4. Thor: The Dark World
Jaimie Alexander, like Margaret Hamilton, is further proof that the actors are just as prone to on-set accidents as stunt performers and crew members.
In the Thor movies, Alexander portrays warrior Lady Sif. One rainy night, while filming a scene in London, the actress slipped on a metal staircase and fell. She sustained a herniated disc and torn rhomboid muscle in her upper back, a dislocated shoulder, and chipped 11 of her vertebrae. The accident took Alexander out of filming for a month.
After her one-month hiatus, Alexander was back in her Lady Sif costume and kicking ass.
3. Now You See Me
Safety is very important on a movie set, especially when there’s a risky stunt involved. Sometimes, despite the safety precautions taken, accidents will still happen. This was the case with actress Isla Fisher.
Fisher played a female Houdini in “Now You See Me”, which was about a group of magicians who use their skills to rob banks. Her character is first introduced when she is shackled and thrown in a large tank of water. In the script, it called for the character to pound on the glass of the tank to give the impression of distress, so nobody thought Fisher was actually in peril when she started to drown for real when her chains tangled. There was a stunt diver with an emergency oxygen tank, but he was too far from the water tank. Another safety feature was a kill switch inside the tank that Fisher could push and drain the water in a matter of seconds, but she couldn’t reach it.
She was able to calm herself down long enough to get out of her shackles and get to safety.
2. The Crow
The old saying “art imitates life” came into play on this movie set. ‘The Crow’ told the story about a rock star who comes back to life to avenge the murders of him and his fiancée. The moment where he and his fiancée are murdered became a little too real.
The scene called for star Brandon Lee to walk into his apartment carrying a grocery bag and get shot. When the actor playing an attacker fired his prop gun at Lee, Lee would trigger a small explosion – called a “squib” – in the bag by a switch at the bottom of it. The explosion in the bag caused a projectile to lodge into the actor’s abdomen. Instead of falling forward, as he was supposed to do, Lee fell backward. He was rushed to the hospital where he later died, despite surgery to repair the damage that had been done.
A rumor went around that the footage of Lee’s death actually made it into the final film. This is untrue, as all the footage of Lee’s death was turned over to the police for investigation.
1. Twilight Zone: The Movie
In the early 80’s, a major accident occurred while filming the first of four segments of ‘Twilight Zone: The Movie’. The segment was about a bigot, played by Vic Morrow, who goes back in time to experience the suffering of the very people he hates through various eras of persecution, including the Vietnam War and Nazi Germany.
One scene called for Morrow to carry two Vietnamese children across a river while a U.S. helicopter chased after them. The scene was supposed to be full of various pyrotechnic effects as well. When one of the explosions went off, it caused the tail rotor to come off the helicopter. As a result, the helicopter landed on Morrow and the children. One of the children was crushed to death by one of the skids, while Morrow and the other child were decapitated and brutally mutilated by the helicopter’s top rotor blades. The children were only 7 and 6 years old.
The director of the segment, John Landis, and some other crew members including the helicopter’s pilot and one of the explosives specialists were acquitted of manslaughter charges. The families of the two children who were killed collected millions of dollars in a series of civil lawsuits.