Remembering Raiders Of The Lost Ark: The Making Of Indiana Jones

Big-budget films always bring with them unique challenges, and Raiders Of The Lost Ark was no different.

While Harrison Ford’s regular stand-in stunt double Vic Armstrong took responsibility for the more high-risk moments of derring-do, Ford got stuck in wherever possible – and paid the price.

During the scene in which Indy goes toe to toe with a massive German mechanic (professional wrestler Pat Roach, who has the distinction of dying twice in Raiders) in hair-shaving proximity to a flying wing aircraft, the landing gear ran over Ford’s leg and tore his anterior cruciate ligament.

But that source of suffering isn’t the one for which the film is chiefly remembered.

On a day that has since become part of movie folklore, Ford was due to engage in a drawn-out, rough-and-tumble brawl with a swordsman, only to awaken that day with a bad case of dysentery. He told Spielberg (who avoided a similar fate by surviving almost solely on imported Spaghetti-Os) he had about an hour of shooting in him, and suggested “Let's just shoot the sucker” instead.

So it was that a scene that would encapsulate the essence of Indiana Jones came to be. Spare a thought, mind, for stuntman Terry Richards, who had spent weeks practising his swordplay in preparation for the scene; he was rewarded instead with one of the most memorable deaths in motion picture history.