Why Stallone Backed Out Of A Cameo In UHF’s Rambo Parody Sequence

Here’s why Sylvester Stallone backed out of a planned cameo in UHF’s Rambo parody sequence. Of the five Rambo movies, there are noticeable leaps in tone and style. The original movie First Blood is relatively grounded in terms of action and character, but Rambo 2 and 3 saw the titular soldier become a borderline superhero. The budgets, body count and Stallone’s muscles all increased in size, and the action became increasingly outlandish. 2008’s Rambo dialed back on the sillier elements and carried a much darker tone.

The overriding pop culture image of the Rambo movie franchise comes from the ’80s sequels, with the barechested hero firing an M-60 or bazooka at hordes of enemy soldiers. This version of Rambo was also incredibly easy to parody, with 1993’s Hot Shots! Part Deux being arguably the best known, while Gremlins 2, National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon 1 or Home Alone all took jabs at the franchise in the years that followed.

UHF also featured an elaborate Rambo fantasy sequence, where “Weird Al” Yankovic’s character daydreams about becoming the character to rescue a friend. UHF was intended to be a star vehicle for Weird Al, but while it was expected to be a big hit, it ultimately faltered at the box office. The film has since become a cult favorite, with the Rambo sequence being one of its comic highlights. UHF’s co-producer Gene Kirkwood is a friend of Stallone -(who has many movie regrets) and after meeting with the actor at his mansion, Stallone agreed to make a tiny cameo in the Rambo scene as a helicopter booth worker. However, he later backed out, with “scheduling issues” being cited.

Since Stallone was at the peak of his stardom during the 1980s, it’s not unreasonable to think his filming schedule made him unavailable, even for such a small role. That said, in speaking with The AV Club about the making of UHF, Weird Al believes the Rambo actor just “wasn’t into it.” When the interviewer cites the scheduling issues explanation for Stallone’s absence, Weird Al elaborated further, stating “I can’t imagine that we wouldn’t have changed our schedule to allow for a cameo from Sylvester Stallone. [Laughs.] So I don’t know why he passed on it, but maybe quote-unquote “scheduling problems” was the reason.”

This suggests Sylvester Stallone ultimately just wasn’t into UHF’s Rambo parody and decided against appearing. It might have made for a funny cameo, but with UHF coming off the back of Rambo III’s – which has an apt Guinness world record – disappointing financial performance and parodies of the character already rife in pop culture, perhaps the star wanted some distance between himself and Rambo. He made some pointed in-jokes at Rambo in The Expendables series, proving he does have a good sense of humor on the topic now.

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Padraig Cotter
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It’s pronounced Paw-rick, not Pad-raig. Now that’s out of the way, a brief introduction. Padraig has been writing about film online since 2012, when a friend asked if he’d like to contribute the occasional review or feature to their site.

A part-time hobby soon blossomed into a career when he discovered he really loved writing about movies, TV and video games – he even (arguably) had a little bit of talent for it. He has written words for Den of Geek, Collider, The Irish Times and Screen Rant over the years, and can discuss anything from the MCU – where Hawkeye is clearly the best character – to the most obscure cult b-movie gem, and his hot takes often require heat resistant gloves to handle.

He’s super modern too, so his favorite movies include Jaws, Die Hard, The Thing, Ghostbusters and Batman. He can be found as i_Padds on Twitter making bad puns.

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