It takes a lot of work from a lot of people to make a big Hollywood blockbuster.
While long days and arduous labor are par for the course, a film set is usually a well-oiled
machine.
But humans are imperfect, and life is unpredictable.
On rare occasions, tragedy strikes.
Actors get injured, stuntmen pay the ultimate sacrifice, and crew members end up in harm's
way.
Here's a look at a few on-set incidents that almost cost crew members their lives.
Sliver
The success of Basic Instinct in 1992 left filmgoers with a taste for more erotic thrillers
starring Sharon Stone.
When Sliver hit theaters in 1993, it offered a fairly straightforward mix of intrigue and
eroticism to tell a story about the rampant voyeurism in a fancy New York apartment building.
But the film was also supposed to include some aerial footage of a Hawaiian volcano.
According to the LA Times, during the shoot, a helicopter lost power and crashed on the
floor of a crater, a couple of hundred feet from a pond of molten lava.
A helicopter team rescued the pilot a few hours later, while rainstorms and toxic volcano
fumes delayed the recovery of the cameramen.
The next day, one of them crawled out to safety, while the other one had to spend two days
on a small ledge before his airlift.
Point Break
In 2015, the Hollywood remake machine spent an astounding $105 million to give the world
another take on the 1991 action thriller Point Break.
Shortly after filming began in Tahiti in September 2014, one of the stunt surfers suffered a
totally bogus wipeout and severely hurt himself.
The production hired Laurie Towner, one of the most successful and famous surfers in
Australia, to film the surfing shots for actor Luke Bracey.
According to Australia's News.com, a giant, punishing wave gave Turner what he described
as "a good old fashion flogging."
He ended up with a broken jaw, stitches in his lip and eyelid, whiplash to his neck and
back, and wounds that just missed an artery.
Resident Evil: The Final Chapter
2017's Resident Evil: The Final Chapter is probably the last film in the Resident Evil
series, and it is almost certainly the last for veteran stunt performer Olivia Jackson.
On the first day of shooting, Jackson, standing in for star Milla Jovovich, was all set to
film a simple stunt involving a motorcycle.
She had to drive the bike in a straight line while an oncoming camera on the arm of a mechanical
crane would lift up and sweep over her.
She told Glamour that she did her part, but the camera didn't do what it was supposed
to do.
The arm failed to clear and struck Jackson in the head and upper body.
Because the character wouldn't be wearing a helmet, neither was Jackson.
Skin was torn clean off her face, and she suffered a severed neck artery.
She fell into a coma for two weeks, and she was left with a huge scar across her face
and a paralyzed left arm, which was later amputated.
Charlie Wilson's War
2007's Charlie Wilson's War concerns the namesake congressman's secret drive to fund the CIA's
hush-hush anti-Soviet Union tactics in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Most of the movie consists of conversations, but there is a little bit of action, including
a scene in which some stinger missiles were supposed to shoot off a helicopter.
While testing the device at Downey Studios in Los Angeles, one of those stage missiles
unexpectedly exploded, injuring the special effects assistant handling it, putting him
in critical condition for a time, according to the Associated Press.
Blues Brothers 2000
1980's The Blues Brothers features one of the most spectacular stunts in movie history.
Police chase Jake and Elwood and their "Bluesmobile" through a Chicago mall.
Filmed at the abandoned Dixie Square Shopping Centre, the production wrecked the place,
along with 103 cars.
Amazingly, no serious injuries resulting from the controlled chaos were reported.
Blues Brothers 2000 tried to recapture the magic of the original with some car chases
and crashes.
Unfortunately, as Canadian site Jam! reported, this time people got hurt.
While filming a smash-up, stunt performer Bob Minor endured a serious head injury.
In an unrelated incident, the production enlisted a towing company to remove an old car out
of a river, because they needed the waterway clear to drive another car into it.
The towing company got the car out with its heavy machinery, only to drop it onto a crew
member's leg, which was later amputated.
Roar
Tippi Hedren is best known for starring in Alfred Hitchcock's classic The Birds, but
later shifted away from a movie career and into a life advocating for big cats.
She even founded an 80-acre animal sanctuary in California.
Hedren apparently didn't harbor a grudge against lions and other large kitties after the disastrous,
somehow not-fatal shoot for the 1981 movie Roar.
Ironically, the film is about a family terrorized by wild animals, and it's legendary in Hollywood
for being extraordinarily dangerous.
That lore was salaciously exploited in the marketing for Roar.
The posters promised, "No animals were harmed in the making of this film.
70 cast and crew members were."
It was a harrowing time, to say the least.
However, Hedren stresses that the 70 number is a bit overstated.
Speaking to Variety, she said,
"I think there were seven people that were hurt, but not seriously."
Hedren herself got hurt, as did her daughter and costar Melanie Griffith.
Also, her husband at the time, director Noel Marshall was in the hospital so many times
that she joked that "they were going to name a wing after him."