That summer and the summer before there were many, many riots and many of them had to do with off-shoots of the Vietnam war. One which was of a Vietnam fire-fight with soldiers screaming, and shooting and bullets kicking up dust, and the other was about riots going on in American cities. “My intent in writing ( First Blood) started back in 1968 when I was a graduate student at Penn State and I was watching TV one night when I was struck by the news by two reports that followed back to back.

(Just learned that today as I was doing research on Morrell.) Morrell was a professor of English at the University of Iowa between 1970-1986, which means the chances are good that the novel was written in the vicinity Iowa City. (The first movie while having plenty of actions, explosions and injuries, actually only has a few people dying.) The changes were made to make the character more sympathetic. The movie was based on the David Morrell novel First Blood that actually had Rambo as more of a killing machine. There weren’t strong indicators that First Blood was going to be a hit film.īut producers Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna, and director Ted Kotcheff, put together a team that would defy the odds, and created not only a film that would open #1 at the box office, but one that would go on to make $125 million worldwide, followed by three sequels-all creating the rare international iconic character, John Rambo. Nor was the topic of Vietnam a popular one in ’82-the last U.S. And though Stallone had become a superstar after the 1976 release of Rocky his other non-Rocky films ( F.I.S.T., Nighthawks & Paradise Alley) hadn’t faired so well. The novel First Blood was published in 1972 and reports are that the property went through three studios, 16 scripts, and a lot of high-profile actors and directors before it became Sylvester Stallone’s second franchise character (after Rocky).

The road to the first Rambo movie being released in 1982 was a long journey. “You enter the forest at the darkest point, where there is no path.”

First blood by david morrell