I had always heard that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a pretty bad production, reading the trivia page at IMDB certainly seems to confirm it
*Eyes Wide Shut * Stanley Kubrick’s last film seemed to take forever. I recall interviews where the cast was about ready to walk. Kubrick was notorious for running late and over budget. He was never satisfied with a shot. etc.
The physical conditions weren’t bad (unless walking around in S&M outfits and masks bothered them). But, the repeated takes and delays were reportedly agonizing.
“March of the Penguins” must have been a real joy to work on.
It was amazing to watch, though, and Morgan Freeman’s mellow narration made it all the better.
The African Queen. According to its IMDb page: Press materials and contemporary articles detailed the perils of shooting on location in Africa, including dysentery, malaria, contaminated drinking water, and several close brushes with wild animals and poisonous snakes. Most of the cast and crew were sick for much of the filming.
ETA that I meant to include a link. Here ya go.
The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996) was famously miserable shoot, both because of the steamy North Queensland location, and for the all the hair-pulling among the directors (note the plural) and the volatile stars Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer. More details.
And I understand the desert scenes in Star Wars were pretty miserable for all concerned, due to the extreme heat. (Imagine being inside a droid costume under such circumstances.) The heat played hell with equipment, too, melting rubber and plastic bits.
During Apocalypse ,Martin Sheen had a heart attack at the age of 36. That seems pretty rough.
Oh, and speaking of Herzog, the production of Fitzcarraldo was famously miserable as well:
IIRC, the big multi-million dollar set for Waterworld sink midway through.
The climbers who were filming the IMAX film “Everest” had to stop to join in the search for the victims of the 1996 Everest disaster.
Good pick.
In a reversal of circumstances, Frank Capra stopped making movies after* A Pocketful of Miracles *because the star Glenn Ford drove him crazy on the set.
Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair claimed continuing back problems as a result of scenes in The Exorcist. Director William Friedkin also slapped William O’Malley, an actor and Jesuit priest to induce a somber expression.
Along the lines of Jaws, the 1976 *King Kong *remake encountered malfunctions with a giant mechanical monkey hand. Supposedly, one of the fingers got stuck in an upright position after the crew was, uh, rehearsing.
Buddy Ebsen nearly died after being painted with the wrong kind of makeup as the Tin Woodman in The Wizard of Oz.
Accidents were common in* Tarzan *films, with falls from trees, vines, and animal bites.
The filming of Platoon was the epitome of Hell.
And it wasn’t even REAL Hell.
I think I remember some of the Lord of the Rings cast complaining at how much of a perfectionist Peter Jackson was. John Rhys-Davies, who played Gimli had very negative reactions to the prosthetics he wore.
Cracked.com offers, The Poltergeist Trilogy, Superman, Atuk, Rosemary’s Baby, The Conqueror and The Omen as “cursed” movies.
And to add insult to injury, the recent discovery of the near-complete print makes it clear that much of that sequence was then hacked out of the film in the post-premiere butchery of it.
Bjork ended up eating part of her character’s costume after filming Dancer in the Dark. Having seen the film I can actually understand it, too. Whatever his talents as a film-maker, I think Von Trier is a truly awful human being.
Hearts of Darkness is definitely worth watching to see how hellish conditions on-set were for Apocalypse Now.
Waterworld was a notoriously long and difficult shoot, out on the water in glaring sunlight, and I’ve read that both Blade Runner and the most recent Harry Potter movie were very tough due to long days of filming while drenched.
Charlie Chaplin rivaled Stanley Kubrick for repeated retakes, over and over and over again, sometimes with no script at all, just improvising with a huge cast and crew.
As to radiation poisoning among the cast and crew of The Conqueror, behold, The Master Speaks: Did John Wayne die of cancer caused by a radioactive movie set? - The Straight Dope
Passendaele, at least the battle scenes, were supposed to be quite hellish - based on a few buddies that played extras. This was not due to dictator-like directing, but solely the conditions.
That said, it was supposed to be as accurate as possible.
engineer_comp_geek already mentioned Kubrick in general. Specifically, I remember reading that during filming for The Shining he brought a then 69-year-old Scatman Crothers to tears over the repeated retakes (a *reduced * 40 for one scene).
There were so many revisions Jack Nicholson gave up reading the script and he frequently went home and collapsed.
Speaking of Australia; I was watching The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert with the comentary on last night. Let’s see trudging across the Outback from Sydney to Alice Springs in a bus that was also the main set, wearing elaborate gowns and full make up in 40/100+ degree heat, freezing nighttime temperatures, flies, a grueling shooting schedule, sounds like hell. It took hours for the cast to climb that rock formation in the final scenes, in full costume, and no safety people to do a walk though before the actors were filmed inches from the edge of a cliff.
In one of her books Diana Cary Serra (1920s child actress Baby Peggy Montgomery) talks about her father Jack, a former cowboy turned bit actor when men on horseback were needed, plotted to kill Cecil B DeMille. DeMille’s film “The Crusades” involved some dangerous stunts storming a castle were the extras got hurt falling off a bridge (and if you couldn’t work, tough luck getting paid). Jack’s plan involving a stampede to run over DeMille never came to fruition but he apparently could require actors to do dangerous things (such as Victor Mature wrestle an old lion).
I’m sure a lot of dangerous things happened on sets before world war II. James Cagney says in his autobiography that for films like “Public Enemy”, the studio would have a former soldier fire a machine gun with live bullets. Years ago during the AFI salute to Lillian Gish (who outlived most of the presenters except for Colleen Moore, they had to get John Boy Richard Thomas and Sister Bertrille Sally Field) someone mention Gish still suffered from problems filing the ice floe on a river scene in “Way Down East”.
Three actors and a mechanic were killed filming Howard Hughes’s “Hell’s Angels”.