There are urban legends surrounding every walk of life and the world of movies is no
different.
Some are rebuffed - like the supposed "ghost child" on the set of Three Men and a Baby
turning out to be a cardboard cut-out of Ted Danson - while others remain a mystery.In
some cases, mysterious events happening on and around movie sets have led people to believe
that the sets in question were actually cursed.
Strange occurrences, freak accidents and even, in some cases, the deaths of crew and cast
members, have resulted in such conclusions.It's an often tragic topic, but it's certainly
an interesting one - and it's what this video is all about.
Here are ten movies with shockingly cursed sets.
The Passion of the Christ Movies that deal with religion are notorious
for having cursed sets and none dealt with the subject more controversially than Mel
Gibson's The Passion of the Christ - and it was the movie's star Jim Caviezel, who played
Jesus, that suffered the supposed curse most severely in this case.Caviezel was struck
by lightning during filming, as was assistant director Jan Michelini on two occasions.
But Caviezel also obtained lacerations during whipping scenes, dislocated his shoulder while
performing the crucifixion scenes, suffered with hypothermia, and contracted both a lung
infection and pneumonia.
He also suffered painful skin infections from the makeup that was used to depict his gruesome
injuries in the movie.
Poor guy!
Poltergeist 1982's Poltergeist was notorious for its supposedly
cursed set.
Some people believe that "the Poltergeist curse" was caused by the fact that real skeletons
were used during filming but, regardless of what caused it, there's no doubt that the
events surrounding the movie - and indeed the entire franchise - were both creepy and
absolutely tragic.In the six year period between the three films, cast members claimed to be
haunted by ghosts in their own homes and four of the main actors died.
Most infamously and tragically, young Heather O'Rourke died four months before the third
film was released thanks to a botched operation.
Additionally, Dominique Dunne was murdered by her boyfriend soon after the first film
was released, Julian Beck died of stomach cancer whilst filming the second film, and
Will Sampson died soon after filming it due to kidney transplant complications.
And remember that creepy clown toy in the first movie?
Due to a malfunction in the prop's mechanics, it really did choke young actor Oliver Robbins
- though he did survive the incident.
Rosemary's Baby Rosemary's Baby is one of the most disturbing
and iconic horror movies of all time, and a supposed curse on the movie's set led to
some horrific things happening to the cast and crew.
The movie's producer even claimed that “The story of Rosemary’s Baby was happening in
real life.
Witches, all of them, were casting their spell, and I was becoming one of the principal players.”Director
Roman Polanski's pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered by Charlie Manson's clan a year
after the movie's release - with the murder scene being one of the most sickening ever
witnessed.
Producer William Castle suffered from sudden kidney failure after receiving hate mail about
the film, and the film's composer Krzysztof Komeda died of a sudden blood clot on his
brain - something that was eerily reminiscent of a character in the movie itself.
The Exorcist Given the subject matter of the infamously
controversial 1973 movie The Exorcist, is it any wonder that the movie's set was said
to be cursed?
Not only did strange and terrible things happen to the movie's cast and crew, but even audiences
were affected by the supposed curse.Where do we even start here?
Well, the movie's set inexplicably burned down and delayed filming for six weeks.
Star Ellen Burstyn hurt her back and missed weeks of filming whilst bedbound.
Actor Jack McGowran died suddenly just one week after he finished filming his role in
the movie.
Half of the crew were struck down with sunstroke or dysentery whilst filming on location in
Iraq.
A night-watchman and a special effects expert died during the making of the film and, ultimately,
things got so bad that the director recruited a priest to exorcise the set.
During screenings of the movie, viewers blacked out, vomited, had heart attacks, and one woman
even miscarried.
The Amityville Horror The Amityville Horror is supposedly a true
story and the original movie based on it - which was made in 1979 - spawned a number of sequels
and a 2005 remake.
It was the sets of the original and its aforementioned reboot that were supposedly cursed.The star
of the original, James Brolin, wasn't overly keen on the idea of starring in the movie
and only accepted the role after a strange event occurred.
He was reading the script in the early hours of the morning when a pair of his pants suddenly
fell off a hanger, causing him to leap out of his chair in terror.
Years later, Just before filming was due to start on the 2005 remake, a dead body washed
up on shore near the movie's set, and Ryan Reynolds, the remake's star, has claimed that
members of the crew kept waking up at a quarter past three each morning while filming.
This was also the time that the real murders that influenced the story took place.
Twilight Zone: The Movie In 1983, a movie based on The Twilight Zone
television series was released.
It was in anthology form, with John Landis, Steven Spielberg and George Miller each directing
a different segment - and the movie was believed to be cursed.In one scene involving a helicopter,
a nearby air mortar blew off the chopper’s tail.
It crashed into the river below, severing the heads of one of the movie's stars - Victor
Morrow - and a Vietnamese child actor called Myca Dinh Le, and crushing another Vietnamese
child actor named Renee Shin-Yi Chen to death.
Both of the children had been hired illegally by the producers.
Eerily, the film’s concept artist had included a burnt-out helicopter in the middle of the
river in one of his sketches, foreshadowing the details of the accident.
Even more eerily, a year before his death, Victor Morrow had taken out a $5 million life
insurance policy after having a premonition that he would die in a helicopter crash.
The Crow 1994's The Crow is one of the most underrated
superhero movies of all time - people forget just how good it was, given how low key it
was in comparison to the superhero movies of today - but the number of horror incidents
on its set would suggest that the movie was cursed.The first day of filming set the tone,
when a crew member's crane ran into a power cable, resulting in him suffering burns on
90% of his body.
From that point on, a construction driver drove a screwdriver through his own hand,
a set sculptor destroyed the props room with his car, and a storm destroyed most of the
set itself.
Of course, the most tragic occurence was the death of the movie's star - Brandon Lee - who
was shot dead by accident during filming.
Rather spookily, the event mirrored a scene from his father Bruce's movie Game of Death,
in which an actor is shot dead when gangsters replaced a prop bullet with a real one.
Bruce would die before completing that movie.
The Wizard of Oz The Wizard of Oz was released in 1939 - long
before safety regulations even existed on movie sets, let alone before they were anywhere
near as strict as they are today - so the accidents that happened on the movie's set
could be put down to that, but there were indeed quite a few accidents and many believe
that they must have occurred due to the set being cursed.The original Tin Man, Buddy Ebsen,
was almost killed by an allergic reaction to the aluminum powder used for his makeup,
resulting in him being replaced by Jack Haley.
Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch, caught on fire and refused to perform any
more pyrotechnic scenes thereafter, and the little dog who played Toto broke a paw.
However, that strange thing appearing to swing around in the background of one scene wasn't
a munchkin actor who hung himself, as some people suggested – it was merely a bird.
The Omen The Omen is another horror movie that dealt
with religion as a theme - an apparently sure-fire way to encourage weird things to happen to
the people involved - and, sure enough, that's exactly what happened during and after the
filming of this 1976 classic.There was an animal handler on the movie's set helping
to organise the scene in which a baboon goes into a frenzy, and he was killed by a tiger
the the day after that scene was filmed.
Then, soon after the movie was released, the special effects director was involved in a
car crash that tragically killed his girlfriend - she was decapitated in an eerily similar
way to one of the characters in the film.
Even more bizarre was the fact that a sign by the wreckage supposedly read "Ommen 66km".
But the absolute creepiest thing about the accident was that it happened on Friday the
13th of August, 1976.
It's enough to send a shudder down your spine.
The Matrix Most of the movies on this list are from the
horror genre - which often makes the fact that the sets were cursed even creepier - but
that's not always the case.
1999's The Matrix is a sci-fi classic, but events that occurred during production led
people to believe in something called "The Curse of the Matrix".Two cast members - Aaliyah
and Gloria Foster - died during filming (in a plane crash and from diabetes respectively),
Keanu Reeves' real-life relationship broke down after the birth of his stillborn child
during production, Reeves himself had to spend his own money to ensure production continued
after mounting costs threatened to bring it to a halt, a number of the special-effects
houses commissioned to produce individual shots went bust - and that's not even everything,
but we'd be talking all day if we tried to cover it all.
Thanks for watching our video about shockingly cursed movie sets.
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