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While shooting aerial footage for Top Gun, veteran aviator and aerial cameraman, Art Scholl, died when he lost control of his helicopter. Ironically, he was shooting the scene where Goose dies. He was executing an inverted flat spin in order to get a spinning shot that would simulate Maverick’s vision as he fell following the plane crash when he radioed “I’ve got a problem.” His plane quickly plummeted toward the ocean as he continued, “I’ve got a big problem.” They were never able to find the wreckage of the plane or Scholl’s body.
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Three pilots similarly died while filming dangerous stunts for the 1930 film Hell’s Angels. Director Howard Hughes himself crashed a plane while filming a dangerous stunt that a stuntman refused to film, though he survived the crash.
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Cinematographer Neal Fredericks — best known for The Blair Witch Project — also died in a plane crash shooting aerial footage for the film CrossBones. Writer-director Daniel Zirilli and three others escaped from the wreckage after the plane failed, but Fredericks was stuck under his harness and drowned.
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On the last day of filming for Twilight Zone: The Movie, they were shooting a Vietnam War battle scene where actor Vic Morrow, 53, and child actors Renee Shinn Chen and Myca Dinh Le, who were six and seven, ran from a pursuing helicopter.
The helicopter lost control and crashed into the three actors, killing them. The scene was deleted from the final film, but the overall segment starring Vic Morrow was still included when the film was released in 1983.
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The film Caine changed its name to Shark after a stunt person was killed by a shark during filming. They then used photos of the accident to promote the film. The stunt person, Jose Marco, died after a shark broke through protective netting and attacked him. His death was then used to market the film, as seen in the poster below.
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Three extras reportedly died on the set of Noah’s Ark during the dangerous flood scene, which saw over 600,000 gallons (the exact amount is contested) of water coursing down spillways simulate the deadly flood. Cinematographer Hal Mohr actually reportedly walked off set when director Michael Curtiz ignored his warnings about how dangerous the stunt was.
Legend has it that John Wayne was one of the extras who survived, but this has not been confirmed. Due to the age of the film, there is not much paperwork to corroborate exactly what happened, but it’s clear that the set was rife with a lack of regulation.
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In a more recent example, second assistant cameraperson Sarah Jones was killed on the set of Midnight Rider, a 2014 biographical film about Gregg Allman that was never finished as a result of this controversy. In fact, the incident that cost Jones her life occurred on the first day of filming, which was done on a live train track atop a 110-year-old bridge. The company had reportedly been denied permission to film there. There were allegedly no safety meetings preceding the accident, no on-set medic, no coordinator, and no call sheets with safety details.
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The crew was told that if a train began to come, they would have 60 seconds to run off of the tracks. They would also have to run towards the oncoming train in order to escape. When a train did come, director Randall Miller shouted for everyone to run. Jones, attempting to save equipment, was only able to make it to the metal gangplank parallel to the tracks. Debris from the train colliding with props pushed her back onto the track, where she was struck.
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Actor Roy Kinnear died after falling from a horse while finishing up filming The Return of the Musketeers. Immediately after the fall, he was taken to the hospital with a severely fractured pelvis and internal bleeding, then ended up dying the next day of a heart attack. While Kinnear did not actually die on set, his family sued producer Pierre Spengler and the director Richard Lester, alleging that they had pushed the horse’s speed and declined to offer a stunt double. The family was awarded a $650,000 settlement.
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Crew member Jim Engh was electrocuted on the set of The X-Files (in pre-production for the Season 8 premiere) and died. The metal scaffolding he was working on was struck by a power line in what was referred to as a “freak accident.” The ensuring 4,800-volt charge caused Engh to go into cardiac arrest, and injured five others.
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A stuntman died in the silent 1925 film Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ while shooting the chariot racing scenes. “During one take, we went around the curve and the wheel broke on the other fellow’s chariot,” actor Francis X. Bushman later recounted. “The hub hit the ground and the guy shot up in the air about 30 feet. … It was like a slow-motion film. He fell on a pile of lumber and died of internal injuries.”
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In another stunt gone wrong, a stuntman named A. J. Bakunas died while filming a 323-foot fall in the 1979 film Steel. He was trying to beat a world record and had previously done the same fall from a lower story. The footage is rumored to still be in the film.
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The most deadly example on this list is White Thunder (later renamed The Viking), In 1931. Filmmaker and producer Varick Frissell set off with his crew aboard the SS Viking, which was laden with gunpowder. When the ship became blocked by icebergs, the crew reportedly created small bombs to blast the ice. However, their efforts backfired, causing much of the ship to explode. 27 people died, including Frissell, with the rest jumping off the ship and swimming miles in the icy water to make it to safety. The film was eventually released with a prologue about the disaster, which included footage of newspapers from the time.
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While shooting The Crow, star Brandon Lee was killed when costar Michael Massee shot him with an improperly loaded prop gun. He was almost done filming the movie, and it was apparently the last scene he had to film involving weapons — he was also hoping to move away from physical roles and more into dramas with his next film. He was 28.
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Something similar happened to Jon-Erik Hexum on the set of the show Cover Up. He was reportedly pretending to play Russian Roulette with a prop gun — he fired a blank, which fractured his skull and caused a brain hemorrhage. He was 26.
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And of course, one of the most recent examples of an on-set death due to a lack of gun safety is when cinematographer Halyna Hutchins tragically died on the set of Rust. Alec Baldwin was using a gun as a prop when it went off and killed Hutchins.
The gun had been declared safe before using and Baldwin reportedly did not know it was loaded — he also denied pulling the trigger, though the FBI reported the gun could not have fired without the trigger being pulled. Baldwin was originally charged with involuntary manslaughter, but the charges were later dropped. First AD David Halls was sentenced to probation and armorer Gutierrez-Reed is still embroiled in the court case. Filming eventually resumed and has now wrapped.
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During the troubled production of Fitzcarraldo, multiple deaths reportedly occurred on set, though not actually during filming. The film used actual tribesmen as extras, and one reportedly drowned after taking out a canoe. Others reportedly died from diseases contracted in the remote regions of Peru where the film was shot.
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Special effects technician Conway Wickliffe died while filming a car chase for The Dark Knight. It was the scene where the Batmobile is blown up, and Wickliffe was holding a camera out the window of the backseat of the car during a test drive when the car hit a tree instead of turning. Wickliffe, who was not wearing a seat belt and was leaning out of the window, was pronounced dead at the scene. He was named in the dedication for the film along with Heath Ledger.
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in the Disney film Gone Fishin’, Stunt doubles for the film’s leads (Joe Pesci and Danny Glover) were filming a stunt where a boat goes off a ramp then lands between two other boats when something went wrong and the boat rolled and flipped off the side of the ramp, hitting the two boats it was supposed to land between and sending them flying into a crowd of extras and stunt performers. Twentynine-year-old Janet Wilder, who often worked as a part-time stunt person on shoots to spend more time with her husband (longtime stunt person Scott Wilder), was struck and killed while holding the hand of her husband (who was also injured).
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Stuntperson Paul Dallas died at age 34 while filming a stunt for the show L.A. Heat. In the stunt, Dallas jumped from a three-story building and was meant to land on an airbag. However, he missed the bag and died from massive head injuries soon after. He had actually previously founded a company focused specifically on producing safe airbags.
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Just a month later, up-and-coming 27-year-old actor Ken Steadman died in a dune buggy accident on the set of the show Sliders. The buggy flipped when it hit a dry lake bed.
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Crew member Mike Huber died while filming GI Joe 2: Retaliation. He was working on a high-powered scissor lift when it tipped over, killing Huber.
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Comedian Redd Foxx, best known for Sanford and Son, died on set while rehearsing for a scene in The Royal Family. His character on Sanford and Son was known for faking heart attacks, so everyone thought he was joking. Unfortunately, this was a real heart attack, and Foxx died.
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Dying of a heart attack on set, unfortunately, seems to happen kind of a lot. Harvey Lembeck was reportedly appearing as a guest star on Mork & Mindy when he had a heart attack and died on set at age 58.
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Adolph Caesar was similarly performing on the set of Disney comedy Tough Guys when he died of a heart attack at age 52.
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Soap opera star Jay Pickett died of a heart attack at age 60 while sitting on a horse on the set of his own film, Treasure Valley.
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Finally, perhaps most creepy is the example of Tyrone Power, who suffered a heart attack on the set of Solomon and Sheba. He died before making it to the hospital, still in his costume.
What’s creepy about it? Well, his father (also named Tyrone Power) had also died (in the arms of his son) during an on-set heart attack while he was shooting The Miracle Man.
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