For years, FIRST BLOOD, based on a 1972 novel by David Morrell, belonged in that ever-familiar status of development hell, before independent producers Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna took over the project, bringing in Sylvester Stallone who also did rewrites on the screenplay in order to make the character more of a victim.
In the first of the five films, which recently completed the circle in RAMBO: LAST BLOOD, John Rambo (Stallone) is an unwanted and rudderless drifter, back from the war and arriving in the small town of Hope, where he is stopped and questioned by Sheriff Will Teasle (Brian Dennehy). Driven to the town’s border, Rambo tries to walk back into town to get something to eat when he is subsequently arrested and charged with vagrancy and resisting arrest.
He also falls foul of Galt (Jack Starrett), a sadistic officer who wants nothing more than to bring Rambo down. However, when they attempt to shave him in preparation for a court appearance, Rambo has a flash of PTSD and escapes their clutches from the station into the nearby mountains on a stolen motorbike.
Other officers and associates are recruited to seek and bring back Rambo, but his training as a Green Beret in the jungles of South-East Asia make him an even more potent mix – and perhaps a little too much for this hillbilly combo….
A sleeper hit in the autumn of 1982 (it hit UK cinemas at Christmas that year), FIRST BLOOD led to two bigger hits in RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II (co-written with Stallone by TITANIC’s James Cameron) and RAMBO III, set in Vietnam and Afghanistan in a reflection of the political times the films were released in.
FIRST BLOOD remains the best of the quintet with a raw, grounded quality – and a brilliant score by the late, great Jerry Goldsmith, who won an Oscar for THE OMEN.