Nighthawks

Nighthawks

Summary
-Deak DaSilva and Matthew Fox are both NYPD officers who are transferred to a special anti-terror unit. They both must stop an international terrorist who has just arrived in New York, looking to cause chaos

Cast
-Sylvester Stallone: Deak DaSilva
-Billy Dee Williams: Sgt. Matthew Fox
-Lindsay Wagner: Irene
-Persis Khambatta: Shakka Holland
-Rutger Hauer: Heymar "Wulfgar" Reinhardt
-Nigel Davenport: Peter Hartman

Did You Know?
-The song "I'm a Man" by Chicago is a favorite song of Stallone's and he used that as the track in the disco where Deak DaSilva recognizes Wulfgar
-The department store scene was filmed in London, England
-When the posters for this movie came out, it was described as being a cross between 1973's Serpico and 1973's The Day of the Jackal
-The cable car seen in the movie is the famous Roosevelt Island tram

-This is the first movie where Sylvester Stallone is seen in 'drag' in one scene

-This is the first theatrical movie where Stallone plays a cop. He would play a police officer later in 1987's Tango & Cash
-The title of the movie refers to the men and women street cops of New York City Crime Unit who patrol the city at night

-Sylvester Stallone has facial hair throughout the entire movie while Rutger Hauer only has facial hair early in the movie

First Blood by David Morrell

This is the story that started it all. This is a really good book. It goes into a little more detail than the movie. But, if you've seen the movie, makes it a little easier to visualize things in here. And apparently there were novels for all three movies. Might have to check those out! The movies are good

Summary
-John Rambo is a troubled veteran of the Vietnam War. He comes back to the US and hitchhiking to Madison, Kentucky, looking for members of his military team. He immediately attracts attention because of his attire: blue hoodie stained with blood, long hair, beard, dirty jeans and dusty boots, carrying a sleeping bag and army jacket with US flag on it. When he enters Madison, he immediately attracts the attention of the local sheriff, an arrogant former Korean War vet named Will Teasle. He picks Rambo up and drives him to outside the city limits. After Rambo repeatedly enters the town, he is arrested and driven to the local police station, where is charged with resisting arrest and vagrancy. There, the officers take him to the basement to give him a shower and shave him. They have him strip all his clothing and as he does this, they notice a vast network of scars all over his body, from his chest to his legs and back and everywhere. They start to wonder where he's been. Through the early part of the story, he's referred to as "The Kid", leading you to suspect that Rambo is not very old, maybe late teens or even in his twenties. While in the cold, wet cells, he starts having flashbacks to his time as a POW in Vietnam. What the sheriff and deputies do not know is that while in Vietnam, he was a POW and was tortured, which causes him to have flashbacks. He snaps from it. When he escapes, being completely naked from the fire hose shower they give him, he steals a motorcycle from a passing civilian and hops on it, heading for the hills outside. He then becomes the focus of a large scale manhunt. It's then up to his commanding officer, Col. Trautman, who has been called in, to stop this machine of war.

How it differs from the movie
This book is really good. It's definitely different than the movie, now that I finished reading it. If you've seen the movie First Blood, then you'll know the scenes I mean. It's a little more detailed

In the book, in the part where Rambo is arrested and taken down to the basement for a shower, they ask him to remove everything and they give him a humiliating full body cavity search, examining his private parts, both front and back. While he's stripping, they see scars all over his body, on his legs, on his back, on his chest, etc. When one of the deputies asks about how he got those scars, he mumbles "In the war." And when they try to cut his hair, he squirms around and the officers threaten him. All of this is done while he's still completely naked from the shower. The deputies and sheriff do not understand that Rambo was a POW and tortured in the camp. The way they are currently treating him causes him to experience severe flashbacks. When he escapes, he kills one deputy by slashing his stomach with the straight edge razor they were going to use to shave him. And when he escapes outside, he steals a motorcycle from a passing guy and rides it through town, still completely naked and shocking everyone and rides it into the nearby hills. Rambo comes across a father and son out hunting and they are shocked to find him naked. He pleads with them to help him. He asks simply for clothes and the son, who is highly skeptical of this man, brings him jeans that are too tight and boots that are too big. Towards the end, Teasle is killed by shotgun fire from Col. Trautman, while Rambo, who is cornered in an old shed, suffering from a gunshot wound to the chest and a massive fever, is arrested for what he did to the town and the 18 people who were killed

In the movie, when Rambo is taken down to the basement for a shower, they only show him taking off his shirt, not everything else. It's only when he's getting his humiliating fire hose shower that you see he is completely naked because you can see his bare lower back and below that. When Rambo escapes, he is fully clothed in boots, jeans and a gray tank top and is also fully clothed when he steals the motorcycle. And the cop he kills is in the forest, looking for him instead of being killed in the police station. He steals a motorcycle and heads for the hills, finding an old piece of tarp to use as a makeshift shirt. Towards the end, Teasle is loaded into an ambulance from his fall through the police station skylight. When Rambo prepares to kill him, Col. Trautman stops him in his tracks. Rambo then snaps and tells a story of watching a friend get killed by a bomb and the horrible treatment of him and the other soldiers when they return home

 



Death Race 2000

Death Race 2000

Summary
-In the future, the ultimate sport is racing. It's a new type of racing called the deathrace. The racers get points for mowing people down with their cars as they drive fast across the country. A government agency is trying to end the death race and to do so, have sent in an undercover agent

Cast
-David Carradine: Frankenstein
-Simon Griffeth: Annie Smith
-Sylvester Stallone: "Machine Gun" Joe Viterbo
-Mary Woronov: Calamity Jane
-Roberta Collins: Matilda the Hun
-Martin Kove: Nero the Hero

Did You Know?
-The film is set in 2000
-This would not be the only time Sylvester Stallone drives a race car. He would later play a race car driver in the 2001 film Driven
-The opening sequence was filmed on an actual raceway between races
-The racetrack used for the grandstand scenes and opening track was the Ontario Motor Speedway near Los Angeles

If you're a 1990s kid...

Then you'll know the struggles we went through...

This one isn't on here; I came up with this one
When you seen everyone with light up gymshoes and then you got light up gymshoes. You thought you were hot stuff. Until those lights starting going out, one by one

Coloring the "Spacemaker" logo in the center of your pen box with markers and covering it with glue. Waiting for 2-3 days and making your own colored bookmarks. I'm definitely guilty as charged of this!

1. When you underestimated the ratio of graham crackers to frosting when eating Dunkaroos. You ended up with no frosting and all graham crackers

2. Having this catastrophe when inserting your Capri-Sun straw

3. When you hoped to go to the barber and get a "cool" haircut and instead walk out with a bowl cut

4. Watching your Tamgotchi die because the buttons were stuck

5. Being that one kid who still had a cassette Walkman instead of a CD Walkman

6. When you finally did get a CD player, you discovered the horror-it didn't fit in your pockets

7. The sad moment when reality hits-your Lion King color-changing spoon stops changing color

8. Having to open a million folders just to find the games on Windows 95

9.  The frustration that arises when you rent a movie from Blockbuster and come to find out the last person who rented it forgot to rewind!

10. Losing the feeling in your fingers from the weight of the candy in the McDonald's buckets

11. Running out of AOL minutes because you didn't have an extra free CD

12. The 3rd degree burns you sustain on the roof of your mouth because you couldn't wait for your Pizza Bagels to cool off

13. Your parents refusing to buy you CD's because of this label (This is like reverse psychology to kids. This label makes them want to listen to those CD's more because their parents don't want them to listen to it!)

14. When you got a new CD and were excited to listen to it, only to need everything but the kitchen sink to get it out of the plastic

15. You sank in your own sweat after sitting in one of these on a warm day

16. Being woken up in the middle of the night because your Furby decides to start talking...

17. This happens and sometimes for no good reason

18. When the VCR eats your favorite tape

19. Having eight valuable seconds of play time before your Nintendo game self destructs

20. Accidentally pulling the home phone off the receiver because the cord was tangled

21. When you programmed the VCR to record an episode of a show you like, it does not come out like you expect

22. When you run a light colored marker over a dark color

23. When the fabric of your slap bracelets rips and the sharp plastic underneath pokes you

24. Playing with your Skip-It and not wearing socks or long pants and having red rings around your ankles, making it look like you were wearing handcuffs on your ankles like a prisoner

25. Despite all the care and love behind your Beanie Baby tags, they still bent

26. Losing the eraser tip to your mechanical pencil. Two words: YOU'RE SCREWED!

27. Receiving temporary blindness from the sun reflecting off the metal slide, third degree burns as you went down them and temporary deafness from those kids who feel the need to scream like they're being murdered

Rocky

Rocky

Summary
-Rocky Balboa is a 4th rate boxer looking to make it to the big times. He currently works as a debt collector for a local loan shark. And one day, when heavyweight champ Apollo Creed comes to Philadelphia looking for a champ to take him on, his managers set up an "exhibition match" between him and a local fighter to become the next champ. Apollo is supposed to win, but Rocky sees this as his chance at success

Cast
-Sylvester Stallone: Rocky Balboa
-Talia Shire: Adrian Pennino
-Burt Young: Paulie Pennino
-Carl Weathers: Apollo Creed
-Burgess Meredith: Mickey
-Thayer David: Jergens
-Joe Spinnell: Gazzo
-Jimmy Gambina: Mike
-Frank Stallone: Streetcorner singer

Did You Know?
-Sylvester Stallone was inspired to write the screenplay for Rocky after seeing the Chuck Wepner-Muhammad Ali fight on March 24, 1975

-Rocky's dog in the movie was actually Sylvester Stallone's dog in real life

-This was the highest grossing movie of 1976

 

 

 

 

-The pictures of Rocky on his mirror are actual photos of Sylvester Stallone as a child

-During the scenes where he was in the meat locker practicing, Sylvester Stallone punched the meat so hard it flattened his knuckles out. So now that if he makes a fist, his knuckles are level
-During filming, Sylvester Stallone quit smoking because he got out of breath too easily
-Rocky says he injured his finger in here, most likely from boxing. It's an actual injury Sylvester Stallone sustained from playing football in college

-During his famous jog through Philadelphia, Sylvester Stallone pulled a tendon and had to be taken to the nearest hospital in a wheelbarrow

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-Rocky is not the character's actual name. His actual name is Robert Balboa. He derived his nickname from real life boxer Rocky Marciano

Rocky Marciano

-Prior to this movie, Sylvester Stallone was earning $36 a week as a movie theatre usher

-According to Sylvester Stallone, the black fedora hat and leather jacket came from a local hand me down shop

-Sylvester Stallone's brother, Frank Stallone. who's also an actor, has a cameo as the lead singer of a street band while their father, Frank Stallone, has a cameo as the man who rings the bell at the beginning of the Creed vs. Balboa fight
-The character Talia Shires plays, Adrian Pennino, was named after Shire's grandfather, Francesco Pennino
-Cher was considered for the role of Adrian

-Talia Shire's shy and reserved nature during filming stems from the fact she was suffering from the flu during filming. She worried about kissing Sylvester Stallone and getting him sick