Stacy Conradt
The Quick 10: 10 Film Set Tragedies
by Stacy Conradt - September 30, 2009 - 5:36 PM

q10

If you’ve seen the movie based on Stephen King’s Pet Sematary Two, you probably remember the horrifying scene at the beginning when the actress is electrocuted on set while her son (Edward Furlong, back in his dreamy days) looks on. While that particular incident comes to us courtesy of Mr. King, film set tragedies aren’t unheard of in real life. Here are 10 of them.

tz1. The Twilight Zone: The Movie. It sounds like something straight out of Rod Serling’s head, but sadly, this accident wasn’t a work of fiction. Actor Vic Morrow and two children were filming a scene for the first segment of the movie that involved a trip in time back to the Vietnam War. Some explosions went off too close to low-flying helicopters, which resulted in “foreign object damage to one rotor blade, the separation of the helicopter’s tail rotor assembly, and the uncontrolled descent of the helicopter.” Sadly, the damaged rotor blade decapitated Morrow and one of the children; the other child was crushed under the helicopter itself.
2. Million Dollar Mystery. A well-known Hollywood stuntman, Dar Robinson, unfortunately plunged over a cliff to his death when filming this barely-concealed advertisement for Glad Bags (the movie was co-financed by Glad and DeLaurentiis Entertainment and featured Glad Lock bags prominently). After 19 years as a stuntman and nary a broken bone, Dar missed his braking point while filming a motorcycle drive-by and sailed right over the edge of a cliff. This movie and Lethal Weapon, which he had just finished filming, were both dedicated to him.

3. Catch-22. The 1970 movie based on the Joseph Heller novel of the same name had its own tragedy, although this was one that probably could have been prevented. Second Unit Director John Jordan was direction a scene out of a vintage airplane and refused to wear a harness to keep him secure while the plane was in flight. He was sucked out of the plane and, of course, didn’t survive the fall.

topgun4. Top Gun. Art Scholl, a seasoned stunt pilot, was hired to do some stunts for the movie and film them from the inside of the plane to make it appear as though Tom Cruise (or Anthony Edwards, or Val Kilmer) had performed them. He was working on a flat spin off the coast Southern California when he radioed, “I have a problem… I have a real problem.” The plane crashed into the Pacific and was never recovered. The cause of the accident is unknown to this day.

5. The Dark Knight. Obviously Heath Ledger died before the film came out, but that’s not the death I’m referring to. Conway Wickliffe, a film technician, was filming a test run of a stunt involving the Batmobile in England. He lost control of the car and was killed when it ran into a tree. The Dark Knight was dedicated to both Wickliffe and Heath Ledger.

6. The Return of the Musketeers. Fifty-four year-old actor Roy Kinnear, a veteran British character actor, was filming a scene on horseback for the Richard Lester-directed movie. The two were old friends and had worked together for many years, including on the Beatles’ 1965 film Help! Kinnear fell off of his horse and broke his pelvis, the stress of which caused him to have a fatal heart attack the next day in the hospital. Lester was so aggrieved by his friend’s death that he retired after that movie.

7. Bikini Island. Stuntman Jay C. Currin was practicing an upcoming stunt where he jumped from a cliff during the filming of this 1991 movie. Sadly, he misjudged it. Although he landed on the safety airbag below, he didn’t land it quite right and ended up smashing into the rocks on the Malibu shore.

8. XXX. Vin Diesel’s stunt double, Harry O’Connor, was working on a scene where he had to parasail near the Palacky Bridge in Prague, then slide down the lines of the parasail onto a submarine waiting below. He executed the stunt perfectly the first time, but told the film crew that he felt he could do it much better. He was wrong: on the second attempt, he didn’t make it down the line fast enough and hit the bridge. The stunt was being performed at such high speeds that he died upon impact. The first take was used in the film.

crow9. The Crow. How can you have an article about movie set disasters and not mention Brandon Lee? You can’t, of course. Brandon was the lead on The Crow and was shooting a scene where he walks in to find his girlfriend being attacked. One of the attackers turns and fires a gun at Lee’s character. Unfortunately, he really did fire the gun – “dummy” cartridge malfunctioned and a real bullet shot out of the gun. Although the malfunction caused the bullet to move a lot more slowly than normal, the point-blank range coupled with the large bullet resulted in Lee’s death 12 hours later.
10. Delta Force 2. There’s all kinds of improbable things Chuck Norris can do, but he was powerless to stop a helicopter crash in 1989 during the filming of Delta Force 2: The Columbian Connection. It crashed upon takeoff and killed the pilot and four crew members.

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Comments (28)

  1. OK, so maybe this was a TV set, not a film set per se, but I remember when Jon-Erik Hexum was killed on the set of the show “Cover-up”. He shot himself in the head with a gun he thought was loaded with blanks, but was actually loaded with real bullets. I remember the show not actually being too bad; probably cheesy ’80′s by today’s standards, but, as a nine-year-old, I thought the show was pretty cool.

    Very sad.

    posted by Justin on 9-30-2009 at 8:35 pm

  2. I used a video camera when I was 12 years old to film a stunt sequence where my hampster was attempting a death defying jump over half of the backyard while smushed into my toy evel kenievel rocket car. He succesfuly completed the jump, but was ejected upon impact and smacked the stockade fence headfirst. I attempted to provide first aid, but decided it wasn’t worth the effort and applied the heel of my shoe to his furry little head. RIP Mickey, you are missed you brave little furry kenievel.

    posted by Brady on 9-30-2009 at 8:42 pm

  3. Actually, Hexum was killed by a blank cartridge. As with Brandon Lee, the weapon was too close when fired. A piece of the dummy round penetrated his temple.

    I’ve always wondered about the early silent movies. Those stunts were insane.

    posted by Lorne on 9-30-2009 at 8:45 pm

  4. Thanks, Lorne, for the clarification. I went over to IMDB just to look up the show for curiosity after typing my comment, and read about that. It’s funny how I remembered it from twenty five years ago! Makes it an even sadder event…

    posted by Justin on 9-30-2009 at 8:54 pm

  5. Stephen King only wrote one book titled “Pet Sematary”, which was covered in the first movie of the same title. The sequel was written as a screenplay by Richard Outten, and as far as I can tell, Stephen King was not involved in the sequel.

    posted by Seanette on 9-30-2009 at 9:01 pm

  6. @Brady….I don’t know what to say about that. My captcha says it all: pouting parently.

    posted by holly on 9-30-2009 at 9:23 pm

  7. A stunt man died in such a spectacular way, they didnt stop filming… or cut it from the final take: Ben Hur

    posted by DrJeckle on 9-30-2009 at 9:24 pm

  8. Attack of the Killer Tomatoes – the helicopter crash on the film is real and was not planned, but nobody died.

    posted by PartiallyDeflected on 9-30-2009 at 9:27 pm

  9. Actually, Dr Jeckle, no stunt men were killed during Ben Hur. They had dummies with moveable arm and leg joints, so they looked like real humans being run over by the chariots. It looked so real that it shocked movie goers of the time, according to IMDB.

    posted by Shandi on 9-30-2009 at 11:30 pm

  10. Dr.Jeckle, please be sure of your facts before posting urban legends. Stuntman dying in “Ben-Hur”, and the actual death scene included in final cut of movie???
    Bogus, bogus, bogus!!!

    From Snopes: http://www.snopes.com/movies/films/benhur.asp

    -”BB”-

    posted by Bicycle Bill on 9-30-2009 at 11:31 pm

  11. Didn’t Bruce Lee die on a movie set as well? I thought I remembered people talking about a “family curse” when Bandon died. Or maybe I’m missremebering…

    posted by Lisa H on 9-30-2009 at 11:47 pm

  12. What about Wizard of Oz and the midget that accidently hung himself?

    posted by John on 10-1-2009 at 12:00 am

  13. bruce lee had a headache on set that later turned into a brain bleed. i don’t think he died on set though. but they both died very young…brandon was set to be married two weeks before his death.

    posted by em on 10-1-2009 at 12:53 am

  14. David Ritchie on \Jumper\.

    http://www.monstersandcritics.com/movies/news/article_1252335.php/Jumper_crew_member_killed_on_set

    posted by iRonnie on 10-1-2009 at 1:40 am

  15. Bruce Lee’s cause of death was never definitively pinpointed. He died of a cerebral edema, (brain bleed), but no one knows how it happened or what caused it. He actually passed away in a friend’s apartment, per imdb.com, but there’s no way of knowing when or why he was initially stricken ill.

    reCaptcha: “Regina morgues”
    How creepily apropos . . .

    posted by Valkyrie on 10-1-2009 at 4:51 am

  16. There was one right here in little ol’ Iowa. Three men were in a helecopter filming a shot for ‘The Final Season’ in Norway, Iowa when the helecopter got tangled up in a power line and crashed killing the cinematographer.

    posted by Patty on 10-1-2009 at 9:42 am

  17. I work around the corner (Lexington, KY) from the building where stuntman A.J. Bakunas died while filming a jump for a late-seventies Lee Majors movie called “Steel.” Click my name for a link to the Google News Archive.

    ReCaptcha = “free blading.” Sounds dangerous.

    posted by Roger on 10-1-2009 at 9:47 am

  18. Wizard of Oz also an urban legend.

    http://www.snopes.com/movies/films/ozsuicide.asp

    posted by Kathleen on 10-1-2009 at 9:55 am

  19. Actors are involving in dangerous stunts which may threaten their life just for the sake of audience. Hats off to them.

    posted by Sandeep on 10-1-2009 at 10:08 am

  20. Actually, the circumstances surrounding Brandon Lee’s death were a little more complicated. There were two types of fake bullets being used on the movie – blanks, which had a charge of gunpowder in them but no bullet, and dummy rounds, which had no charge but looked like a real round with the bullet in the end. The former was for the flash and bang during a scene, and the latter was used when loading the weapon so that it looked real.

    The problem was, someone had not disabled the firing pin from the dummy rounds. So at some point, the gun was fired with a dummy round in it, and the mini-explosion from the firing pin was enough to eject the bullet into the barrel of the gun, but not fully through and it got stuck. When the time came to shoot the scene, the gun was loaded with blanks without the barrel being inspected. When the gun was then fired in the scene, the charge from the blank propelled the leftover bullet out of the barrel and into Mr. Lee.

    A very unusual and tragic series of events.

    posted by Bert on 10-1-2009 at 10:11 am

  21. Thanks for a super depressing article. :\ (lol)

    Interesting, though – thanks for the post!

    Recaptcha:

    Smalkin Jones – sounds like a BAMF name.

    posted by OkieMelissa on 10-1-2009 at 11:01 am

  22. I think you mean primer, not firing pin, but that sounds plausible.

    I can’t believe they loaded live primers into dummy rounds. There has to be a way to disable them before installation. Soaking them in some kind of solvent would probably do it. Aside from that, the blanks should have gone into a different gun altogether.

    Brandon Lee’s death was the worst kind of tragedy… a preventable one.

    posted by Troy H on 10-1-2009 at 12:18 pm

  23. If I remember correctly, there was a scene in Dr. Zhivago where they were taking people away in cattle cars, and a lady was running beside the train to get her child on the train. She got caught by the train and appeared to be run over. In real life, I think this woman was injured or killed during the scene, but they used it in the movie.

    posted by Allison on 10-1-2009 at 1:24 pm

  24. Allison, She wasn’t killed but she was injured.

    http://www.snopes.com/movies/films/zhivago.asp

    posted by Nerak on 10-1-2009 at 5:36 pm

  25. Troy,

    As the owner of several rimfire and centerfire firearms, I’ve looked into dummy rounds for several of my firearms to protect the firing pin working the firing mechanism. From what I’ve read, a common method used to produce dummy rounds is to remove the bullet from the casing, empty the casing of gunpowder, fire off the primers, and re-install the bullet. For shop use, they recommend drilling through the casing and or painting the bullets red (or another distinctive color) to ensure you don’t confuse them with live ammo.

    A similar technique sans drilling or painting would produce fantastic dummy rounds, although they would be horribly non-idiot-proof. I could see how a primer could be missed in making the dummy rounds, although I would hope that movie studios would have much more effective safety measures in place. Sadly, this doesn’t always seem to be the case…

    posted by Matt on 10-1-2009 at 6:50 pm

  26. A cameraman died during the filming of “The Wraith” a horrid Charlie Sheen vehicle shot here in Tucson. Downhill, high speed on a very steep winding narrow mountain road is not recommended.
    That’s why the sports car crowd runs hill CLIMBS. Much safer.

    posted by Ken on 10-1-2009 at 8:22 pm

  27. Star, director and writer of Gone in Sixty Seconds (1974). On August 20 1989, Halicki began to shoot Gone In 60 Seconds 2 in Dunkirk and Buffalo, New York. Preparing for the most dramatic stunt sequence in the film, during which a 160 foot-tall water tower would suddenly topple, a cable attached to the tower snapped. The cable sheared off a telephone pole, which fell on and instantly killed him.

    posted by Robert Holdridge on 10-4-2009 at 11:42 am

  28. Brandon Lee was killed by the gas pressure alone, from the blank cartridge.

    The dummy bullet / blank cartridge theory is all wrong. Dummy rounds do not have a live primer.

    Mr. Lee was fooling around with a large caliber revolver loaded with blanks. He put the muzzle of the gun to his head and pulled the trigger. The resultant head trauma killed him.

    posted by Ride Fast on 10-18-2009 at 4:33 pm

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