Lundgren AND the original cut of the film also known as the Goldblatt Workprint.

And it was these special features that gave me the source material for today’s post, 10 Things You Didn’t Know About The Punisher…

1.The powers that be knew from the start that the budget constraints were not going to allow them to shoot in New York City, where The Punisher comic book is set, so the original plan was to move the story to the Pacific Northwest and film in either Seattle or Vancouver. But then New World Pictures Australia stepped in and made the producers an offer they could not refuse.

2. Despite what some might tell you (including Director Mark Goldblatt), Dolph Lundgren had no prior knowledge of The Punisher character before agreeing to be in the film.

3. The decision was made early on not to have The Punisher wear the spandex outfit with the skull logo that the character was wearing in the comics at the time the movie was being made. Director Mark Goldblatt did admit in hindsight it was a mistake not having The Punisher’s iconic skull logo incorporated in Lundgren’s Punisher wardrobe. Nobody expected the fan backlash that the lack of the logo would cause. The logo only appears on the handles of the knives that The Punisher uses in the movie.

4. Stan Lee did give the movie his blessing prior to production, but after seeing the finished product Stan Lee thought the film was too violent.

5. One of the reasons that The Punisher did not get a theatrical release was due to the poor box office results of Red Scorpion, Dolph’s first starring vehicle that was released the year prior.

6. The scene where Louis Gossett Jr’s character Jake Berkowitz grabs a piece of pizza and eats it after he takes out a mob henchman carrying a pizza box was all improvisation by Louis during the first take of the scene.

7. The original cut of the film featured a look at Frank Castle with his family pre-Punisher. The 15 minute Frank Castle segment was taken out of the beginning of the movie and some of that footage would be re-purposed as flashbacks in the final cut of the film.

8. Other actors considered for the role of Frank Castle/The Puniser were Christopher Lambert and Steven Seagal.

9. An interesting note about filming in Australia, the union rules are such that if a shoot is going to go past the allotted time each day, that the crew would get to vote if they would work overtime or not. If they didn’t want to, production shut down and picked up the next day.

10. The final scene in the movie had to be reshot almost a year after the film wrapped production in Australia. The reason for the reshoot was that after a test screening they realized The Punisher looked like a cheater in his final fight with mafia kingpin Gianni Franco (Jeroen Krabbé). The set was recreated in Los Angeles and this time it was Franco who did the cheating.