The world of film production isn’t always smiles and rainbows! Not only do filmmakers have to content with deep troubling topics and themes in their work, but sometimes productions seem to be cursed from day one! Check out these horrific incidents which occurred on horror production sets!
Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983)
In 1983 on the set of The Twilight Zone, Vic Morrow was killed. But what makes this even more scary, is that he predicted his own death a year before shooting the film! He famously took out a $5 million life insurance policy on himself, stating to his family that he believed something bad was going to happen on one of his upcoming movies. Sure enough, a year later while filming a scene, a helicopter crashed, killing him along with two child actors. On the same movie set it was reported that movie concept artist mistakenly drew a burned-out helicopter in the middle of a river in one of his drawings.
Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
When shooting started for this horror film, it very quickly started to feel real! During production, producer William Castle received an anonymous letter saying he would “slowly rot during a long and painful illness”. Not long after, Castle collapsed and had to go into surgery and went on to have a problem he would have to combat for months. However, that isn’t everything! The musical composer Krzysztof Komeda fell and died from a hematoma and the entire cast became ill with food poisoning one night.
The Omen (1976)
The Omen is one of the classics in the horror genre, and there were many tragedies that happened during its filming! The first incident came when the scriptwriter’s plane was struck by lightning whilst travelling to the film’s location. But what’s even more shocking is that it happened again! An airplane in which headline star Gregory Peck and the movie’s executive producer were travelling in was also struck by lightning in a separate incident. But surprisingly, neither is the biggest tragedy to fall on the cast and crew. The crew had decided to use a private airplane to get from one film location to another. However, just before the plane took off with a number of crew onboard, something went wrong and it crashed onto a road, colliding with traffic. All 11 people involved in the accident were killed.