Cursed: The on-set terrors of ill-fated movies

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Cursed: The on-set terrors of ill-fated movies

Car crashes, injured stars, a fire, a stabbing, an arrest – the
latest
Bond film is cursed, surely. It isn't the first. Kaleem Aftab reveals
the on-set terrors of other ill-fated movies


Monday, 16 June 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/film-and-tv/features/...


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The cast and crew of the new James Bond film Quantum of Solace are
beginning to think it is cursed and the film's star Daniel Craig has
been injured several times on set © Getty Images


The filming of Quantum of Solace, the latest James Bond adventure,
has
seen so many on-set accidents that the cast and crew are beginning to
wonder whether the movie is cursed.


It started on 18 April this year when an Aston Martin DBS ended up at
the bottom of Lake Garda after a stuntman charged with delivering the
car to the set lost control on a bend in the road. A week later,
another stuntman was seriously injured when he crashed a car during a
chase sequence. Soon after that, another car was crashed.


Bond himself, Daniel Craig, has also been in the wars. He was rushed
to hospital a few days ago when he sliced open the end of a finger.
He'd already been involved in an incident when his face was cut,
requiring eight stitches. In yet another tumble, it was feared that
he'd broken his ribs.


There's more. An outdoor Bond set was damaged by a fire at Pinewood
Studios. In Austria, a technician was stabbed by his wife while
working on the film. The Mayor of Panama, Carlos Lopez, was arrested
after driving on to the set in an attempt to force the production to
shut down.


In spite of all this, it is premature to say that Quantum of Solace
is
jinxed – most of the incidents have occurred either when high-powered
equipment was being used or during action sequences. It's more likely
that the film's only curse is an unmemorable title.


But there is a long Hollywood tradition of cursed films and a certain
cachet that comes with working on them, especially if it's a
supernatural horror film. This is probably why the Bond crew have
been
so quick to claim the badge of honour.


In some cases – such as Tarkovsky's Stalker, for example – it's a
combination of bad luck and some very bad planning. In others –
anything featuring the late Brandon Lee, Bruce Lee's son, for
instance
– it's individuals who appear to have the hex on them.


The most intriguing film curses are those that do not reveal
themselves until after the project has finished; mysterious, often
tragic occurrences, supposedly caused by evil spirits determined that
the film should never see the light of day. Hollywood hokum? Here are
10 of the spookiest productions.


THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939)


This was one of the earliest film hexes. Margaret Hamilton (the
Wicked
Witch of the West) suffered severe burns when her make-up overheated.
Since then, the legend of the curse has grown and grown, and there
have been several mysterious accidents on theatrical versions of the
story. Those playing the Wicked Witch have been especially unlucky.


THE POLTERGEIST TRILOGY (1982-88)


Four actors attached to the Poltergeist films died within six years.
The most notable death was that of Heather O'Rourke, 12, who played
Carol Anne. O'Rourke went into hospital with what was thought to be
flu and died the next day. Dominique Dunne, 22, was killed by her
jealous boyfriend. Julian Beck, 60 (Detective Kane), died of stomach
cancer. Will Sampson, 53, who played the medicine man, performed an
on-set exorcism; he died a year later with kidney failure. Some say
the spirits of the dead grew agitated when real skeletal remains were
used in filming.


THE CROW (1994)


Schoolfriends of Brandon Lee say he'd had a premonition that he would
die suddenly on a movie set, just as his father, the martial-arts
legend Bruce Lee, did. The Crow had its fair share of on-set
incidents, including fires and accidents, but the death of Lee, eight
days before filming ended, was attributed to the Lee "family curse".
Brandon was shot dead while filming a flashback scene showing how his
character, Eric Draven, really died. He was killed because the metal
tip of one of the dummy bullets had mysteriously pulled loose from
its
brass casing. But could it have been a curse on The Crow that led to
Lee's death? In the spin-off TV series, the veteran stunt co-
ordinator
Marc Akerstream was killed in a freak accident when some debris from
an explosion shot up in the air and struck him on the head.


SUPERMAN (1951 and continuing)


The curse of Superman mainly strikes the actors cast as the good guys
– play one of them, and there's a good chance your career will stall
or you'll suffer serious misfortune. The most famous victims are
George Reeves and Christopher Reeve. George played Superman in the
1950s. In 1959, eight days before he was due to be married, he was
found dead from a gunshot wound, a mystery that provided the plot of
last year's Hollywoodland, starring Ben Affleck. Christopher was
paralysed after being thrown from his horse in 1995. In 2004, he died
from heart failure.


Margot Kidder (Lois Lane) now suffers from bipolar disorder. Marlon
Brando played Superman's dad before a series of tragedies befell his
personal life, involving the imprisonment and death of his son
Christian. Richard Pryor (Superman III), was diagnosed with multiple
sclerosis. The careers of actors Kirk Allen and Dean Cain nosedived
after playing the Man of Steel. Supposedly, it was Jerry Siegel and
Joe Shuster, unhappy with the compensation they received for creating
the character, who cursed the films.


ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968)


Roman Polanski's films in the Sixties were famed for their
investigations into mysterious forces. But it's his story of a
pregnant wife whose baby is sacrificed to the Devil that came back to
haunt him when, in August 1969, Charles Manson murdered Polanski's
pregnant wife Sharon Tate. Indeed, from Repulsion (1965) on, the
parallels between the work of Polanski and the life of Manson become
uncanny. The interest in the occult of director and killer developed
over these years. The curse spreads to the death of John Lennon;
Manson and followers named their death spree "Helter Skelter" after
the Beatles song, and Lennon was killed outside his New York
apartment
building, The Dakota, where Rosemary's Baby was filmed.


THE MATRIX TRILOGY (1999-2003)


The deaths of two cast members – Gloria Foster, who played The Oracle
in the original film, and the 22-year-old singer-turned-actress
Aaliyah, who had filmed a couple of scenes before she died in a plane
crash in the Bahamas – combined with the rumour that Brandon Lee was
originally the Wachowski brothers' first choice to play Neo, have
resulted in claims of a Matrix hoodoo. Perhaps: the trilogy certainly
had millions of people around the world cursing the time they had
wasted watching the appalling sequels.


STALKER (1979)


The production of Andrei Tarkovsky's metaphysical sci-fi classic was
continually beset with problems. In the picture, mysterious and
unfathomable events take place in the Zone. But weird events spilled
over into reality. The film had to be shot twice: the first version
was "lost" when the experimental Kodak film stock being used could
not
be developed. But it was only years later that rumours of a curse
started to appear after many of those working on the film met with
untimely deaths. Part of the action had been shot near a
hydroelectric
station on the river Pirita, near a chemical plant that was releasing
poisonous liquids downstream. The pollution can even be seen floating
down the river in one shot. The film's star Tolya Solonitsyn, its
assistant director Larrisa Tarovskaya and Tarkovsky himself all died
from cancer of the bronchial tube.


THE RING TWO (2005)


A Shinto minister had to be flown in during the shoot of this
American
remake of the Japanese horror movie to perform a purification
ceremony. Life first began to mirror the film's storyline when the
production offices were flooded after a pipe burst. Soon after, the
make-up truck was flooded. Possessed animals feature in the plot,
making it all the more eerie when bees invaded a props truck and a
crew member was attacked by a deer. Director Hideo Nakata, who also
directed the Japanese originals, was used to strange happenings on
his
Ring sets; when making Ringu 2 in 1998, a microphone on the sea
surface seemed to pick up a ghostly voice.


THE OMEN (1976)


The 2005 documentary The Curse of The Omen posited that supernatural
forces were trying to prevent the original 1976 movie about
Christianity's Armageddon prophecies being filmed. On the first day
of
shooting, a car crash injured principal members of the crew. Then the
two aeroplanes carrying screenwriter David Seltzer and actor Gregory
Peck were both struck by lightning. The crew had been due to fly in a
private plane before a last-minute cancellation; the plane crashed
and
killed all on board, as well as the pilot's wife and child who were
in
a car driving on a road below. Two lions attacked and killed a warden
in a safari park after appearing in the film – and the director
Richard Donner's hotel was bombed.


THE EXORCIST (1973)


Considered by many to be the scariest film of all time – and even
scarier is that many say a demon was hard at work trying to stop work
on this film about the Antichrist. Different sources say that between
four and nine people died during filming. Jack McGowran had just
wrapped his part when he died of a heart attack. There are rumours
that Linda Blair, who played Regan MacNeil, had a premonition that a
set member would die a few weeks before he did so. The crew has
subsequently revealed that working on the production was a creepy
experience. The Exorcist curse even struck in cinemas, with reports
of
spectators vomiting, fainting and breaking into hysterics. During the
Italian premiere at the Metropolitan Theatre in Rome, lightning
destroyed a 400-year-old crucifix.