Sylvester Stallone Sat Out One Of Cliffhanger's Best Stunts – But His Co-Star Didn't

After a couple of box office duds, including "Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot," which was the subject of one of the greatest troll moves in Hollywood history, Sylvester Stallone was in need of a hit. He got one with 1993's "Cliffhanger," Renny Harlin's pulse-pounding action flick that many have referred to as "'Die Hard' on a mountain" (and a film that was only made because of the success of "Die Hard"). The movie marked Stallone's return to the type of muscular, high-octane action for which he was primarily known, and the despite the film's somewhat formulaic structure, "Cliffhanger" turned out to be a super effective thriller, a cable TV staple (shout-out to all of those countless lazy TNT and TBS Sunday afternoon viewings), one of Sylvester Stallone's best movies, and a strong case could be made that it's one of the best action films of the '90s.

But when it came to the production of the movie, which follows some expert climbers who are forced at gunpoint to retrieve money from a terrorist plane crash in the mountains, there was just one problem: Stallone was apparently afraid of heights.

Spoilers for "Cliffhanger" ahead.

The film's opening stunt is both its most memorable and most visceral. Hal (Michael Rooker) and his girlfriend Sarah (Michelle Joyner) are stranded on an isolated mountain peak due to an injury to Hal's knee. Their pal Gabe (Stallone) climbs up to help rescue them, with a safety line cast stretching across a chasm to a helicopter that's landed on an adjacent peak. Hal makes it across just fine, but the less experienced Sarah's harness snaps halfway across, leaving her dangling for her life and hanging by a thread. Gabe scrambles out to save her, and manages to catch her just as the harness completely gives way ... but he can't hold her for long, and in a horrific, stomach-churning moment, she slips out of her glove and falls to her death, screaming his name as she hurtles through the air. It's the worst thing that's ever happened to Gabe, and it's a moment that haunts him for the rest of the film.

Stallone wasn't really up on that mountain for the scene, but Joyner was.

The Telegraph spoke with Joyner for a piece in 2023 looking back at the making of the movie, and she explained that she really was up on that mountain for a long continuous establishing shot that saw her and Rooker stranded. "Renny said, 'There's no place for the helicopter to land, so you'll have to be dangled out of a helicopter on a line, and someone will be there to grab you, pull you down, and anchor you to the mountain with a harness,'" she said. "That was the first thing we did. It wasn't fun!" And while Stallone shot all of his parts of the scene on a soundstage (he "never got more than a few feet off the ground," the actress remembered), Joyner, Rooker, and Stallone's stunt double, Mark De Alessandro, were out there for real, tethered to a line and dangling thousands of feet above the ground. (In a behind the scenes video, Harlin says it was at 8,000 feet, while the Telegraph puts the height at 4,000 feet. The scene was shot in Italy's Dolemite mountain range at a site called Vajolet towers, which has a high point listed at 9,255 feet, but an exact elevation of where this specific moment was filmed is tough to come by.)

"When I watch it now, it's really convincing that Stallone was up there," Joyner said. "There's no way you can tell that he wasn't. I think, 'So, did I really need to risk my life like that?'"

I'd never heard this before, but rewatching the opening scene, it's now something I can't ever unsee. The way the filmmakers accomplished all of this is actually pretty ingenious — especially a shot that starts with Stallone dangling from a cliff...

TriStar

... but then uses a helicopter passing downward through the frame to hide an editing transition to a shot of a professional climber who completes impressive climbing maneuvers with his face mostly away from the camera:

TriStar

Was a safety net or some other protective gear placed under Stallone on that actual cliffside for his shot, or was that whole rock face recreated inside a sound stage? Either way, movie magic!

To pull off the real part of the film's heart-pumping opening stunt, Joyner wore two harnesses while she was out on the line: the one that broke (as part of her costume), and a hidden one that ran through her sleeve and connected her to the line. But during the moment of truth, with only that thin line keeping her from plummeting to her actual death, Joyner's fear became very real. As she told The Telegraph:

"When I got off the wire that day, I couldn't even walk. My legs just went out from under me. In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have done that stunt! Not that I thought it would go wrong, it was just super scary. I was in tears. Even when you're pretending, your body doesn't know that. You still shake and your legs get weak. It's just a natural human response."

When she made it to the soundstage to film the studio shots with Stallone, Joyner got a standing ovation from the crew for doing the work for real. But she suspects that reaction emasculated Stallone, and caused him not to be particularly nice to her during their time working together. "I don't think he appreciated that," she recalled. "I was like a reminder that he didn't have the same balls that I did to be up there."

In the following video, director Renny Harlin breaks down how the scene was shot, pointing out where a female stunt performer comes in, how a dummy was used in the scene, and more. But in order to preserve his star's image (or maybe he was even contractually obligated not to reveal the truth at the time?), he conveniently leaves out the parts about Stallone's refusal to get on the line for real:

Still, the result is a masterclass in editing, and makes me appreciate the way Harlin overcame significant obstacles in order to execute a vision that still holds up more than 30 years later.

You can read our own career-spanning interview with Harlin here, including a section where he talks about working with John Lithgow to craft the memorable villain from "Cliffhanger."