Apocalypse Nowused so many nameless stagnant bodies , authorities literally thought there was a serial killer on set .
I love a goodbehind-the-scenesmovie fact, even when they’redark— but fair warning, these ones from theBuzzFeed Community* are more than a little freaky. Read on if you want to see these movies in a wholeeee new light.
- There are also a few from r / MovieDetails and from yours truly !
1.Final Destinationreportedly usedreal footage from the TWA 800 wreckage (a 1996 plane crash that was one of the most deadly in history) for the plane crash scene in the movie. Also, therewasalso a group of American high school students on a class trip toFranceon TWA Flight 800, just like the film.
2.One of the dolphins that played Flipper (in the show of the same name)allegedly killed itselfafter the show ended and she was confined to a tank. According to her former trainer, Ric O’Barry, she swam to him, then stopped breathing. “You have to understand dolphins and whales are not air breathers like we are. Every breath they take is a conscious effort. They can end their life whenever,” O’Barry toldOprah.
3.We can’t confirm this, but there have long beenreports and rumorsthat over 20 kittens were killed on the set ofThe Adventures of Milo and Otis.
4.There are alsoclaimsabout a ton of animal cruelty onHeaven’s Gate,such as literally blowing up a horse with dynamite. The director and producer would not comment, and the head wrangler on the film claimed the horse was simply injured by an explosion.
5.Bo Derek, who played Jane in 1981’sTarzan, the Ape Man,wasalmost killedby a lion onscreen. The footage stayed in the final cut — in fact, the scene was adjusted so that the attack could be included.
7.The same thing happened to Brendan Fraser inThe Mummy.He wasdirectedto “sell it” more, so on the next take, he stood extra high on his toes — and the rope was pulled higher up. “The next thing I knew, my elbow was in my ear, the world was sideways, and there was gravel in my teeth,” Fraser said. Luckily, he was alright.
8.The Brady Bunchkids almost died while filming an episode at an amusement park — as they were about to board a rollercoaster, actor Robert Reed (who played the family patriarch)pointedoutthat the camera on the car looked unstable. They decided to do a test run and found that the camera would’ve likely killed the family had they been on the coaster.
9.Two people died at separate screenings ofThe Passion of the Christ,which was criticized for the amount of violence shown. A Kansas womandiedof a heart attack during the crucifixion scene, and less than a month later, a Brazilian priestalso diedof a heart attack in the middle of a screening of the film with his congregation.
10.Shelley Malil, perhaps best known for costarring as Haziz inThe 40-Year-Old Virgin, was laterimprisonedfor stabbing his ex-girlfriend 23 times in front of a friend while her children slept upstairs. She survived, and he wasreleasedafter eight years, against the wishes of his victims. He blamed his actions in part on a lack of roles followingThe 40-Year-Old Virgin.
11.Actor Johnny Lewis — whohad oncedated Katy Perry and is allegedly the person “The One That Got Away” is about—murdered his landlady, killed her cat, then attacked a house painter and his neighbor (who were able to escape), before dying from what was ruled an accidental fall in 2012. Ironically, Lewis had leftSons of Anarchyyears prior because it was too “violent.” In the years since, he had played a serial killer onCriminal Mindsand starred in the horror filmLovely Molly.
12.Multiple filmshave usedreal skeletons rather than fake ones, includingFrankenstein, Poltergeist,andDawn of the Dead.The last example is one of the most interesting — the props department had been told the skeleton was fake, only todiscover later onthat it was a 30-something woman who had died a century before when a police officer noticed it looked a little too real in the display window of a props store.
13.Some films even usereal cadavers(aka, dead bodies) — sometimes unknowingly, like in the case ofApocalypse Now. When police investigated, they found that the cadaverswerereal and actually being supplied by grave robbers. In fact, local authorities had toinvestigateeveryone on set because the bodies were unidentified and the people could have been killed by someone on set.
14.A handymanallegedly obsessedwithPsychoreportedly set out to murder Marli Renfro, the woman who acted as Janet Leigh’s body double in the notorious shower scene, but killed the wrong person by accident. His victim, it turns out,wasMyra Davis (who also went by her stage name Myra Jones), who was Leigh’s stand-in for lighting and staging, but not the double seen on screen in the shower scene (though herhandis seen briefly).
15.While shootingThe Crow, star Brandon Leewas killedwhen 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.
16.Something similar happened to Jon-Erik Hexum on the set of the showCover Up.He wasreportedlypretending to play Russian Roulette with a prop gun — he fired a blank, which fractured his skull and caused a brain hemorrhage. He was 26.
17.He’s not the only actor to die during filming. Tommy Cooper, a Welsh comedian and magician, actuallydied on live TVwhile performing on the British variety showLive from Her Majesty’s.Cooper suffered a heart attack moments after he began a segment, but the audience, believing it was simply a part of the sketch, just laughed as he died.
18.Comedian Redd Foxx, best known forSanford and Son, died on set whilerehearsingfor a scene inThe Royal Family.Like Cooper, when he fell,everyone thoughthe was joking. His character onSanford and Sonwas known for faking heart attacks. Unfortunately, this was a real heart attack, and Foxx died.
19.A Nightmare on Elm Streetwas based on true occurrences — director Wes Craven says he came up with the plot for the filmafterreading an article “about a family who had escaped the Killing Fields in Cambodia” in the LA Times. “Things were fine, and then suddenly, the young son was having very disturbing nightmares. He told his parents he was afraid that if he slept, the thing chasing him would get him, so he tried to stay awake for days at a time. When he finally fell asleep, his parents thought this crisis was over. Then they heard screams in the middle of the night. By the time they got to him, he was dead. He died in the middle of a nightmare.”
20.Horror movies can be just as scary on set as they are onscreen. For example, on the set ofAnnabelle,multiple freaky things happened,includinga light fixture falling on the actor who played the janitor in the same hallway that his character is killed by a light fixture in the script. (The script must have changed, perhaps after this incident, as I can’t find the scene in the finished film.)
21.And finally, after filmingThe Possession, a horror film about a dybbuk box (aka an evil spirit in a box), the box used for the film was put in a storage area with the other props. The storage areathen"burnt to the ground" inexplicably — star Jeffrey Dean Morgan said that investigators found “no signs of arson, no electrical fire.”
