First Blood (presented with Portland’s Wyrd War)
- Saturday, Dec 13, 2025, 8:00pm
Screening location: SIFF Film Center – 167 Republican St, Seattle (located within the Seattle Center, just north of Climate Pledge Arena / east of KEXP and The Vera Project)
Director Ted Kotcheff’s action thriller masterpiece FIRST BLOOD (1982) is the one that started it all. Frequently overshadowed by the more cartoonish franchise sequels that followed, FIRST BLOOD emerges in this beautiful new 4K restoration as an expert class in the craft of genre filmmaking and a dramatic meditation on post-wartime veteran PTSD.
Sylvester Stallone plays John J. Rambo, bringing to life the character created by The Brotherhood of the Rose novelist David Morrell, the last of an elite special forces unit that served in Vietnam, who enters the small Pacific Northwest town of Hope where he is quickly targeted for harrasment by local law enforcement. Gorgeously shot by legendary cinematographer Andrew Laszlow (THE WARRIORS, SOUTHERN COMFORT, STREETS OF FIRE) and tautly edited by Joan Chapman, FIRST BLOOD is the most fun you will ever have watching an entire town blown to crap and the very timely subject of the National Guard being deployed against a U.S. citizen (spoiler: it does not go well for the National Guard)
Co-presented with Wyrd War, a Portland-based record label and guerrilla action group, specializing in the advancement and celebration of strange and wonderful film, music, and art. Above synopsis courtesy of Dennis Dread of Wyrd War.
“Stallone brought intense physicality, obviously, but also hangdog vulnerability to a character who takes revenge on a cruel, unfeeling establishment and utters some of the most iconic lines in shoot’em’up history.” Kevin Maher, The Times (UK)