How Dysentery Gave Indiana Jones His Most Famous Shot

In the spring of 1981, the Raiders of the Lost Ark shoot was three months in and based out of Kairouan, Tunisia. The scene to be filmed that morning had three pages of dialogue and stage direction: a Cairo street, a turbaned swordsman appears, threatens Marion, and engages Indiana Jones in an elaborate whip-versus-scimitar duel that the script blocked out for roughly three days of shooting. The swordsman, played by British stuntman Terry Richards, had spent months training for it.

Harrison Ford was sick. Three months of dust and Tunisian heat had left him with dysentery — unable, in his own description, to stay away from his trailer for longer than one magazine of film. Ten minutes was about all he had.

He walked up to Steven Spielberg that morning and said, in the version both have repeated since, "Steven, why don't we just shoot this sumb***h?" Spielberg said he had been thinking the same thing.

In one take, the camera holds on Richards doing his sword work. Indy looks at the blade, looks at the camera with mild exhaustion, draws his revolver, and shoots him. Cut. At the first preview screening, audiences laughed for about ten seconds straight. The scene is one of the most quoted moments in the film and probably its most beloved improvisation.

Both Ford and Spielberg have confirmed the dysentery story on the record. Richards, the swordsman, was reportedly disappointed but professional about it. The film opened on June 12, 1981.