Philo has just a few things in his life, his friends, his truck, and his ability to fight. When he decides to take off after a woman in the hopes of finding something else to enrich his life his friends go with and in the process they have a rowdy good time as he picks up bare-knuckle fights along the way, earning some extra cash as they move from place to place. It’s only when he finally catches up to the woman that he starts to realize that something’s not right when she sets a biker gang on him. After escaping the gang he confronts her only to learn that she’s not the woman he was after, and is in fact the worse thing for him.
You’d think the biker gang would be a good hint.
10. Apparently Manis the orangutan got bored easily.
They had to time their scenes to avoid losing Manis’ attention completely since his attention span wasn’t all that great.
9. Eastwood’s boxing coach was the same man that trained Sylvester Stallone.
The same man trained Jake LaMotta as well so you know he had to have a good amount of skill and knowledge.
8. The movie was originally intended for Burt Reynolds.
The film came almost right on the heels of Smokey and the Bandit and was geared to take advantage of that kind of success. But Burt turned it down.
7. This was Eastwood’s first pure comedy film.
Up this point his movies had a bit of comedy in them but it was coincidental and not the main drive of the film.
6. Eastwood had to get advice on comedy from Burt Reynolds.
He was a little nervous about doing something that was essentially a lot of comedy and not as much drama as he was used to.
5. The movie played better in small towns.
Superman was playing in the bigger towns so the less it had to compete with that the better, plus smaller towns tended to watch pretty much anything that came their way and still do.
4. The script was originally turned down by a lot of studios.
For a while no one wanted to take a chance on something that wasn’t proven at the time, and Eastwood and comedy just weren’t a proven draw yet.
3. This was one of many fighter movies that came out around this time.
There were a lot of them, such as Rocky, Raging Bull, The Prize Fighter, and many, many more that came out only a few years apart.
2. Sondra Locke learned that she was pregnant just as production was ending.
She ended up getting an abortion and then eventually had another one down the line. After that she had a tubal ligation. The whole story didn’t make Clint look like the good guy to be honest.
1. This was Sondra Locke’s singing debut.
She had her moment to sing in the film and she did pretty good. Obviously she stuck to acting though and then took to directing.
The movie stands as one of Eastwood’s best movies still.