#stunt work

“It’s such a brief moment in the film but I think that’s the kind of stuff that I love. It doesn’t matter how small a moment is; all of that stuff adds to the general texture of the film. You want to see the actors in the film doing the things that they’re setting out to do. That was a big day for me, because a lot of work had gone into it. It would have been a very public embarrassment had I cocked it up. Public shame. And probably an injury, and then the film would have to stop. If I came off the horse, Ridley said I owed him two Bentleys.”

DALTON's Stunt Double (Bjorn de Klerk) | Behind The Scene of ONE PIECE Season 2

The iconic Florence La Badie 🌹

She was an American-Canadian actress in the early days of the silent film era, who was a major star between 1911 and 1917! La Badie was known as "Fearless Flo" as she loved taking risks, and performed many of her own stunts!

Yuen Biao's fantastic jump off a two-storey burning building, from Millionaires' Express (1986).

He did not land on pads; Hong Kong and Chinese actors and stuntmen did not use them. Instead, Yuen landed on some empty cardboard boxes buried just below the ground.

For those who have not seen this film, you're missing a real treat. Directed by and starring Sammo Hung, it's a rip-roaring Hong Kong martial arts Western comedy. It stars a veritable who's who of Hong Kong and martial arts stars, including Cynthia Rothrock, Richard Norton, Yuen Wah, Yukari Ôshima, Jimmy Wang Yu, Shih Kien, Phillip Ko, and a host of others.

Ostensibly about a train heist, the movie can best be described as a Hong Kong-version of It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963). Hung and his team threw everything except the kitchen sink into the film: cowboys, samurai, ninjas, Sherlock Holmes, cops and robbers, Wong Wei Hung, American calvary, jailbreaks, and even the CIA!

All that shouldn't work, but it does, because no one (except Richard Norton, who never seems to know how to loosen up) is taking anything seriously. There are laughs galore, incredible stunts, and some really great fights.

The film is perhaps best known for the final fight between Sammo and Cynthia Rothrock. The pint-sized Rothrock (I've met her a few times, and she's the nicest lady, but really tiny) mops the floor with Sammo, but everything works out in the end.

She went in to do a similar stunt in James Bond's The World is not enough, 20 years later.