It’s Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Pittsburgh Penguins. The sitting vice president, along with a packed Civic Arena full of fans, is all on hand to see who will win. 

There’s just one problem: a group of terrorists, led by Joshua Foss, played by actor Powers Boothe, has another game plan in mind. Hold the vice president hostage for more than a $1 billion ransom and blow up the arena at the end of the game if their demands aren’t met.

The 17,000 people in the Igloo need a miracle, and they get it in the form of Jean-Claude Van Damme, who plays the butt kicking Pittsburgh Fire Marshal, Darren McCord.

McCord defuses the bombs, kills the terrorists, even those masquerading as the Penguins mascot, saves the vice president, the two teams, all the fans, and his two children, all over the course of a hockey game.

This is the plot of the 1995 action thriller, Sudden Death, which this year is celebrating its 30th Anniversary.

Sudden Death had a moderate success when it was released. 

It opened the week of Christmas in 1995 at #8, behind movies like Toy Story, Jumanji, Heat, and Waiting to Exhale. It also never made it to #1. 

Still, Siskel and Ebert gave the film two thumbs up, and over the years, it has taken on a bit of a cult following with both action movie fans as well as the hockey community.

What many may not know is that this Universal Picture was written with Pittsburgh and more over the Civic Arena in mind. In fact, the idea and the development of the story all came from former Penguins owner Howard Baldwin and his wife, Karen.

“Karen was the one who created this; everybody should know that,” Howard said. “She came up with the idea and everybody (in Los Angeles) jumped on it.”

Karen and Howard were already connected to the film industry, and Karen said everyone in LA at the time was trying to think of a way to do their own version of the movie Die Hard.

“We would fly in and out of Pittsburgh to see the games when we owned the team and the flight path was right over our arena,” said Karen. “The arena was like a colander that could open, and I said to Howard, ‘What about Die Hard in an arena?’ What if we had somebody take over that building? I’m like, that could be fun, don’t you think? So, we wrote a treatment about, pretty much, Die Hard in the arena.”

The Baldwins both have fond memories of making Sudden Death. They said that they pitched it to both Director Peter Hyams and Jean-Claude Van Damme, while they were making the movie Timecop, and both jumped at the opportunity to do such a large-scale action film with full access to a giant arena. 

But the Baldwins admit, the production did have its problems.

Dawn Keezer, the Executive Director of the Pittsburgh Film Office, said that one of the hurdles during filming involved the production shooting off fireworks and exploding the outdoor digital sign at the arena in the middle of the night without telling the city.

“No one was aware we were going to have fireworks going off at 2 a.m. for a movie, and unfortunately, that woke a lot of people up and scared a lot of people, who then called 911,” Keezer remembered fondly. “So, the next day, the mayor’s office, that would be Mayor Tom Murphy, called my office and said, ‘Can you please let them know, we aren’t doing this again?'”

“What happened is, they evacuated the hotel,” Howard said. “It was a Hilton that was right across the street, and nobody made the hotel aware of us, so they really did, they said, ‘my god, something is going on,’ and they evacuated the hotel.'”

But fireworks and explosions without notification may have been the least of their worries.

The Baldwins were hoping to shoot a regular-season game between the Blackhawks and the Penguins for the movie, but the NHL was at the beginning of a 104-day lockout when filming began.

“Doing the real games became problematic, but the players on the Penguins were great and willing to cooperate,” Howard said. “We had an exhibition game against the Cleveland Lumberjacks, who whore the Blackhawks jerseys. We had about 11,000 people at the game, and we gave it away. Then we came back and did a bunch of reshoots in February when there was a real game. But it made our job a lot more difficult, there’s no question about it.”

While Penguins stars at the time like Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr weren’t in the film, other players like Jay Caufield and Luc Robitaille were, along with two members of the Penguins organization, legendary Penguins Broadcasters, Paul Steigerwald and the late Mike Lange, who played themselves.

We sat down with Paul Steigerwald, who says this movie is still paying him money, some 30 years later.

Paul: “A whopping $1.71 to this day. I got a $1.71, and I get checks like that every now and then.
Chris: “I believe they call those residuals.”
Paul: “They do, I believe it says residuals on it. So that’s it. I am a residual.”

Steigerwald said that Sudden Death is far from a Citizen Kane or a Chinatown, but it is a great time capsule that captures the old Civic Arena in a cool way. He said it immortalized his broadcast partner, Mike Lange, at the height of his career, and Steigerwald said was masterful in the film for improvising calling a fake game, in a very real and believable way.

“I think having Mike Lange be that announcer was really good for the movie because it added color to it that otherwise wouldn’t have been there,” Steigerwald said. “His sayings were universally appreciated. It wasn’t just Pittsburghers; you know, hockey fans across the world who heard his calls loved his sayings. He just knew what turned people on. So, for him to be in a movie that exists forever is pretty cool.”

So is Sudden Death the greatest movie ever made? 

Probably not. But for the Baldwins and the many local Pittsburghers who worked on it and who saw it, all these years later, Sudden Death still scores big with entertainment and nostalgia.

Dawn Keezer says that film is a testament to the over 5,000 people who work in the film in TV industry here in the region, and it is one of over 250 movies that have been made in and around Pittsburgh since the 1990s.

“We did Sudden Death, we did Flashdance,” Keezer said. “Look at the dichotomy there. I think Sudden Death is part of the film-making history of southwestern PA. I think it is a great capsule of history, and I think it was a fun movie.”

“It ain’t Shakespeare, but it is entertainment,” said Karen. “I think we miss that a little bit now. Sometimes things have gotten so politically correct that the people feel that unless you leave that theatre full of angst, you haven’t had an experience. And this movie really reflects a different era when entertaining movies were to entertain, not necessarily to make you leave thinking the world is worse than it actually is.”

“And you’ll never get a better fight scene in any movie than that mascot and Jean-Claude Van Damme,” Howard said. “That to me is just a classic scene.”

Sudden Death is rated R for strong violence and language. It is available to rent or buy on several streaming platforms

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