Actors and Stunt People Killed While Filming When we look at movies and television shows we usually don’t realize some of the making of these movies and television shows could have been very dangerous. People have died making some of this entertainment. Many a stunt actor has died for a scene and sometimes actors have also died. One of the most famous movies where many of the cast in the movie died including John Wayne, was The Conqueror. Nearly half the cast died. The movie was made in 1956 and a lot of sand was required for the scenes. Sand was taken from an area which had nuclear bomb testing and it was radioactive. Eventually this radioactivity killed Wayne and many of the actors, and people who worked on the set. It was one of the biggest movie tragedies in the movie making business. When a stunt person is killed in the making of a movie, it doesn’t get the coverage that an icon like Wayne would get. You may have looked at movies and not known about the death or deaths of stunt people who were part of the scenes. Take the movie Top Gun for example. One of the most famous stunt pilots in Hollywood was killed in the making of this film. He had been flying a biplane upside down when something when wrong and it fell into the ocean. The pilot could be heard saying he had a real problem. I wonder how many of those who saw the movie knew about this? James Bond movies were not immune to the tragedy of stunt men getting killed. These movies always had a lot of action scenes and daring stunts. In the movie For Your Eyes Only, there was a scene where Bond is being chased down a bobsled track. One stunt man was chasing Bond while riding on a bobsled. As he went down the track, he fell under the bobsled and was dragged down the course and suffered fatal injuries. Sometimes explosions are created and this type of scene might be one of the more dangerous ones. That was a disaster in the movie The Expendables 2. Many people hadn’t heard of this. Two stunt actors were caught in the explosion. One was killed and the other seriously wounded. This resulted in a lawsuit filed against the stunt coordinator. One has to wonder when something like this happens if it is the end of the career of a stunt coordinator. I know if I was an actor or stunt man in a film or television show who had a stunt go dangerously wrong, I would think twice before working for him or her. Sometimes it seems like the safety restrictions which should have been put into place for the stunt people were not. Deadpool 2 had a stunt woman’s death. She was riding a motorcycle when she flew off of the bike and was sent through a glass window. It seems this could have been avoided. A report came out which said the following: "failed to conduct a risk assessment addressing safety controls, speed of the motorcycle, and equipment limitations," had "failed to ensure that the stunt performer was wearing safety headgear" and failed to provide "adequate supervision". The producers were fined nearly $300,000. It is so sad when these deaths and injuries could have been prevented. The Right Stuff was a popular movie. The stunt double was a former Green Beret and was involved in a scene where he was reenacting Chuck Yeager’s ejection from a plane he was flying. When he jumped out of the plane the unthinkable happened, his chute didn’t open. After his death the chute was thoroughly examined but nothing wrong was found. There are a lot of movie scenes which call for people jumping off cliffs and other high places. I am sure we all have seen scenes like that. The movie, The Sword and The Sorcerer had such a scene. It called for a fall of about 79 feet from the top of a cliff. There had been an airbag set up at the bottom of the cliff so everything seemed set. When the fall took place, the bag was missed by about 2 feet and the jump killed the stuntman. He had just performed the same height jump for another movie. One movie which was truly a disaster for stunt men was a movie western made in 1941 named They Died With Their Boots On. It was about the life of General George Custer. Three stunt men died in the making of the film. One fell from his horse and broke his neck. Another insisted on using a real sword and during a scene with an explosion he stabbed himself and a third suffered from a heart attack. Bruce Lee’s son Brandon Lee was making the movie The Crow when he died. There was a scene which called for a prop gun to be fired at him. The problem was there was a bullet in it. This was similar to what happened in the shooting of Rust with Alec Baldwin. One has to wonder how something so careless can happen? This is one of those deaths which could have clearly been avoided just by giving the gun a thorough examination before using it. Another big movie star was killed making a movie and he was Vic Morrow and died along with two child actors. His death was heroic. The movie was The Twilight Zone. There was a scene with a helicopter which went out of control and was heading for the children and Morrow ran to them to try and protect them. All three were killed. Morrow without thought for his own life tried to save those children and will always be remembered for his bravery and unselfish act. John Wu is a famous action movie director. When he was filming the movie Red Cliff tragedy struck. The script called for a large fire scene. Unfortunately, the fire got out of control. The fire scene was with two wooden ships. The ships both got engulfed in flames. This was the result of high winds. The fire killed one stunt man and injured six crew members. An actor named Jon-Erik Hexum was filming a series on CBS. It was called Cover UP and he was playing a CIA agent who was working undercover. There was a delay in the filming and Hexum thought the gun, which had only blanks, would be fun to play Russian Roulette with so he pressed it against his head and fired. What he didn’t realize was even a gun with blanks pressed against your head can kill you when fired and it did.
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