The Twilight Zone movie was supposed to bring the classic 1960s TV series to the big screen – but a helicopter stunt went horrifically wrong, killing actor Vic Morrow and two child actors
A horrific tragedy occurred on a major Hollywood film set that led to the deaths of two children and the beheading of star Vic Morrow. The Twilight Zone was an adaptation of a beloved 1960s series, co-produced and co-directed by Hollywood icon Steven Spielberg, the creative genius behind ET, Jaws, Jurassic Park and Gremlins.
The film comprised various segments helmed by different filmmakers including Spielberg, John Landis, Joe Dante and George Miller. Shot in 1982, this Twilight Zone adaptation was set to feature Vic Morrow, a 1970s icon who achieved stardom following the 1960s series Combat!
Yet Morrow would never live to appear in this production. The performer would perish aged 53 alongside child actors, seven year old Myca Dinh Le and six year old Renee Shin-Yi Chen, in a helicopter stunt that went catastrophically awry, reports the New York Times.
John Landis, not Spielberg, was helming the segment in question. On July 23, 1982, at 2.20am, during the shooting of Landis’s ‘Time Out’ storyline, disaster struck, reports the Mirror.
Shooting on location at Indian Dunes, California, the helicopter involved plummeted. The sequence was captured at night, with its setting designed to mirror Vietnam as the film was positioned during the conflict.
Morrow, who was portraying a bigoted character named Bill Connor, was meant to transport the two youngsters from an abandoned village across a waterway during a US military pursuit scene, with the helicopter scheduled to hover above. The New York Times reported that the production was “poorly planned” and “barely rehearsed”, leading to one of the scene’s planned explosions damaging the helicopter’s rotor blades, which caused the pilot to lose control.
The helicopter then plummeted from the sky and into the river, decapitating Morrow and Le whilst crushing Chen to death. Shockingly, the tragedy was witnessed by the children’s parents, who were present on the set.
The six individuals aboard the helicopter during the crash sustained only minor injuries when it plunged into the riverbed near the Six Flags Magic Mountain Amusement Park. Following the incident, civil and criminal legal action was brought against staff overseeing the shoot, including Landis.
However, the director and four other defendants were cleared of involuntary manslaughter following a nine-month trial. Sixteen prominent directors – including Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, John Huston, George Lucas, Sidney Lumet and Billy Wilder – signed an open letter of support for the filmmaker.
Yet Spielberg was not amongst them and in April 1983 he told the Los Angeles Times: “No movie is worth dying for. I think people are standing up much more now than ever before to producers and directors who ask too much. If something isn’t safe, it’s the right and responsibility of every actor or crew member to yell ‘Cut!'” Le and Chen’s parents took legal action and reached an out-of-court settlement for an undisclosed sum.
Furthermore, in October 1984, the National Transportation Safety Board published its report on the accident, stating that the “probable cause of the accident was the detonation of debris-laden high-temperature special effects explosions too near a low-flying helicopter leading to foreign object damage to one rotor blade and delamination due to heat to the other rotor blade, the separation of the helicopter’s tail rotor assembly, and the uncontrolled descent of the helicopter.
“The proximity of the helicopter (around 25 feet off the ground) to the special effects explosions was due to the failure to establish direct communications and coordination between the pilot, who was in command of the helicopter operation, and the film director, who was in charge of the filming operation.”
Additionally, it emerged that the children’s very presence on set had been unlawful as child labour laws forbade children from working at such late hours, let alone being so close to explosions or a helicopter.
Despite the horrific incident, the film production proceeded, and it remains available for viewing today. Twilight Zone: The Movie hit cinemas in June 1983.