Hollywood knows all too well the risks that filming big-budget action sequences can bring, with a long list of horrific filming accidents to prove it.
But, there is one particularly gruesome tragedy which befell upon the set of Twilight Zone: The Movie, which is seen as being by far the worst. The movie, which was an adaptation of the popular 1960s’ series, was co-produced and co-directed by hailed Hollywood legend Steven Speilberg.
The film’s production took place in 1982, just one year after the release of Speilberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, with a budget of $10million. The adaptation was to star Vic Morrow, who rose to fame in the 60s’ drama series Combat!
However, Morrow would go on to lose his life, alongside child actors Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen, in a harrowing helicopter accident on set.
The film features four stories directed by Spielberg, John Landis, Joe Dante, and George Miller. On July 23, 1982, at 2.20am, during the filming of Landis’s ‘Time Out’ segment, a helicopter that was being used for a scene being filmed at Indian Dunes, California, crashed – killing Morrow as well as six-year-old Chen and seven-year-old Le.
The six people aboard the helicopter during the crash were only slightly injured when it went into the river bed near the Six Flags Magic Mountain Amusement Park. The scene was filmed at night, with its backdrop intended to resemble Vietnam as the movie was set during the war.
Morrow’s character, a loudmouth racist called Bill Connor, was scripted to carry the two children from a deserted village across a river while being pursued by US soldiers hovering above in a helicopter. The New York Times reports the production was ‘poorly planned’ and ‘barely rehearsed’ – leading to one of the planned explosions damaging the helicopter’s rotor blades, which caused the pilot to lose control.
The aircraft crashed into the river, decapitating Morrow and Le while crushing Chen to death. The tragedy was witnessed by the children’s parents, who were present on the set.
Following the incident, civil and criminal legal action was brought against staff overseeing the shoot, including Landis. But the director and four other defendants were acquitted of involuntary manslaughter after a nine-month trial.
The parents of Le and Chen sued and settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. Moreover, in October 1984, the National Transportation Safety Board issued its report on the accident, citing the “probable cause of the accident was the detonation of debris-laden high-temperature special effects explosions too near a low-flying helicopter leading to foreign object damage to one rotor blade and delamination due to heat to the other rotor blade, the separation of the helicopter’s tail rotor assembly, and the uncontrolled descent of the helicopter.
“The proximity of the helicopter (around 25 feet off the ground) to the special effects explosions was due to the failure to establish direct communications and coordination between the pilot, who was in command of the helicopter operation, and the film director, who was in charge of the filming operation.”
Twilight Zone: The Movie would still go on to be released in June 1983.