First Blood Part II may have set the standard for over-the-top, wildly jingoistic, in-yer-face action movies, but its also pretty good whiz-bang escapism. Along with Rocky IV, it dominated the global box office back in 1985, with only Back To The Future making more money. The film remains Stallones biggest commercial success, the movie that made him the Worlds biggest action star (Arnie had just done Red Sonya oops) and gave him enough clout to make Rambo III for a then unheard of $58 million. Its also the most frantically paced of all the Rambo movies and the only one with a strong female character, for which you can thank Stallones co-writer, one James Cameron. A jobbing screenwriter at the time, he was trying to get The Terminator off the ground when he accepted the assignment though he later distanced himself from the movie, claiming the action was his but the politics were Stallones. More than a decade later, Cameron was King Of The World while Stallone, following a series of flops, was sending himself up in An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
