Rambo: First Blood (1982) - 33 mistakes

Visible crew/equipment: During the motorcycle chase Rambo jumps over the train tracks, if you look close you can easily see the ramp

Visible crew/equipment: In the shot of the stolen army truck crashing through the police road block, you can see a camera mounted inside the truck. Look in the small window on the rear wall of the cab. (Apparently both this shot and the shots from inside the cab were done in the same take.)

Continuity: When Teasle talks to Trautman for the first time, Teasle is wearing a winter coat over his police uniform. At one point the brown lapel of his police jacket is sticking out past the collar of the winter coat, but in the next shot it's tucked underneath, and he didn't have time to fix it.

Continuity: When Sylvester Stallone is in the stolen army truck and crashes through the police road block, the truck becomes airborne. Upon landing, the gas tank is clearly separating from the truck, but in the next shot, the truck and gas tank are together.

Continuity: Following his encounter with Rambo in the woods Teasle has a long bloody cut on his lower face. When he returns to his office the cut is completely healed and gone. But when he sits down in the bar with Trautman it is back. After this scene it vanishes for good so I presume the bar scene was originally intended to be inserted before Teasle returned to the office.

Revealing: In the scene where Rambo is driving the truck and pushes the cop car into path of the broken down car, the explosion starts the second the cars make contact. In the next shot during the fireball, the two cables that held the static vehicle in place are visible.

Revealing: When Rambo throws a rock at the police helicopter and knocks Walt out, you can clearly tell it's a stuntman. Walt is in his 40s and overweight. The guy that was falling looked like he was 25 and was noticeably thinner.

Continuity: In the opening scene when Rambo is looking for Delmar Berry, a woman is hanging washing on a clothes line. In one shot she is hanging an orange checkered towel. A moment later in the next shot she is hanging the same towel in the same place again.

Visible crew/equipment: At the beginning of the movie, Sheriff Teasle escorts Rambo to the outskirts of town. As the sheriff drives off, the boom mike is visible in the reflection of the car's right rear passenger window.

Audio problem: When Rambo rides the motorcycle down the sidewalk he's shouting at the pedestrians to look out. The movements of his mouth don't match what you hear him say.

Continuity: In the scene when the gas station blows up, watch the cars parked in front of the "Kool Lights" advertisement. These two cars explode (for no obvious reason, by the way) after the police officers have gotten out of their cars. They run away from the explosion and leave their police cars behind. Next shot, the same two cars in front of the ad explode again.

Continuity: When Rambo approaches the police road block, the truck's windshield is penetrated by bullets. When the truck crashes through the barricades, the bullet holes are gone. They reappear on the next shot, but at the wrong places, then disappear again.

Continuity: During the escape from prison, Rambo grabs a motorcycle and is being chased by a sheriff's car. During the chase, the rear view mirror in the sheriff's car disappears and reappears throughout the scene.

Continuity: When Sherrif Teasle is chasing Rambo on the stolen motorcycle, Teasle drives his police cruiser through a small ravine. The car hits ground hard and the lens to the driver-side front turn-signal can be seen popping out of the fender. The lens is mysteriously back in place in all subsequent shots.

Audio problem: When the Colonel arrives at the tent we hear the Sheriff say "We're a little busy this morning Colonel, what can I do for you?", but the movement on his lips does not match what we hear.

Continuity: When Orval (the dog man) gets shot, Sheriff Teasle and his deputies get down seeking cover. Teasle's hat falls down to his left-hand side. Next shot (close-up), his hat falls down again, this time to the right-hand side.

Plot hole: When Rambo hijacks the Army truck, he throws out the driver, Robert A. and continues driving down the one-lane dirt road in the same direction. When Robert A. hits the ground, he immediately pops up and runs the opposite direction, away from where the truck is driving. A couple of shots later, we see a behind view of Robert A. running. It turns out that it is the driver's view from a Sheriff's vehicle. How could a car, especially a Sheriff's squad car, possibly come from that direction since it was a one-way road? And how could that same officer not see that the man driving the truck was Rambo?

Continuity: When Rambo blows up "The Outpost", Rambo is in an alley and runs for cover behind a mail box. A couple of shots later Rambo does this all over again, but this time the shot is reversed.

Visible crew/equipment: In the scene when Rambo jumps on the hood of the army truck you can easily see the outlines of the cushion they put under the hood to ensure a soft landing.

Continuity: During the motorcycle chase, just after the police car breaks through the wooden gate, in the close up of Rambo's motorbike its wheels go through two puddles, a short space of land, then another puddle. Keep watching closely as he rides through the mud. In the overhead shot of Rambo approaching the road at an intersection, he goes through the same three puddles again (the third one is hidden behind a tree, but you can still see the splash).

Continuity: When Rambo is driving the army truck he rams the police car off the road. In the shot just before the police car hits the stationary car the passenger side windows are open and police are shooting at him through these windows. But in the next shot just before the explosion the cars windows are closed.

Continuity: When Rambo is being pursued through the forest and comes upon the cliff edge, the water at the bottom of the gorge changes direction of flow several times. It is first seen as flowing left to right, from Rambo's point of view. The very next shot shows the water flowing right to left. It reverses direction twice more in subsequent shots.

Continuity: The rock thrown by Rambo at the helicopter doesn't actually break the windshield at all. For a very short instance (one or two frames) you can see the rock bouncing off the windshield which is still intact. The next frame is cut in (just look at the position of the pilot in the background) - the glass is now broken. Some shots later, when Galt has fallen out and the helicopter leaves, the windshield is intact again.

Continuity: When Deputy Galt falls off the helicopter, the close-up shot reveals he still holds his rifle. A split second later (distant camera), you would expect to either see him still holding the rifle or see the rifle falling away from him. However, the rifle has disappeared.

Factual error: Col. Trautman should be wearing his rank insignia on the flash (small patch) on his beret. All officers wear their rank on their flash, enlisted men wear the unit crest. (This error was corrected in Rambo II and III.)

Continuity: During the car chase, after Rambo escapes from the jail, the hub caps on the sheriff's car keep appearing and disappearing. The passenger rear and one on the driver's side even pops off, but reappears again. Look closely after the car flips over.

Audio problem: In the helicopter scene when deputy Gault is telling the pilot "If you don't fly this thing right...." it would be impossible to hear him over the sound of the aircraft without yelling, yet Gault speaks in a normal voice.

Continuity: After Rambo has dumped Robert A. from the truck, a police car takes up the chase. During the chase, the truck's headlights switch on and off between shots.

Continuity: The police car that Rambo rams into the stationary car with the Army truck has damage that appears and disappears, especially the rear right quarter of the car.

Audio problem: In the scene after Rambo holds the knife to the Sheriff's neck, we see the sheriff in the tent having his neck looked at by the doctor. The other guy, Dave, says that Rambo is now his problem. The Sheriff then replies, but the movements of his mouth do not match what he says.

Continuity: When the deputies chase Rambo in the forest, sometimes Teasle refers to Shingleton as Shingleton, but sometimes he calls him Singleton.

Continuity: When the truck crashes through the police road block, you can see the tailboard coming down. At the gas station, however, it's up again and Rambo has to lower it to get the M60.

Factual error: In the scene in the police station, where Rambo was about to get shaved, he had a flashback of the vietcong guy slicing his chest up. The vietcong guy was noticeably speaking Japanese instead of Vietnamese.