Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Sudden Death Was a Nightmare to Shoot, Gets 4K Release

The bonkers ‘Die Hard hockey game’ movie Sudden Death, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, has received a glorious 4K UHD release. The film has been given a new HDR Dolby Vision Master from a 16bit 4K scan of the 35mm original camera negative, so we can now see and hear the ice fights and rooftop rumble with more crisp definition than ever before. The commentary track, interviews, and behind the scenes details help reveal one of the wildest action movie productions of the ’90s. The film follows Van Damme at Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals; he’s in the arena with his children, and discovers that terrorists are in the audience and planting explosives.

Sudden Death was released in 1995 and marked a kind of ‘end of an era‘ for one type of action movie, the more brawn than brain kind that had dominated the ’80s with stars like Van Damme, Steven Seagal, and Arnold Schwarzeneger. Instead, 1995 solidified the shift of audiences turning to more sarcastic, stylized blockbusters with smart and relatable heroes, films like that year’s Bad Boys, Get Shorty, and Die Hard with a Vengeance. Nonetheless, Sudden Death is immortalized for its wacky and brutal brawl between Van Damme and the Pittsburgh Penguins mascot, Iceburgh, not to mention being filmed in the real Penguins’ Civic Arena. Although the production there did not go as planned.

Thanks to the release’s special features and a great oral history of Sudden Death conducted by The Hockey News, we know just how comically difficult the production of the film became. That’s mainly because of the 1994 NHL lockout, which delayed the season while the players sought collective bargaining. Find out more below.

How the NHL Lockout Messed with Sudden Death

Sudden Death

3/5

Sudden Death pits a lone fire marshal (Jean-Claude Van Damme) against extortionists who hold unsuspecting NHL players and fans for ransom during game seven of the Stanley Cup Finals, and who set payment milestones to coincide with the game’s progress.

Release Date

December 22, 1995

Director

Peter Hyams

Runtime

1h 50m

Writers

Gene Quintano

Distributor(s)

Universal Pictures

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The reason that Sudden Death has real access to Civic Arena is that it was produced by the actual owner of the Pittsburgh Penguins, Howard Baldwin. His wife and fellow Penguins owner, Karen Elise Baldwin, co-wrote the script. She had come up with the idea in the first place, explaining:

“I was an actress, and then I started writing and producing. We had the Penguins, we had access to Civic Arena, and the building was unique in that the roof opened up. One day,
I said “What if we do something like ‘Die Hard’ in a hockey arena?
” I thought that would be a lot of fun because the building is so unique and at that point in time, there were a lot of Die Hard-type movies.”

Everything was set for Peter Hyams to direct the film in their arena; the Baldwins got permission from the NHL to film their home game on October 1 against the Chicago Blackhawks. Hyams and his crew would use footage of the game (which was sure to be excellent, given the rivalry between these teams) and the sellout crowd. Then, of course, the NHL lockout happened. The Baldwins continued the production anyway, which meant they needed to cast hockey players and enough extras to fill Civic Arena.

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Nancy Mosser was in charge of filling the seats of the arena and casting locals for the crowd and the fake hockey game, and said, “I had to cast 10,000 extras. Those were paid, booked extras that we had to call and tell them what to wear.” Then there were the hockey-playing extras, local players of varying talent who were paid $125 a night for sometimes 12-hour shifts, and who had to remain on-call throughout four months of the production.

A lot of the time during those long shifts was spent just waiting for something to happen, which, when involving young hockey players at night, resulted in some mischief. Some of the guys cast as hockey players discovered a way to get into the VIP suites in Civic Arena. As one of the film’s hockey consultants, Dee Rizzo (also cast as a Blackhaws player), recalled in the oral history:

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‘Catapulting Hundreds of Feet Into the Air… My Jaw Just Dropped’

Of course, all 10,000 extras couldn’t be in their seats during the entire production of the film, so the crew often resorted to simple cardboard cutouts of the extras’ likenesses. It seemed like a good idea and mostly worked, until Hyams had to film the epic rooftop sequence. Civic Arena has a retractable roof, which made for some excellent shots in Sudden Death (and a great experience for Penguins fans), but a nightmare for the cardboard extras. Bob Black, a hockey player who was cast to play the Blackhawks’ goalie, remembers:

“They were filming the fight scene on the rooftop. The helicopter [with the camera] was huge. You could feel the wind from the blades on the ice starting to swirl around the boards.
All of a sudden, sections of these cardboard people start catapulting hundreds of feet into the air
, and then they’re spinning down to the ice. My jaw just dropped.”

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“The cardboard cutouts sort of became a personality of their own,” added Mosser. “They looked pretty real. They were really effective until the wind came and moved them. People had to scramble to set them back up again. Everybody worked so hard to get those seats filled.”

You can see that hard work on display in stunning 4K UHD in the new Kino Lorber release of Sudden Death. The film is not streaming anywhere, but it can be rented on digital platforms like Prime Video, or you can buy it from Kino Lorber below:

Buy Sudden Death