How Sylvester Stallone Rescued the First Rambo Film With a Radical Recut, Cutting It From 3½ Hours to 93 Minutes

About a year ago, a cer­tain kind of cinephile took note of obit­u­ar­ies for Ted Kotch­eff, a tele­vi­sion-turned-film direc­tor who worked steadi­ly from the mid-fifties to the mid-nineties. Even to read­ers only casu­al­ly acquaint­ed with movies, more than one title pops out from his fil­mog­ra­phy: The Appren­tice­ship of Dud­dy Kravitz, Fun with Dick and Jane, North Dal­las Forty, Week­end at Bernie’s. The focus on gen­res, and their vari­ety, sug­gests not an auteur but a jour­ney­man, the kind of effi­cient, ver­sa­tile prob­lem-solver that used to keep Hol­ly­wood afloat. But occa­sion­al­ly, the work of a jour­ney­man can achieve its own kind of tran­scen­dence: that moment came with First Blood, in Kotch­ef­f’s case, which launched the Ram­bo series in 1982.

Those who remem­ber Sylvester Stal­lone’s John Ram­bo as a head­band­ed one-man army bent on re-fight­ing and win­ning the Viet­nam War, one bout of ultra-vio­lence at a time, will be sur­prised by the rel­a­tive meek­ness of his first onscreen incar­na­tion.

As First Blood’s sto­ry is sum­ma­rized by the Cin­e­maS­tix video above, Ram­bo drifts into a small Wash­ing­ton town after a search for his Viet­nam com­rades comes to a fruit­less end. Hos­tile­ly eject­ed by the local sher­iff, he nev­er­the­less walks right back into city lim­its. Arrest­ed and booked at the police sta­tion, he turns on the cops in a PTSD-trig­gered rage. When he makes his escape into the for­est, the law pur­sues him, leav­ing him no choice — at least in his own mind — but to declare war on the police, the town, and per­haps the whole of Amer­i­can civ­i­liza­tion.

This is a promis­ing enough nar­ra­tive for a post-Viet­nam genre pic­ture, as a vari­ety of pro­duc­ers must have thought while David Mor­rel­l’s orig­i­nal nov­el was cir­cu­lat­ing through Hol­ly­wood. But only the star pow­er of Stal­lone, with the first cou­ple of Rocky pic­tures under his belt, could get it made. And indeed, he almost got it un-made: dis­mayed by its ini­tial three-and-a-half hour cut, he decid­ed to buy the rights and destroy the neg­a­tive. The solu­tion that end­ed up sav­ing the movie was­n’t much less dras­tic, pro­duc­ing a 93-minute cut that excised most of Ram­bo’s dia­logue. The result, as Cin­e­maS­tix cre­ator Dan­ny Boyd explains, pos­sess­es the good kind of ambiva­lence, which lets the audi­ence share not just the belea­guered pro­tag­o­nist’s per­spec­tive but also that of his increas­ing­ly frus­trat­ed pur­suers, who esca­late the bat­tle out of all pro­por­tion to his actions. 44 years on, First Blood still offers sur­pris­es, not the least of which is that Ram­bo — for the last time in his career — nev­er actu­al­ly kills any­one.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Viet­nam War Shaped Clas­sic Rock–And How Clas­sic Rock Shaped the War

Muham­mad Ali Explains Why He Refused to Fight in Viet­nam: “My Con­science Won’t Let Me Go Shoot My Broth­er… for Big Pow­er­ful Amer­i­ca” (1970)

Mick­ey Mouse in Viet­nam: The Under­ground Anti-War Ani­ma­tion from 1968, Co-Cre­at­ed by Mil­ton Glaser

The Alche­my of Film Edit­ing, Explored in a New Video Essay That Breaks Down Han­nah and Her Sis­ters, The Empire Strikes Back & Oth­er Films

How Edit­ing Saved Fer­ris Bueller’s Day Off & Made It a Clas­sic

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.