82. Sudden Death (1995)

Hello, fellow underdogs! We're back with Matt Belenky — film producer/film writer/film aficionado/Pittsburgh native — to discus one of the best Die Hard clone movies ever put to screen: Peter Hyams' 90's classic, Sudden Death. Matt recently celebrated Sudden Death's timeless charm and Pittsburghian ethos in the Pittsburgh Orbit article Terrorism in Overtime: Sudden Death Turns 25, and he fills us in on all the local details you'll want to hear: the casting of real-life Penguins broadcasting duo Mike Lange and Paul Steigerwald as themselves, the story being conceived by Karen Elise Baldwin (daughter of then-Penguins owner Howard Baldwin, who produced the film), and the strange circumstances in which the hockey game was filmed during the NHL lockout. We also talk about how well the film marries action genre tropes with the sports genre tropes, the fast clip at which the deaths pile up and the plotting skates along, whether or not this is Jean-Claude Van Damme's best or most iconic role, the savvy inclusion of the props/backrooms/corridors/interstices of the now-demolished Civic Arena, the hilarious culinary-themed kills (i.e., the death of the Pens mascot, Iceburgh, in an industrial-sized dishwasher), and the stunningly shot stunt work/action set pieces (i.e., the helicopter crashing into the Jumbotron). Oh, and to break the ice, we have a blast breaking down the entire slate of box office releases in late December 1995 (Waiting to Exhale, Grumpier Old Men, Nixon, Dracula: Dead & Loving It, Balto, Four Rooms, Tom & Huck, Cutthroat Island, etc...) — with each of us picking the one movie we'd choose to see if we had only enough allowance to buy a single ticket on opening weekend. Enjoy!