Jonathan Hensleigh was dismayed before filming began when he learned that he wasn’t going to be given sufficient budget for a top flight action movie. He felt he needed in the region of $64 million but was only given $15 million instead, and only 52 days to shoot the picture. Hensleigh had to rewrite a lot of his original script to accommodate this reduction in budget and shooting schedule.
Castle has since devoted his life to eradicating organized crime, using the nom de guerre of the Punisher, using his combat experience (four years as a United States Marine Corps Captain in a special operations unit in the Vietnam War), guerilla warfare (combat assault attacks, assassinations, ambushes, hit and runs, bombings, using the enemies’ own money, weapons and supplies against them), urban warfare (using the crowded city of New York to blend in and disappear), psychological warfare (putting fear into the hearts of criminals), using detective-like skills (talking to people, reading obtained files on the people he goes after, tracking and surveilling the enemy), always adapting to the enemy such as using the Mafia’s own methods and tactics against them (interrogating and torturing suspects to death in order to get information from them) and whatever resources and means may be necessary to do so, ranging from light anti-tank weaponry, to enraged polar bears, piranhas, and to a hydrogen bomb.
Video
The Punisher film
The Punisher was created by Gerry Conway and Ross Andru, who was then the regular writer and artist, respectively, for The Amazing Spider-Man, with then-Marvel art director John Romita, Sr. working on the formal design. The Punisher was initially an antagonist of Spider-Man, although only due to being duped by the supervillain known as The Jackal. The character of the Punisher immediately became popular, and made appearances in the various Spider-Man titles and other series throughout the 1970s.