Vic Morrow

[Adam H. Kerman]

I just realized. We're coming up on the 30th anniversary of the death of
Vic Morrow, best known for Combat.

During production of post-series theatrical movie of The Twilight Zone,
Morrow and two child actors were in a low-flying helicopter, just a few
feet off the ground, through an area in which pyrotechnics were being
set off.

After reading about the deaths years ago, the explosives seemed like a
terrible idea that couldn't have possibly been set off safely. Couldn't
they have done them in editing?

[BTR1701]

"Adam H. Kerman" <a...@chinet.com> wrote:
> I just realized. We're coming up on the 30th anniversary of the death of
> Vic Morrow, best known for Combat.
>
> During production of post-series theatrical movie of The Twilight Zone,
> Morrow and two child actors were in a low-flying helicopter, just a few
> feet off the ground, through an area in which pyrotechnics were being
> set off.

Actually, Morrow and the kids weren't in the chopper. They were on the
ground beneath it:

"Morrow, Le, and Chen were filming a scene for the Vietnam sequence in
which their characters attempt to escape from a pursuing U.S. Army
helicopter out of a deserted Vietnamese village. The helicopter was
hovering at about 25 feet above them when pyrotechnic explosions damaged it
and caused it to crash on top of them, killing all three instantly. Morrow
was decapitated along with one of the child actors."

[Adam H. Kerman]

BTR1701 <addre...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>"Adam H. Kerman" <a...@chinet.com> wrote:

>>I just realized. We're coming up on the 30th anniversary of the death of
>>Vic Morrow, best known for Combat.

>>During production of post-series theatrical movie of The Twilight Zone,
>>Morrow and two child actors were in a low-flying helicopter, just a few
>>feet off the ground, through an area in which pyrotechnics were being
>>set off.

>Actually, Morrow and the kids weren't in the chopper. They were on the
>ground beneath it:

Right. Thanks.

[Ubiquitous]

In article <jsbi76$cb9$2...@news.albasani.net>, a...@chinet.com wrote:

>I just realized. We're coming up on the 30th anniversary of the death of
>Vic Morrow, best known for Combat.

I think he's better known for his role as Mel in Alice.

--
"If Barack Obama isn't careful, he will become the Jimmy Carter of the
21st century."

[Adam H. Kerman]

Ubiquitous <web...@polaris.net> wrote:
>a...@chinet.com wrote:

>>I just realized. We're coming up on the 30th anniversary of the death of
>>Vic Morrow, best known for Combat.

>I think he's better known for his role as Mel in Alice.

Vic Tayback

[Michael OConnor]

Victor "Vic" Morrow was another one of those perpetual special guest
stars on every single cop/detective show on TV in the 70's, along with
Leslie Nielsen, John Vernon, Jack Cassidy (until his death), James
Olson, Darren McGavin (when he wasn't starring in the Night Stalker),
and about a dozen other 50-ish actors. He never made the transition
to feature films, unlike his daughter, Jennifer Jason Leigh.

[Horace LaBadie]

In article
<3f9ae4df-fa46-4937...@t8g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>,

Twilight Zone sort of cut short his movie career.

[number6]

On Jun 26, 8:44 am, Horace LaBadie <hwlabadi...@nospam.highstream.net>
wrote:
> In article
> <3f9ae4df-fa46-4937-bc7f-4145f42ef...@t8g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>,

>  Michael OConnor <mpoconn...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> > Victor "Vic" Morrow was another one of those perpetual special guest
> > stars on every single cop/detective show on TV in the 70's, along with
> > Leslie Nielsen, John Vernon, Jack Cassidy (until his death), James
> > Olson, Darren McGavin (when he wasn't starring in the Night Stalker),
> > and about a dozen other 50-ish actors.  He never made the transition
> > to feature films, unlike his daughter, Jennifer Jason Leigh.
>
> Twilight Zone sort of cut short his movie career.

Yep no matter how you slice it ...

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On Jun 26, 1:44 am, "Adam H. Kerman" <a...@chinet.com> wrote:

> After reading about the deaths years ago, the explosives seemed like a
> terrible idea that couldn't have possibly been set off safely. Couldn't
> they have done them in editing?

Presumably the special effects folks believed they could be set off
safely. Low level and tiny 'explosives are used all the time on
sets. Indeed, if the books I read were correct, they even have tiny
charges "sqibs"* placed near a person's body (something I find hard to
believe). In The Godfather, supposedly there was a tiny charge placed
in the outer lens of someone's eyeglasses to simulate being shot
through his glasses.

One would have to read the actual authoritative report on the accident
to get the details on what was intended to happy and what went wrong.
Undoubtedly, safety rules were revised as a result of that accident.
Filmmaking books refer to that accident to cite the need for safety
practices on the set, especially when using pyrotechnics.

Using helicopters does have a risk. In NYC, radio listeners got to
hear live a traffic report helicopter crash. In Phila, a helicopter
trying to visually inspect an airplane in trouble got too close.
Both aircraft crashed killing a senator and schoolchildren on the
ground.


*SQUIB: These small explosives can cause a rapid expansion of gases,
for example, and they are the force behind air bags in cars. Squibs
are also used in special effects for film and stage; one common use of
squibs is as fake bullets which will explode blood packs worn by
actors to make it look as though the actor has been hit.

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-pyrotechnics.htm

[tomcervo]

Landis yelling "LOWER! LOWER!" to the helo crew probably didn't help.
Fun trivia question: Which Executive Producer walked away from the
whole thing like he had NO IDEA what was happening on the set of the
picture he was micro-managing?

In a lighter vein, look up Eli Wallach's account of what happened when
he ignored Eastwood's warning about lax safety standards on the set of
GBU.

[Rhino]

"BTR1701" <addre...@invalid.invalid> wrote in message
news:1473335833362385703.247664...@news.giganews.com...

Assuming Morrow was playing an American - he'd have trouble passing for
Vietnamese - why would his character be _fleeing_ a pursuing US Army
helicopter? Wouldn't an American military unit generally be considered the
exact opposite of an enemy to an American in Vietnam?

Or was the helicopter possessed by anti-American zombies or something? I
never saw the movie so forgive me for asking....

--
Rhino

[Rhino]

"Michael OConnor" <mpoco...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:3f9ae4df-fa46-4937...@t8g2000yqd.googlegroups.com...

Actually, he got his start as an actor in live theatre, then got a major
role in the feature Blackboard Jungle (1955) before eventually moving on to
TV. IMDB has much more about him:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0607558/

[Michael Black]

He wasn't playing an American, according to wikipedia, he was playinga
racist American somehow becoming the people he hates (such as a black
man), so he was playing a white racists living the life of a Vietnamese at
the time of the incident.

Michael

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On Jun 26, 1:44 am, "Adam H. Kerman" <a...@chinet.com> wrote:

> Couldn't
> they have done them in editing?

CGI special effects was far less developed in 1982 than now.

[EGK]

It's The Twilight Zone. Morrow was playing a bigot/racist who spouts a lot
of prejudiced insults in a bar. When he leaves the bar he enters The
Twilight zone and proceeds to take on the ethnicities of those he's been
railing against. It's been a while since I saw the movie but he also gets
placed in occupied France during WWII as a jewish man being hunted by the
Nazis. And as a black man in the south about to be lynched by KKK members.

[Horace LaBadie]

In article <Pine.LNX.4.64.12...@darkstar.example.net>,

Similar to the TZ episode, A Quality of Mercy, in which a gung-ho young
US Army Lt., played by Dean Stockwell, gets a glimpse of war through the
eyes of his Japanese counterpart during the final days of WWII.
Stockwell gets transformed into a Japanese Lt.

[Invid Fan]

In article <jsbi76$cb9$2...@news.albasani.net>, Adam H. Kerman

<a...@chinet.com> wrote:

> After reading about the deaths years ago, the explosives seemed like a
> terrible idea that couldn't have possibly been set off safely. Couldn't
> they have done them in editing?

Badly, yes. Look at the explosion of Jabba's ship in Return of the
Jedi. A better way would have been to work with perspective tricks on
set, setting the pyros off way behind or in front of the actors.

--
Chris Mack "If we show any weakness, the monsters will get cocky!"
'Invid Fan' - 'Yokai Monsters Along With Ghosts'

[Adam H. Kerman]

EGK <m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>"Rhino" <no_offline_c...@example.com> wrote:

>>Assuming [Vic] Morrow was playing an American [in The Twilight Zone
>>movie] - he'd have trouble passing for Vietnamese - why would his

>>character be _fleeing_ a pursuing US Army helicopter? Wouldn't an
>>American military unit generally be considered the exact opposite of
>>an enemy to an American in Vietnam?

>>Or was the helicopter possessed by anti-American zombies or something? I
>>never saw the movie so forgive me for asking....

>It's The Twilight Zone. Morrow was playing a bigot/racist who spouts a lot
>of prejudiced insults in a bar. When he leaves the bar he enters The
>Twilight zone and proceeds to take on the ethnicities of those he's been
>railing against. It's been a while since I saw the movie but he also gets
>placed in occupied France during WWII as a jewish man being hunted by the
>Nazis. And as a black man in the south about to be lynched by KKK members.

I refused to see the movie, but I thought they completely changed the plot
after the deaths.

[Adam H. Kerman]

Huh?

There weren't any. They would have done it however it was done in the '50's.
Weren't they still editing on film in the early '80's?

[Adam H. Kerman]

Invid Fan <in...@loclanet.com> wrote:
>Adam H. Kerman <a...@chinet.com> wrote:

>>After reading about the deaths years ago, the explosives seemed like a
>>terrible idea that couldn't have possibly been set off safely. Couldn't
>>they have done them in editing?

>Badly, yes. Look at the explosion of Jabba's ship in Return of the
>Jedi. A better way would have been to work with perspective tricks on
>set, setting the pyros off way behind or in front of the actors.

Thanks. It's not like Hollywood had never done war movies before.

[Michael Black]

Hey, "Tron" came out about now in 1982.

For some reason, there were a string of movies I remember, or maybe it's
simply that I remember they came out in 1982.

"Tron", "Bladerunner" "ET", "FireFox". THat's a short list, but some
months back I started realizing quite a few movies I remember came out
that year. "Gandhi".

Michael

[Invid Fan]

In article <jsd28q$h4e$4...@news.albasani.net>, Adam H. Kerman

They recut it using the footage they had, body doubles, etc. Same plot,
but no vietnam sequence or at nothing from that final day of shooting.

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On Jun 26, 3:25 pm, "Adam H. Kerman" <a...@chinet.com> wrote:

I think still on film in the early 1980s. I believe Star Trek/Next
Generation was an early user in the late 1980s, as was Xena/WP in the
mid 1990s.

Around 1980 I attended a lecture by a Star Trek principal. Someone
asked that, since S/T was so popular, why couldn't it return to TV?
The answer was that it was simply too expensive to do for TV (as
opposed to the movies). Obviously that changed by the late 1980s when
Next Gen was born. In those years personal and workstation computer
power was growing rapidly.


According to filmmaking books, whether to use CGI or more traditional
ways of generating special effects is still a judgement call based on
quality and cost.

When I watch the original Star Trek today, the sets look to me to be
obviously cheap, basically paper mache and colored lights. (I thought
"Val" was a joke). But, do I see that because the sets were cheap,
or, is it because every book on S/T talks about their cost
limitations, so I'm expecting it?

I never cared for ST/Next Gen partly because the image looked very
'cold' to me. The old S/T had more saturated brighter colors, as was
the style of that era.

[Invid Fan]

In article
<914d9d2e-9afe-431a...@n16g2000vbn.googlegroups.com>,

<hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:

> On Jun 26, 3:25 pm, "Adam H. Kerman" <a...@chinet.com> wrote:

> > There weren't any. They would have done it however it was done in the '50's.
> > Weren't they still editing on film in the early '80's?
>
> I think still on film in the early 1980s. I believe Star Trek/Next
> Generation was an early user in the late 1980s, as was Xena/WP in the
> mid 1990s.
>

Next Gen Trek used very little CGI. Babylon 5 was the show that really
brought it to TV, the point where the company doing the effects was
bought and did the CGI on later DS9 seasons.

> Around 1980 I attended a lecture by a Star Trek principal. Someone
> asked that, since S/T was so popular, why couldn't it return to TV?
> The answer was that it was simply too expensive to do for TV (as
> opposed to the movies). Obviously that changed by the late 1980s when
> Next Gen was born. In those years personal and workstation computer
> power was growing rapidly.
>

No, I don't think that was it. On the technical side, the big change
was to do all the special effects in video, instead of on film. While
the pilot was done by ILM, the later stuff had them doing everything in
house. They even found it easier to film new ship scenes instead of
trying to reuse footage from old episodes (which had been the original
plan, and done on shows like Battlestar Galactica).

On the budget front, the big change was the syndication market. Next
Gen never made money on new episodes: at one point I think the numbers
were each new one cost $1.6 million, and brought in $1 million from
stations airing it. The profit came once they had enough episodes to
air them 5 days a week, which is why you saw that almost the day after
season three finished. They wouldn't be able to do this if it was a
network show, but the independent stations airing the daily episodes
would be the same ones airing the new one, so there would be no
conflict of interest.

[William December Starr]

In article <f1bad559-50da-4f8c...@d6g2000pbt.googlegroups.com>,

tomcervo <tomc...@aol.com> said:

> Landis yelling "LOWER! LOWER!" to the helo crew probably didn't
> help. Fun trivia question: Which Executive Producer walked away
> from the whole thing like he had NO IDEA what was happening on the
> set of the picture he was micro-managing?

The IMDb's credit list says:

Produced by

Jon Davison .... associate producer
Jon Davison .... producer (segment 3)
Michael Finnell .... associate producer
Michael Finnell .... producer (segment 3)
George Folsey Jr. .... associate producer: prologue and segment 1
Kathleen Kennedy .... associate producer
Kathleen Kennedy .... producer (segment 2)
John Landis .... producer
Frank Marshall .... executive producer
Steven Spielberg .... producer

...but I'm gonna guess you mean Spielberg anyway because, really,
who else in that list would make for a fun trivia question?

(Hmm, the 1989 ABC revival of "Columbo" had an episode, "Murder,
Smoke and Shadows" (27 Feb 1989), in which the killer was very
clearly based on Spielberg, and he'd committed the murder to try to
keep covered up an incident in his late teens when he'd gotten a
friend accidentally killed in a dangerous stunt during the shooting
of a homemade movie. Hmm.)

-- wds

[Remysun]

On Jun 26, 12:25 pm, EGK <m...@privacy.net> wrote:

> It's The Twilight Zone.  Morrow was playing a bigot/racist who spouts a lot
> of prejudiced insults in a bar.   When he leaves the bar he enters The
> Twilight zone and proceeds to take on the ethnicities of those he's been
> railing against.    It's been a while since I saw the movie but he also gets
> placed in occupied France during WWII as a jewish man being hunted by the
> Nazis.   And as a black man in the south about to be lynched by KKK members.

Takes on? Rambo takes on. It sounds like he becomes.