Aarrrrrrrhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

The Lord of Truth sends us an e-mail with news that should make everyone feel better...

Rambo is coming out of hiding and looking for some fresh blood.

After a 17-year layoff, Sylvester Stallone is ready to reprise his role as everyone's favorite muscle-bound Green Beret for a fourth installment in the popular 1980s film franchise.

After protracted legal wrangling, the rights to Rambo were snapped up in 1997 by Miramax's genre division, Dimension Films. But a planned Rambo IV stalled. Now, with Miramax heads Harvey and Bob Weinstein exiting Disney, they have sold the sequel rights for the intrepid character to Nu Image/Millennium Films, and the project is finally moving forward.

In addition to breaking the old red bandanna out of mothballs, Stallone, 58, will write the screenplay.

"I've signed the deal and I have the old headband, machine gun and bow and arrow ready to go. I am looking forward to showing movie fans the real action hero again," Stallone said in a statement.

Stallone, who earned an Oscar nomination for writing the original Rocky and who has directed such flicks as Staying Alive and Rocky V, compared Rambo IV to such 1970's revenge classics as Straw Dogs and Deliverance.

The sequel opens with our brooding Vietnam vet finally settling down with a wife and child, while still working for the military. (Sadly, Richard Crenna, who costarred in the three previous installments as Rambo's longtime commander, Colonel Samuel Trautman, will be MIA from the new sequel, havingdied in 2003.)

Though he's "assimilated into the tapestry of America," workplace stress forces Rambo to leave the big city and move his family to the boonies. Their lives are upended however by white supremacists unhappy about a part-Navajo man moving into the area. When the racists take Rambo's 10-year-old daughter hostage, dad is forced back into action to rescue her.

Well, that won't be formulaic at all. But at least I can sleep at night, knowing that Sly won't be unemployed too long, following the cancellation of The Contender. Heck, maybe Sugar Ray can fill in for Richard Crenna.