This Friday, the classic film Raiders of the Lost Ark will be the first film to screen as part of the new season of Event Cinema’s In The House series on George Street in Sydney (win yourself a double pass HERE)! And to get the spirit of nostalgia, we dug deep to find you ten fun facts about the film that you probably never knew…
- During filming in Tunisia, nearly everyone got food poisoning, except for Director Steven Spielberg, who brought cans and cans of Spaghetti O’s. While unpleasant, this may have been fortuitous as the scene in which Indiana shoots a flamboyant swordsman was originally supposed to be Indiana whipping the sword out of the swordsman’s hands. Food poisoning rendered Harrison Ford unable to perform the original scene.
- Most of the sounds of body blows throughout the film were created by hitting a pile of jackets with a baseball bat.
- The out-of-control plane that ran over Indiana’s knees, well, it actually ran over his knees, tearing Ford’s ligaments. Indiana Jones might have been rubbing off on Ford because instead of getting help he wrapped his knee in ice and the show went on. And these sorts of instances seem to be part of any film shoot featuring Ford: he was hurt by the Millennium Falcon while filming The Force Awakens.
- Originally the film was given a R rating because of the exploding head towards the end of the film. So, to avoid the rating, they filmed the scene with flames burning in front of his face to make it less graphic.
- The scene where Indiana threatens the Nazi’s with a bazooka, you can clearly spy a fly creeping in the mouth of Paul Freeman. It’s been held that Freeman swallowed it, but that’s actually not true. Freeman explained in an interview years later that the fly flew off as soon as he uttered the word “bad,” but Spielberg noticed it and thought he’d have some fun with it so he cut out a few frames so the fly would not be seen flying away. This made it look as though Freeman ate it. Empire Magazine chose this scene as one of the most common scenes for which people press the “Pause” button on their VCRs.
- The spirit effects at the climax were cleverly created by shooting mannequins underwater in slow motion and filmed with a fuzzy lens.
- You think your first day at work was daunting? Raiders Of The Lost Ark was Alfred Molina’s screen debut and on his first ever scene involved being covered with tarantulas.
- The giant boulder that chases after Indiana Jones (and Harrison Ford did have to outrun it!) at the start of the film was made of fiberglass.
Being fiberglass, the sound it made wasn’t akin to a real boulder, so sound designer Ben Burtt thought rolling boulders down hills might be satisfactory, but it wasn’t quite right. The right sound came completely unexpectedly when the crew were leaving set in a Honda Civic. Coasting down the gravel, the Civic made the exact sound Burtt needed so he grabbed a microphone and held it near one of the Civic’s rear tires to record the effect.
- In filming the Well of Souls sequence, the producers scoured every pet shop in London and the South of England for every snake they could find. However, once all the snakes were on set they found that there was not nearly enough snakes so Steven Spielberg had several hoses cut into lengths, and these were used as well. Looking closely, you can tell which are the real snakes and which are not.
- The model for the U-Boat used in the film was the same as used in the classic Das Boot, which was filming at the same time. However, no one at the props company told the Das Boot crew they were using it, so it was presumed missing at the time.
Raiders of the Lost Ark screens this Friday at the Event Cinemas on George Street in Sydney, to kick off the new In The House classic cinema series. For tickets and more details head HERE.
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