Kevin Peter Hall, who plays the Predator, also appears as the pilot of the general's helicopter at the end of the film.
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After they catch the Predator in the net and it breaks free, the laser blast breaks a big part of a tree and it heads toward a soldier, hitting him head on. If you watch closely when they show an above shot of the tree hitting the guy, you can see an air pressured pad pushing the tree on the ground into him. See more...
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Predator (1987) - 13 trivia entries
Directed by John McTiernan, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bill Duke, Carl Weathers, Elpidia Carrillo, Jesse Ventura, Kevin Peter Hall (add more)
Kevin Peter Hall, who plays the Predator, also appears as the pilot of the general's helicopter at the end of the film.
Another reason that the movie almost didn't make its deadline was because the actors kept getting sick. The film was filmed mostly in the Mexican jungle, and aside from dangerous, venomous insects, the actors were often afflicted with high fever, severe stomach ailments, and flu-like illnesses during most of the filming, causing a few of the actors to require several days of bed rest.
Anyone know who was cut from the film as the first Predator? Jean-Claude Van Damme, in a special effects suit. He quit very early on, as he didn't like being uncredited, so the design was scrapped and remade as what we know and love today.
When we see the predator polishing and sorting out his skull collection (before the final fight with Arnie), we see some skulls he had already cleaned, and one of them has a hole in the head (where he shot the person we see earlier). Nothing major, but it shows some nice thinking because we only see the skull for a split second.
Kevin Peter Hall had to wear a custom made "cool suit" which circulated cold water to keep him cool while wearing the Predator suit in the Jungle. Even with the cool suit he could only wear the Predator suit for about 2 hours before overheating and having to be quickly but carefully extricated from the suit.
The Predator suit weighed over 200lbs and even though Kevin Peter Hall was a large and powerful man he had to be connected to a "bungie" rig to enable him to move believably.
Almost all the thermal vision shots were done by artificially colouring negatives shot with a regular camera as the expensive and extremely cumbersome thermal imaging camera couldn't see the difference between the temperature of the actor's bodies and the ambient temperature of the tropical jungle the film was shot in. The few shots which actually use the thermal imaging camera were done by spraying ice water all over the surrounding area and making the actors stand by a fire before filming.
Although shot in a real jungle most of the shots of Dutch and his team traversing the jungle environment had to be augmented with plants placed by the crew as the real jungle wasn't all that dense.
Jesse Ventura could only carry enough blank ammunition to fire "Old Painless" for five seconds even though the props department had dramatically reduced the cyclic rate of the weapon to allow the camera to film the barrels rotating.
Only two people were injured during the filming of Predator in spite of all the explosions and gunfire, the first was director John McTiernan who broke his wrist falling from a tree but ignored the injury out of embarassment, the second was the stuntman who did the high dive off the waterfall who threw his knee out when he hit the water.
Surprisingly, despite the excellent effects and make-up in the film, the budget approval for Predator was so low that within the very last weeks of filming, the movie was almost dropped. Arnold Schwarzenegger also had an obligation he had to keep during the last week of filming, causing him to miss 3 days.
Fox's insurance company wouldn't allow Sonny Landham to be in the film unless he was accompanied at all times by a bodyguard, not to protect him but to protect the other members of the cast and crew from him.
"Old Painless" required a rather large and heavy battery pack to operate, when you see Jesse Ventura walking with the weapon it is not plugged in and consequently wouldn't operate.
You may also like: Predator 2 | Terminator 2: Judgment Day | Aliens vs Predator: Requiem | Transformers | Jurassic Park
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