Director of some of the 1980s most popular comedies and action movies dead at 94

Ted Kotcheff, the Canadian filmmaker who introduced moviegoers to Sylvester Stallone’s traumatized Vietnam War veteran John Rambo with “First Blood” and helmed comedies like “Weekend at Bernie’s,” “Fun With Dick and Jane” and “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz,” died Thursday. He was 94.

His death was confirmed by his family to Canadian publication The Globe and Mail.

After beginning his career in Canadian television and working in the U.K. industry, Kotcheff broke through with his 1974 feature “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz,” an adaptation of Mordechai Richler’s 1959 coming-of-age novel starring then-rising star Richard Dreyfuss.

The film took home the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and earned an Academy Award nomination for best adapted screenplay (for Richler and Lionel Chetwynd), launching Kotcheff’s career in the American film industry.

In Hollywood, Kotcheff turned in box office hits like the marital satire “Fun With Dick and Jane,” starring George Segal and Jane Fonda, and the football insider drama “North Dallas Forty,” starring Nick Nolte.

But his most enduring feature came in 1982, teaming with Sylvester Stallone for “First Blood,” a seminal post-Vietnam drama about a tortured, war-rattled soldier that brings guerrilla warfare to the homefront after being bullied by local cops in a quiet Pacific Northwest town.

Though far more haunted and less spectacle-oriented than its gun-toting poster would indicate, “First Blood” minted Stallone (who also co-wrote the screenplay) as an American action icon and gave the star another iconic character, alongside Rocky Balboa, to return to through his career.

The film also marked Kotcheff’s largest commercial triumph, ranking as the 13th-highest-grossing release of its year and launching a veritable action franchise with four more entries, including one recently released in 2019.

After directing another Vietnam-concerned feature with “Uncommon Valor,” produced by John Milius and starring Gene Hackman, Kotcheff returned to comedies and notched another hit with 1989’s “Weekend at Bernie’s,” starring Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman as two low-level suits who puppet their CEO’s corpse.

It was a memorable premise that even spawned an inexplicable 1993 sequel, stretching the science of decomposing corpses.