Tragedy as Hollywood actor decapitated and two children killed in 80s stunt gone wrong

The Hollywood star and two child actors aged six and seven lost their lives on set.

Hollywood was rocked by tragedy on the set of Twilight Zone: The Movie, where a horrific accident claimed three lives, including that of star Vic Morrow. The incident remains a dark chapter in cinema history, exposing major failures in safety protocols during the production of the 1980s adaptation of the popular 1960s series.

The disaster resulted in the death of actor Vic Morrow and two young children, sending shockwaves through the industry. The film itself was co-produced and co-directed by Hollywood legend Steven Spielberg, the mastermind behind hits like E.T., Jaws, and Jurassic Park, reports the Mirror.

The film was made up of different segments directed by different directors including Spielberg, John Landis, Joe Dante and George Miller. Filmed in 1982, this Twilight Zone adaptation was to star Vic Morrow, a 1970s superstar who rose to fame after the 1960s series Combat! But Morrow would never make it to star in this film. The actor would die aged 53 alongside child actors, seven-year-old Myca Dinh Le and six-year-old Renee Shin-Yi Chen, in a helicopter stunt which went horrifically wrong, reports the New York Times.

John Landis, not Spielberg, was the director of the segment in question. On July 23, 1982, at 2.20am, during the filming of Landis’s ‘Time Out’ storyline, the tragedy struck. Filming on location at Indian Dunes, California, the helicopter involved crashed. The scene was filmed at night, with its backdrop intended to resemble Vietnam as the movie was set during the war. Morrow, who was playing a racist character called Bill Connor, was supposed to carry the two children from a deserted village across a river during a US army chase scene, with the helicopter set to loom overhead.

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 fell out of the sky and into the river, decapitating Morrow and Le while crushing Chen to death. Horrifically, the accident was witnessed by the children’s parents, who were present on the set.

The six people aboard the helicopter during the crash were only slightly injured when it went into the river bed 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. But the director and four other defendants were acquitted of involuntary manslaughter after a nine-month trial. Sixteen significant 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.

But Spielberg was not one of 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!’”

The parents of Le and Chen sued and settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. Moreover, in October 1984, the National Transportation Safety Board issued its report on the accident, citing 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.”

What’s more, it was discovered that the children’s mere presence on the set had been illegal because child labour law regulations prohibited children from working at that late hour, not to mention being in such proximity to explosions or a helicopter.

Despite the tragedy – the film production went ahead – and you can watch it to this day. Twilight Zone: The Movie was released in June 1983.