The worst accidents while filming

Brandon Lee in "The Crow."

Buddy Ebsen in The Wizard of Oz

And Margaret Hamilton, too

"Noah's Ark" (1928)

Three drowned when the wall of water hit the extra. Assorted additional injuries. John Wayne and Ward Bond are amongst the flood extras.

Just awful.

Would Jon-Erik Hexum’s accidental shooting be considerer “while filming”?

Glenn's meager attempts at acting seem to fall in this category.

Surely Sharon stone has a dramatic tale to recount.

Edna Rae Gillooly injured her coccyx on the set of The Exorcist.

Rawhide actor Eric Fleming drown while filming a TV movie. He was in Peru shooting High Jungle and there was a scene with him and another guy in a canoe on a river with extreme rapids. It was known to be so deadly that the natives wouldn’t accept a job as stunt doubles. They were smart.

Fleming’s canoe got caught in the rapids and he dove out to try and swim under them (he was a surfer so I suppose he thought it’d be like escaping undertow?) . But he got caught up and drown. The guy who stayed in the boat lived.

I liked him on Rawhide, he had a great authoritative presence.

The silent actress whose crinoline gown caught on fire from somebody’s stray cigarette and burned her to a crisp.

Vicki Lawrence and Dorothy Lyman once tried to trip Beverly Archer on the living room set of 'Mama's Family'. Thankfully, ol' Bev fell right into Allan Kayser's crotch, and the petticoats from her Iola character's infamous pink gingham dress also softened the fall.

LucyMAME: The day they recorded Lucy’s vocal tracks.

R10, Martha Mansfield

Less of an accident, more of a wardrobe malfunction.

Like Morrow, Boris Sagal (father of Katey Sagal / Peg Bundy) was also split in half (or decapitated) by a helicopter blade. He was a director filming the miniseries “WW3.”

Popular Thai film actor, Mitr Chaibancha, died while shooting the final scenes of his film "Insee Thong," in which, after vanquishing the villains, he was to leap onto a helicopter rope ladder and fly off into the sunset. However, when Mitr leapt, he was only able to grab the final rung, and as the helicopter flew higher and higher, he lost his grip and fell to his death. The accident was kept in the final cut of the film, but was excised from the video release.

R15, what a way to go...

When Jon-Eric lived in North Bergen, N.J., the only shooting he did was in the front seat of my Mustang.

Greg Plitt struck by train while filming a promotional video.

Doctor Zhivago....The scene in Doctor Zhivago where she falls under the train was an actual onset accident which badly damaged her legs. Director David Lean kept the scene in and the filming continued.

Beautiful Wallace Reid—briefly the top male dramatic film star in the world—sustained a serious head injury en-route to location shooting. Paramount did not want to interrupt the shooting schedule, so they prescribed morphine. His addiction and downfall was swift.

“While en route to a location in Oregon during filming of The Valley of the Giants (1919), Reid was injured in a train wreck near Arcata, California and needed six stitches to close a 3-inch scalp wound. To keep on filming, he was prescribed morphine for relief of his pain. Reid soon became addicted, but kept on working at a frantic pace in films that were growing more physically demanding, and changing from 15–20 minutes in duration to as much as an hour. Reid's morphine addiction worsened at a time when drug rehabilitation programs were non-existent. He died in a sanatorium while attempting to recover.”

Why Landis used real children for that extremely dangerous scene Is mind boggling. A Vic had dolls instead of real children he probably would’ve survived because he would’ve gotten across the lake. The heaviness of the kids and all that was going around him caused him to not run fast.. Landis is a sociopath and belongs in prison

Some of you are going on the assumption that what Landis captured on film wasn't exactly what he and Spielberg wanted to see.

R23, Spielberg was there during shoot according to sources. Apparently, it was an unprecedented action scene and Spielberg was there . He fled scene as soon as copter crashed .

Dylan O'Brien's injury while filming THE MAZE RUNNER: THE DEATH CURE. A stunt gone wrong where he was to jump from one moving vehicle to another, was struck by the second vehicle smashing his face. He needed reconstructive surgery and has four steel plates in his face.

Front seat of a mustang?

R25, the title is ominous

[quote] Death Becomes Her (IMDB trivia): Meryl Streep accidentally scarred Goldie Hawn's cheek with a shovel during the fight scene.

Oops did I do that?

When Audrey Meadows couldn't stand Jackie Gleason's smell of B.O. and booze, so she moved and he broke his leg on live TV

If this includes "during filming," Monty Clift and his before face and after face in Raintree County after the accident which left his car looking like this.

Stuntman AJ Bakunas died performing a stunt for the 1979 Lee Majors’ movie STEEL.

That unfinished Gregg Allman biopic, Midnight Rider, in which a train struck the film crew filming on a trestle bridge, killing camera assistant Sarah Jones and injuring hairstylist Joyce Gilliard.

R17 I love you.

Pick any song from Mame "sung" by Lucy.

....

This could easily have been one. But it wasn’t.

Speeding ambulance and Ms. Paz de la Huerta!!!

Huh? R37, She's not dead.

[quote]The silent actress whose crinoline gown caught on fire from somebody’s stray cigarette and burned her to a crisp.

I'll bet she wasn't silent while she was burning, R10.

During the filming of the silent version of Ben Hur, hundreds of extras were ordered to jump off of the Roman galleys during the sea fighting scenes. Most of them couldn't swim but did as they were told, assuming there would be boats below to rescue them. There weren't. MGM allegedly paid thousands and thousands of 1920 dollars to shut the affair up with the Italian government and press.

I can think of so many, but I don't know if they actually can be called "accidental," as unfortunate as they have been.

Well, you know what I mean, I'm sure.

[quote]Stuntman AJ Bakunas died performing a stunt for the 1979 Lee Majors’ movie STEEL.

Didn't they leave the stunt in the movie, "because AJ would've wanted it"?

David Morse's stand-in on "Proof of Life" was killed April 9, 2000.

He was in a truck that went into a ravine from a mountain road. Mr. Gaffney was standing in for David Morse, playing a man who had been kidnapped. He was wearing a hood and his hands were tied behind his back. Gaffney was thrown from the truck when the driver lost control.

Cameras were allowed to roll during G.'s HILLBILLY ELEGY antics.

During "Saint Joan"s burning scene, the flames suddenly flared up and burned the front of Jean Seberg's lower torso. You can see her reflexes kick in at 1:30 as she flings the cross away and covers her face (she also let out a short scream -- "short" because that maniac Preminger probably had the full audio cut).

Michael Jacksons head catching fire during the shoot of his Pepsi commercial.

The worst accidents happen after filming.

Well R8 you really screwed up that story. Except for him drowning everything you said was false. The canoe overturned. Fleming died and the other actor was able to swim to safety.

Tolerating Julia Roberts.

Vic morrow was a hero . He stopped to save a kid fell into water , right when helicopter 🚁 crashed into them .

Landis should have gone to jail. That bastard.

Totally, r51

The Jimmy Stewart movie "Flight of the Phoenix" built a working stunt plane to fly the film survivors out of the desert. The actual pilot was the same man who flew the plane through the billboard in "Mad Mad Mad Mad World".

This time his luck ran out and he died on film.

All of us in The Conqueror.

“Roar,” Tippi Hedren’s labor of big cat love, is considered the most dangerous movie ever made with over a hundred injuries including the infamous swipe at daughter Melanie’s face, shown in the preview clip.

Also, Tippi herself was tied down and pecked by birds in filming for Hitchcock.

I remember the producer of Midnight Rider, the film r4 mentions, posted something on Facebook like "women die every day" and linked to an article about someone who died after a bikini wax. He later claimed he was hacked but it's doubtful he was.

Jim Sheppard was a stunt man killed on the set of Comes A Horseman, Wild and Free, and if I recall they left the footage in the movie except for the very final bit where Sheppard's head crashed into a wooden fence post.

A stunt man died during Top Gun while filming the fighter plane shots for Tom Cruise's character, and later two more stunt pilots died and a third was permanently injured in Cruise's movie American Made.

You don't hear about the American Made accident even though it was pretty recent, and Cruise was apparently responsible, at least in part. That all got shut up real fast.

Nicely dovetailing with our coveted props thread, Kurt Russell destroyed a 145 year old museum quality historic Martin guitar in the “Hateful Eight,” grabbing it out of Jennifer Jason Leigh’s hands and smashing it to bits, forgetting that it was to switched out with a lookalike prop. Insurance paid the museum about $40,000 for it, but it was kept in the film. Video in the article.

Daniel Radcliffe's stunt double was rendered quadrapelegic in an on set accident on Deathly Hallows.

There was that recent brouhaha of Uma Thurman revealing the Kill Bill car crash.

There was that time when Roadrunner moved that hole on to the bridge and Coyote practically fell to his death, but they kept it in the cartoon.

r57 reminded me about "The Right Stuff".

In Yeager's original ejection, a rocket motor in his ejection seat which forced the separation of the pilot from the seat (nicknamed a 'butt kicker') smashed into his helmet's faceplate, and lodged itself inside, producing heat and smoke fueled by pure oxygen, inside Yeager's suit. Yeager disabled the oxygen flow by lifting the faceshield upwards, deployed his parachute, and survived the accident after several days of hospitalization.

To recreate the incident they hired an ex-Green Beret expert parachutist. A smoke canister would recreate the burning rocket effect.

Svec, who was falling in a flat and stable position, never deployed either of his chutes. Having jumped without an automatic activation device, he impacted the desert floor, killing the 35-year-old instantly.

An examination of both Svec's primary and reserve chutes showed no problems with either, and eyewitnesses on the ground saw no signs of struggle or difficulty on his part. The suit he wore was not particularly difficult to move around in and, with the exception of wearing the full-head helmet, nothing was out of the ordinary. In the end, no explanation was found for the untimely death of the veteran of over 2,000 jumps, although it is widely assumed that the smoke rendered him unconscious and unable to react.

When the video cuts away from the man he is moments from death.

Kristen Chenowith had some sort of lighting scaffold fall on her while filming The Good Wife.

(Julianna Marguelies probably cut the cable.)

Sean Young thrown from a horse in Batman and replaced by Kim Basinger.

Kim Basinger thrown from Alec Baldwin, and replaced with Hilaria.

[quote]Kurt Russell destroyed a 145 year old museum quality historic Martin guitar in the “Hateful Eight,”

Oh man, that is upsetting.

What a lot of death in the making of some truly shitty movies.

What a lot of death in the making of some truly shitty movies.

Sharon Stone’s low-voiced line readings in everything from Quick and the Dead to Diabolique are horrifying accidents.

Ironically, Zac Efron contracted a near deadly illness, while filming a show called “Killing Zac Efron.”

R71 Oh, you sweet kid. He fucking OD'd.

Fred Flintstone fucking Wilma on the set, resulting in Pebbles

R26-It's a car, Rose.

R70, I actually love Sharon Stone in DIABOLIQUE -- she slings Don Roos' bitchy 1-liners (many of them fabulous) as if to the manner born. (The fact that she and Isabelle Adjani are in completely different movies is another thing altogether.)

and she never looked better than she did in Diabolique

A stuntwoman was left a quadriplegic after a stint went awry on the set of Cannonball Run in 1980.

She died 35 years later.

*stunt

R77, shit happens.

Didn't some dude die on the set of Walking Dead about three years ago? Also, not a death, but that scene in Django Unchained where Leonardo DiCaprio cuts his hand (for real) and smears blood on Kerry Washington's face. That was such a shitty move on his part. I felt bad for her.

Did Reese rub ashes on Kerry during Little Fires Everywhere?

Diana Scarwid peeing on herself while being strangled by Faye Dunaway. Clever editing hid the evidence by some whitening of her panties.

R60, seriously?!!

[quote]LucyMAME: The day they recorded Lucy’s vocal tracks.

I'd argue that Lucy's hair and makeup was equally horrific.

[quote]That unfinished Gregg Allman biopic, Midnight Rider, in which a train struck the film crew filming on a trestle bridge, killing camera assistant Sarah Jones and injuring hairstylist Joyce Gilliard.

Ugh, that was awful; I remember watching the video of the crew desperately trying to get off the tracks. What a stupid, pointless accident. It was a fucking train, not a runaway semi. If they'd had some unpaid intern watch for trains 5-10 miles up the tracks they could've been safely off the tracks & that terrible accident wouldn't have happened. Or better yet, don't get on the tracks at all. I remember reading that the camera man suggested a way to shoot that didn't involve being on the tracks but had the same visual & the producer rejected the idea.

Well, who doesn't pee themselves while being strangled by Faye? With horror or with delight is up to you I guess.