28 Wildly Dark Behind-The-Scenes Facts That'll Make You View These Movies Totally Differently

NOTE: There are mentions of animal cruelty and death in this post.

1. One of the darkest on-set events to happen in Hollywood history is the helicopter accident on the set of Twilight Zone: The Movie. It was the last day of shooting, and star Vic Morrow, along with child actors Renee Shin-Yi Chen and Myca Dinh Le (ages six and seven), were shooting a Vietnam War battle scene. While running from the helicopter, it lost control and crashed into the three actors, killing them. The scene was deleted from the final film, but the overall segment starring Vic Morrow was still included when the film was released in 1983.

Warner Bros. / courtesy Everett Collection

The children were not even supposed to be on set — it was 2:20 a.m., and there was no child welfare worker on set to protest the children working so close to explosions and a helicopter. Director John Landis and producer George Folsey Jr. had reportedly tried to cheat child labor laws by using children of acquaintances and keeping them out of paperwork, paying them in cash. At one point (before the accident), Landis apparently joked, "We're all going to jail!" Landis and Folsey, along with three others, were charged with involuntary manslaughter but were later acquitted.

2. The shoot had flouted safety restrictions before. According to crew members, Landis also decided earlier in the shoot that real shotguns and live ammunition would be used in a scene. After seeing the shotguns, Morrow initially refused to film but was coaxed back into the shot by Landis. According to crew members, Morrow then had to run to avoid the gunfire.

3. Real ammunition was also used in the 1985 film Come and See, and the actors were shot at with live rounds, with bullets apparently passing inches from their heads. There's also a scene where a cow is shot with a machine gun — this really happened. And Aleksey Kravchenko, who was 14 when he began filming, was reportedly forced to adhere to a "starvation diet" during parts of filming in order to appear emaciated.

4. Speaking of animal cruelty on set, the tiger in Life of Pi almost died during filming. An on-set monitor wrote in a leaked email, "Last week we almost fucking killed King [the Bengal used in the film when the CGI version was not realistic enough] in the water tank. This one take with him went really bad and he got lost trying to swim to the side. Damn near drowned. I think this goes without saying but don't mention it to anyone, especially the office! I have downplayed the fuck out of it."

5. Using wild animals in movies — especially big cats — has an extremely sordid history. Perhaps most famously, a bunch of the actors involved in Roar (which featured "132 big cats, one elephant, three aoudad sheep, and a collection of ostriches, flamingos, marabou, storks, and black swans," according to star Tippi Hedren) were injured by the animals. Writer/director/producer/Tippi's then-husband Noel Marshall literally had to star because no other male star wanted to work with that many dangerous animals. The other stars were Hedren's daughter, Melanie Griffith, and two of Marshall's sons.

Griffith was mauled so badly she needed plastic surgery. Hedren herself got gangrene and needed skin grafts. Marshall contracted blood poisoning. Cinematographer Jan de Bont literally had his scalp torn off (he survived). However, no animals were reportedly harmed.

6. The same cannot be said for the monkey star of the Every Which Way But Loose sequel Any Which Way You Can, who allegedly died after being beaten by his trainer. Author Dale Peterson and chimp expert Jane Goodall claimed the chimp had suffered abuse for years, originally having been trained using mace and a pipe wrapped in newspaper. Before filming began, a book by Peterson and Goodall claimed he'd been beaten to make him more docile. When his work was almost done on the film, he was reportedly caught stealing donuts on set. He was then allegedly beaten for 20 minutes with an axe handle and died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

7. And do you remember the Disney movie Snow Buddies? The filmmakers brought in 30 golden retriever puppies to use in the direct-to-DVD movie, but they used only 15 in the initial filming. Why? The other 15 puppies were sick with giardia and coccidia. It turns out the puppies were only six weeks old, two weeks shy of the age requirements for using puppies in film (which are in place because younger dogs shouldn't be separated from their mothers and are at increased risk of illness). Parvovirus had also been rampant in the area for six months and infected many of the puppies. Five of the puppies ended up dying.

Twenty-eight completely new puppies were brought in and also exposed to the virus, though this time, none died. The AHA refused to grant the film use of the phrase "no animals were harmed in the making of this film," deeming the animal treatment in the film as "unacceptable." The credits instead read, "American Humane monitored the animal action."

8. This isn't Disney's first instance of animal cruelty. A number of lemmings were allegedly purposely killed in the 1958 Disney documentary White Wilderness, popularizing the myth that the rodents engage in mass suicide. As it turns out, the filmmakers reportedly pushed the lemmings off the cliff to fake the shot. In fact, kids were allegedly paid to capture and bring lemmings to Canada (where lemmings are not native) in order for them to be killed for the film.

9. But we can't speak about animal cruelty without discussing Cannibal Holocaust. The film was so horrifically violent and offensive that in Italy, director Ruggero Deodato was charged with obscenity and later murder after it was suspected that some of the actors had actually died in the film. The actors literally had to come to court to prove they were alive. Deodato was also charged with animal cruelty (though it was later overturned) because multiple animals had been killed onscreen.

10. The notorious flop The Conqueror wasn't just famous for being genuinely terrible — it also may have killed dozens who worked on it. The film was shot near a nuclear testing site, where a high amount of fallout accumulated right near the movie location. Star John Wayne was reportedly aware of this fact — he apparently took his sons to look at the massive radiation spikes registered on a Geiger counter. The film was shot for thirteen weeks, then subjected the cast and crew to additional exposure when director Howard Hughes shipped in 60 tons of the radioactive dirt for reshoots.

Twenty-five years later, over 40% of the cast and crew (91 people) had developed cancer. About half that amount died, including all of the movie's leads. John Wayne himself developed cancer and died, though that also could have been because he was a heavy smoker. One of his sons, who had visited the set, even died.

11. Something similar may have happened with Stalker, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. The film was shot in an abandoned hydroelectric power station in Estonia, downstream from a chemical power plant. Tarkovsky, his wife Larissa, and star Anatoly Solonitsyn all later died of cancer, which sound recordist Vladimir Sharun believes was caused by the radiation exposure on the set.

12. Jeepers Creepers was ruined for me when I learned that its director, Victor Salva, had previously been convicted of the sexual assault of the 12-year-old star of his film Clownhouse (which was funded by Francis Ford Coppola), as well as of filming the encounter and possessing child sexual abuse images. He was only in jail for 15 months before going on to find major success in Hollywood, most notably for the Jeepers Creepers series, which was in part produced by Coppola.

13. Léon: the Professional (originally released as The Professional in America) is made all the more creepy when you know that it was likely inspired by a real relationship the director, Luc Besson, had with a teenager. Luc Besson was 31 when he began dating a 15-year-old named Maïwenn, who he had known since she was 12. The two had a child when Maïwenn was 16 and married. She later said, "When Luc Besson did Léon, the story of a 13-year-old girl in love with an older man, it was very inspired by us since it was written while our story started. But no media made the link."

The film features a (platonic yet suggestive) relationship between a hitman and a 12-year-old (played by Natalie Portman in her breakout role), but there are explicit sexual references, such as Portman's character Mathilde telling Léon that she'd like him to take her virginity and also her copying Marilyn Monroe's seductive version of "Happy Birthday." There was also meant to be a scene where Léon walks in on Mathilde in the shower.

14. One of the most disturbing behind-the-scenes facts about Candyman is that real bees were used in the scene where bees emerge from Candyman's mouth. Star Tony Todd wore only a dental dam to protect himself so the bees would not fly directly down his throat, but he was still stung many times. "I negotiated a bonus of $1,000 for every sting during the bee scene. And I got stung 23 times. Everything that's worth making has to involve some sort of pain," Todd revealed.

15. A lesser-known creepy fact about the film is that Virginia Madsen, who played Helen, was hypnotized before scenes with Todd to put her into a trance. It was effective — Madsen said that after being hypnotized, she "really couldn't see the crew," and "all the lights became very, very blurry." In fact, it worked so well that it freaked Madsen out — after she couldn't even remember a full day of shooting, she refused to be hypnotized again.

16. Similarly, Possession director Andrzej Żuławski reportedly "hypnotized his performers and put them into a fugue state before shooting certain scenes." Star Isabelle Adjani suffered a mental breakdown after seeing a finished cut of the body horror–heavy film about a married couple's breakup that turns bloody, according to Żuławski. Adjani apparently said it took her years of therapy to recover from the role, which included a graphic miscarriage scene.

The movie's other star, Sam Neill, called Possession "the most extreme film I've ever made, in every possible respect," saying Żuławski "asked of us things I wouldn't and couldn't go to now. And I think I only just escaped that film with my sanity barely intact," he continued.

17. First AD Beau Marks revealed that on the set of Predator, they literally had to hire a bodyguard for actor Sonny Landham...because they were afraid he would become violent. "Sonny ... was crazy," Marks said. "We ended up having to hire a bodyguard to protect the world from Sonny and to keep him in check. Because if he started drinking all bets were off." Apparently, the insurance companies for the movie required that the bodyguard be hired after he was found at a club "on the floor, crawling around the floor, and either he was touching or kissing women's legs."

18. Multiple films have used real skeletons rather than fake ones, including Frankenstein, Poltergeist, and Dawn of the Dead. The last example is one of the most interesting — the props department had been told the skeleton was fake, only to discover later on that it was a 30-something woman who had died a century before when a police officer noticed it looked a little too real in the display window of a props store.

19. Some films even use real cadavers (aka, dead bodies) — sometimes unknowingly, like in the case of Apocalypse Now. When police investigated, they found that the cadavers were real and actually being supplied by grave robbers. In fact, local authorities had to investigate everyone on set because the bodies were unidentified, and the people could have been killed by someone on set.

20. Final Destination reportedly used real footage from the TWA 800 wreckage (a 1996 plane crash that was one of the most deadly in history) for the plane crash scene in the movie. In the 1996 crash, there had been a group of American high school students on a class trip to France, just like in the film.

21. After Bruce Lee died before filming was completed on 1978's Game of Death, the filmmakers decided to create a new scene by incorporating footage from the actor's funeral — meaning his corpse was actually used in the film.

22. An even worse example is the Hong Kong film Men Behind the Sun, which allegedly used real footage from a child's autopsy.

23. Disaster almost struck during this Pearl Harbor scene from Tora! Tora! Tora!, which featured people running from an exploding plane. This wasn't supposed to happen, and the stuntpeople running from the flames were really running for their lives. "Shrapnel was flying everywhere," stuntperson Phil Adams said, describing what it was like to film the sequence. "It was probably some of the best footage that we shot that day."

24. The ending of the thriller Sliver almost caused the death of three people when they accidentally crashed into a volcano. The film was supposed to end with Sharon Stone and William Baldwin's characters' helicopter flying into a volcano. They filmed right above Kīlauea in Hawaii to get the footage, with pilot Craig Hosking flying. He hit the lip of the volcano and crashed. Hosking was rescued immediately, but it took two days to find director of photography Michael A. Benson and visual effects cameraperson Chris Duddy. In the end, they were all safely extricated from the volcano. The footage was used in test screenings, but after a negative audience response, the ending was changed.

25. Finally, let's end on some messed-up facts about The Wizard of Oz. To make her look younger in the film, star Judy Garland was reportedly put on a diet of black coffee, chicken soup, diet pills, cigarettes (80 a day), and amphetamines. Her ex-husband Sid Luft also claimed that the 40-something munchkin actors would grope her on set by putting their hands under her dress. For her starring role, Garland was reportedly only paid $500 a week, which was closer to Toto's salary than any of the male leads.

26. Garland wasn't the only one to have a dark experience on the set of the children's classic. Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch of the West, suffered second and third-degree burns during the scene where she leaves Munchkinland in a burst of flame. The trapdoor malfunctioned, causing her to be caught in the fire.

The green paint used as her makeup was also toxic. She could only drink through a straw when it was on (and couldn't eat at all) because it was too dangerous to risk her ingesting it. This was especially concerning when she was burned, and the toxic makeup had to be quickly removed from her wounds. "They were literally clawing at her face because it would have scarred her for life," Hamilton's daughter described, remembering that she was bandaged "like a mummy" while recovering. The studio also apparently called the next day, asking when she'd be back at work.

27. And Buddy Ebsen, who originally was set to play the Tin Man, almost died due to his on-set makeup. "They dusted his face and hands with aluminum powder…real aluminum dust," his daughter Kiki Ebsen revealed. "It was in the air. And because the lights were hot, his makeup melted several times a day. So he had to be reapplied with aluminum dust. And he inhaled it over time. It coated the inside of his lungs like paint. He could not get oxygen to his blood, but he didn't know this was happening. He just knew that he was cramping up [on] set and during shooting."

Scared to lose the role, Ebsen said nothing — but 10 days later, he woke up unable to breathe and was hospitalized. He had to use an oxygen tank for two weeks, and it took another six weeks for him to recover. "He actually couldn't get oxygen to the blood, and his blood fermented. The doctor described it as … a breakdown of the nervous system," Kiki said. He was then told to get "the hell back to work" — and when he couldn't, he was replaced with Jack Haley.

28. The snow in the film was made of potentially lethal asbestos. Other movies that used asbestos as snow include White Christmas, It's a Wonderful Life, and Citizen Kane. In fact, multiple actors died in part from inhaling asbestos on set — most famously Steve McQueen.

His death has been partially attributed (even by McQueen himself) to the frequent use of asbestos on film sets (though his military service and racing suits may also have been to blame). He died a year after being diagnosed with mesothelioma.

What's the darkest Hollywood fact you know? Let us know in the comments!