Deaths on film.

[theweaselking]

A topic of conversation that came up today - accidents on sets that made it into the final film. I'm wondering how many of those there are.

The two that come immediately to mind ar Dr Zhivago and Top Gun.

In Dr Zhivago, when the woman is running to the moving train and trying to pass her baby to the waiting arms of the people on board, the character trips, falls, and is killed by the train. The characters look quite realistically broken up and sick in that scene, though, because the *actress* fell under the train and was killed during filming.

In Top Gun, there is a scene where the plane is in a flat spin and the pilots are forced to eject. During filming, the stunt pilot running the spin failed to recover and crashed.

How many others are there like that?

Comments

[flemco.livejournal.com]

In BRAVEHEART, Mel Gibson looks like he's suffering during the execution because they actually ripped his guts out and hung him.

He was replaced by a nazi robot.

[aelfie.livejournal.com]

what about the death scene in The Crow?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Brandon Lee didn't die on camera. He shot himself in the head with a "blank", but the camera wasn't rolling and it didn't get into the final film.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

That happened to Patrick Stewart in Conspiracy Theory, too!

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

Incorrect.

I mean, he didn't die on camera, but he also didn't shoot himself.

[flemco.livejournal.com]

Actually, he didn't shoot himself.

Long story short - the currently believed theory is that in the scene where he fights the posse while on a table, they were all using real guns loaded with blanks. At some point the night before, the firearms master accidentally fired a squib load - a bullet with no powder, but an active primer - into a revolver. This pushed the bullet into the barrel of the pistol. Then, in the scene where all the bad dudes are gunning Brandon down, they were loaded with blanks. Although a blank doesn't have a full load of powder, it was more than enough to blast a pretty big bullet into his spine.

Technically, he DID "die on camera" (actually died not long after) - but the footage was NOT, contrary to rumor, included in the film's release.

[flemco.livejournal.com]

Whoa. Either Snopes is wrong or the documentary I saw was.

Hmm.

May have to side with Snopes on this.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I wonder who it was who died playing Russian Roulette with blanks, as a joke?

[cpt-babypants.livejournal.com]

Did the one from the Twilight Zone movie make it onto the screen? The one with the older guy and the two kids who were running from the chopper?

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

Well, I've heard two versions of which scene they were shooting when he died—the Snopes one, and the one you describe in your comment. HOW it happened seems to be consistent across accounts, however.

I'd look into it more but am theoretically working right now.

[neobitch.livejournal.com]

It's been many years since I watched the Twilight Zone movie, but I don't believe it did.

It made it into a Faces of Death movie or two, though.

[neobitch.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon-Erik_Hexum

This is the one I thought of.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Faces of Death don't count for this, for the record.

[city-of-dis.livejournal.com]

I seem to remember hearing something about someone being trampled to death in a scene which remained in Ben-Hur.

[neobitch.livejournal.com]

I figured as much -- just was stating that the footage is out there, though (as I recall) not in the actual movie it was filmed for.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia Pete tells me this is a lie.

There are several urban legends surrounding the chariot sequence, one of which states that a stuntman died during filming. Stuntman Nosher Powell claims in his autobiography, "We had a stunt man killed in the third week, and it happened right in front of me. You saw it, too, because the cameras kept turning and it's in the movie".[2] There is no conclusive evidence to back up Powell's claim and it has been adamantly denied by director William Wyler, who states that neither man nor horse was injured in the famous scene. The movie's stunt director, Yakima Canutt, stated that no serious injuries or deaths occurred during filming.[3]

[atlasimpure.livejournal.com]

Then that was a damn convincing ragdoll.

[city-of-dis.livejournal.com]

Always gotta ruin shit with actual facts, don't ya?

[coyotegoth.livejournal.com]

Actually, Kevin Brownlow's biography of David Lean mentions the incident, but says: "It turned out that the actress, Lili Murati, a Hungarian survivor of the Holocaust, had bunched up as she fell so the wheels had not severed her limbs...her stumble can be clearly seen in the finished film."

Do non-fatal accidents count?

[dglenn.livejournal.com]

Are you specifically looking for fatal accidents? If not, my hunch would be to start with Jackie Chan's films -- I can't verify my guess right now, but I'll be surprised if no painful-but-not-fatal accidents made it in. (Not counting blooper segments during the credits, of course.)

This does bring to mind something unrelated to your question but still interesting: the opening sequence of the old The Six Million Dollar Man television used footage of an actual crash from a flight test of a lifting body. (It doesn't count because it wasn't filmed for the show.) IIRC, the crash left wreckage strewn over several miles, but the pilot escaped with 'relatively minor' injuries (whatever that means).

Re: Do non-fatal accidents count?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of fatal accidents, or at least serious injuries far out of proportion to what you'd expect.

Rumble In The Bronx showed Chan breaking his ankle as he jumped onto a hovercraft - but I think I might want to disqualify movies where the actor is doing his own stunts, and doesn't die.

[the-colombian.livejournal.com]

The lack of examples at least tells us that most productions have had the decency to keep such scenes off the final print. As for TOP GUN...the guy crashed, but did the actual impact and explosion make it to the final cut?

Re: Do non-fatal accidents count?

[larabeaton.livejournal.com]

after the end credits of Rumble in the Bronx, they show an alarming number of stunt personell being carried away on spineboards.

Re: Do non-fatal accidents count?

[aelfie.livejournal.com]

Armor of God (known as Operation Condor 2: Armor of God in the US) is the one where Jackie Chan nearly killed himself jumping onto a tree.

He missed.

Its in the opening sequence and I don't think they left the footage in. I think they kept the first good take.

[porcinea.livejournal.com]

Jon-Eric Hexum. Voyagers.

[porcinea.livejournal.com]

The credit sequence of Dick Francis' series on Mystery. The Syd Halley one. Stuntman falls off the wrong side of the horse, and actually gets (his hand?) trampled by the horse, just like the injury they were supposed to be faking. They used the footage. (Non-fatal injury, but still. The author, his character *and* the stuntman.)

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

There was a preacher in Florida who did that, while doing a sermon. Not sure what the point of his sermon was.

[aeduna.livejournal.com]

I've been told that...

In Lord of the Rings, Vigo Mortenson kicks a helm and broke his toe...

In Neverwhere, one of the minor characters is running away from assassins down a subway line, and you hear him cry out... because he actually tripped and broke his leg(ankle?)

Not deathly, I guess...

[spawnofweevil.livejournal.com]

On a similar note, Gandalf hitting his head on the doorway in Fellowship was real and unplanned too. Just a bump, but it was nice that both he and Viggo Mortenson responded IC to their injuries (Sir Ian with an 'oof' and Viggo by going down on his knees and screaming dramatically).