Western stars and meThe highlight of the film work was several days of filming in the rebel occupied mountains of Myanmar. Officially the Chinese government says that there is no rebel activity in the Ruli region, yet our production team paid off the rebels to let us do some filming on a small bridge in their territory. The scenery was amazing but the sightseeing was very restricted. No border posts, just a bamboo gate to walk through and you are out of China and into a rarely visited region of Myanmar. The village was amazingly primitive and I can only wonder what the locals thought of us British soldiers as they went through their daily work and routine of planting rice. The scene we filmed there was a prisoner exchange between my captured Princess, Jungle Jim, and the captured girlfriend of our evil British commander.
The final scene I did was on my last night of shooting. Perhaps as a reward for good work the director chose me for the honor of a 3rd “death” on the battlefield. This was to be death by an elephant trunk smacking me in the head. There was no real elephant this time but a shot of me getting hit by a big, prosthetic plastic trunk. The stunt men went easy on me for the practice take but the real one almost knocked me out. I was seeing stars as I got up off the ground so it must have been good. They were happy with just that one take and I was relieved not to have to get hit again. With that last scene my acting career was over. I had a plane ticket to Thailand and within a week I was in Vietnam on a Russian Minsk motorcycle for a two week solo journey through the northern mountains.
