After a day of running around trying to finish our house in Motovun we got back to the apartment we are renting in town and all crashed in front of the television. On the screen, flickering back at us, were images of Motovun. At first I thought it was a tourism advertisement, but then I saw Jackie Chan!

It turns out that he made film Armour of God in Motovun and other parts of Istria in 1986. To tell the truth – the film was awful (and so were the fashions). But it is famous for one incident.

Jackie is renown for doing his own stunts, and the end of his films regularly feature out-takes of him hurting himself while filming. But in Armour of God he nearly died.

Jackie is quoted as saying, “I was filming the movie in Yugoslavia and I fell from a tree. I had to jump from the branches onto a castle wall. I did the first jump and I landed OK but the take wasn’t quite right. I wanted to land like a monkey. So I went for it again and this time the tree just snapped. I fell for ages. I could see the cameraman and I was hoping he would catch me but he was so worried about the camera that he just ran away. I had blood pouring out of my ears it was a pretty serious accident.”

He landed head first on rocky ground, fracturing his skull. He was to surgery and still has a plug covering the hole the accident left in his head. Most of us come away from Croatia with just bad sunburn and a hangover.

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