Trivia / Police Story

• Copiously Credited Creator: Jackie Chan directs, co-writes, and stars in this movie.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: This is Jackie Chan's favorite movie he made.
• Dueling Dubs: The film is rather notorious for possessing a whopping four main dubs for a live action film:
  • The first was prepared at the time of the film's release, and featured the original Michael Lai score, but only saw official release on an obscure Dutch PAL VHS until 2018. In this dub, Jackie's Ka-kui character is given an English name, "Kevin". Has a classic '80s HK cast, with voice actors like Matthew Oram (Inspector Wong), Barry Haigh (Sergeant Mao), John Culkin (Kevin), and Simon Broad (Cheung, the lawyer).
    • The version of this dub that saw wide release was a shortened export version, featuring the same dubbing, but a new, fully synth score recorded by Kevin Bassinson, and also shaved off about 12 minutes from the original Hong Kong cut, giving it a more action-oriented pace with fewer comedy scenes.
  • New Line Cinema, the American distributor of Police Story 4 First Strike, produced a second dub for release on video and television in 1998. This dub was very similar to the export dub, albeit with a remixed sound design and another new score, this time recorded by J. Peter Robinson, using much of his score from the aforementioned First Strike. In this dub, and the two subsequent dubs, Jackie's Ka-kui character was simply referred to as Jackie Chan.
  • Two more dubs would be produced in Hong Kong, starting with a dub produced by Media Asia Films in 1999 for release on home video, and as a basis for other dubs. Another dub would be produced by Fortune Star in 2004 using much of the same cast as the Media Asia dub in different roles; this dub also corrects several problems with the previous dub's script and was remixed into 5.1 surround sound. The 1999 dub would be released on DVD in the UK in 2001, while the 2004 dub was released on DVD by The Weinstein Company sub-label Dragon Dynasty in the US in 2006 and later on Blu-ray by Shout! Factory.
• No Stunt Double: In addition to Jackie Chan, Brigitte Lin did many of her stunts herself. B-Roll footage shown during the credits has her practicing the stunt where she's thrown into a glass table and briefly praying before the stunt where she gets thrown into a glass display.
• On-Set Injury: Jackie Chan slid down a pole that peeled the skin off his hands, leaving him with injuries similar to second-degree burns, then crashed through a glass ceiling and landed on his back, dislocating his pelvis and pushing his vertebrae into nearby organs causing internal bleeding. Chan claims it's one of the only times in his career when he's been afraid that injuries he sustained on set would kill him.
• One-Take Wonder: The climactic mall pole slide sequence was filmed in one take, without any rehearsals or use of wires. Considering Jackie suffered terrible electrical burns on his hands and the landing nearly paralyzed him, there really couldn't be a second take. You can even see the look in his eyes before the jump and tell that he's thinking, "I might die right now." They actually discovered later that the crew member who plugged the lights in ignored the order to use a low-powered car battery and just put it in a regular outlet.
• Production Nickname: So much glass was used that the crew began calling the movie Glass Story.
• Throw It In!: During the opening bus chase, the actors being launched out the front of the bus directly onto the pavement was an accident, which everyone naturally agreed was so amazing it had to be put in the film. The original stunt called for them falling on the specially rigged car blocking the bus.

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