The adventures of Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones (Harrison Ford) have taken the brave archaeologist all around the globe, and it’s made for five unforgettable feature films. Of course, everything started withSteven Spielberg’s 1981 masterpiece,Raiders of the Lost Ark, which remains the gold standard for action-adventure filmmaking to this very day. In addition to the jaw-dropping action sequences and frequent punching of Nazis, one of the best additions to the then-just-starting franchise was Sallah, played by the greatJohn Rhys-Davies.
Having starred in threeIndiana Jonesmovies and threeLord of the Ringsmovies, Rhys-Davies is no stranger to difficult shooting conditions. While asked by Collider’sSteve Weintraubat Fan Expo Boston about which scene or movie was the hardest to film, John Rhys-Davies said “They’re all hard,” but also opened up about the particularly grueling shooting ofRaiders of the Lost Ark, which, according to him, left Rhys-Davies and several other cast and crew members with dysentery. Not only that, but Rhys-Davies also shared how it came from a particularly dark deleted scene that might sound familiar to fans of Steven Spielberg’s filmography, saying,“In a sequence that I believe is in one of the extended versions, the German cook is instructed to take me out and shoot me.“Rhys-Davies then went on to explain he later returned to his hotel room with a fever of well over 100 degrees.
The idea of Sallah almost being killed by a Nazi is already scary enough, but what makes the cut scene even darker is how it parallels with another much darker film Steven Spielberg would make a decade later. InSpielberg’s Oscar-winning masterpiece,Schindler’s List, one of the film’s most infamous scenes involves a curt Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes) trying and failing to execute a concentration camp worker who irritated him. The cut Sallah scene almost sounds like a prototype of that sequence, and there’s a good chance it was cut just because it was too dark and realistic a scene forRaiders' more swashbuckling tone.
Raiders of the Lost Arkwas far from the only time Rhys-Davies had difficulties filming. During the same interview with Weintraub,Rhys-Davies also detailed his notorious experience making theLord of the Ringstrilogy, particularly with the incredibly uncomfortable makeup that prevented him from working on certain filming days (although he still has great love for the films and his character):
“It’s a misconception that it was an allergy. We were using medical adhesive for the prosthetic, and medical adhesive is hypoallergenic. It won’t give you an allergic reaction. The only slant is that it’s a very strong adhesive that sort of bonds to the outer cells of the skin, and it’s not designed to be taken on and taken off at a daily basis. It takes a tiny bit of cellular life with it as you take it off.
In the end, I would lose all the skin around my eyes. And then of course you’d get a histamine response as your body is pumping fluid through to repair it, so your eyes get swollen and horrid. And quite simply I would walk in sometimes and they would look at my eyes and say, ‘John we cannot put the prosthetic on you today. There is nothing we can stick it to.'”
