Cursed: The on-set terrors of ill-fated movies

Car crashes, injured stars, a fire, a stabbing, an arrest – the latest Bond film is cursed, surely. It isn't the first. Kaleem Aftab reveals the on-set terrors of other ill-fated movies

The filming of Quantum of Solace, the latest James Bond adventure, has seen so many on-set accidents that the cast and crew are beginning to wonder whether the movie is cursed.

It started on 18 April this year when an Aston Martin DBS ended up at the bottom of Lake Garda after a stuntman charged with delivering the car to the set lost control on a bend in the road. A week later, another stuntman was seriously injured when he crashed a car during a chase sequence. Soon after that, another car was crashed.

Bond himself, Daniel Craig, has also been in the wars. He was rushed to hospital a few days ago when he sliced open the end of a finger. He’d already been involved in an incident when his face was cut, requiring eight stitches. In yet another tumble, it was feared that he’d broken his ribs.

There’s more. An outdoor Bond set was damaged by a fire at Pinewood Studios. In Austria, a technician was stabbed by his wife while working on the film. The Mayor of Panama, Carlos Lopez, was arrested after driving on to the set in an attempt to force the production to shut down.

In spite of all this, it is premature to say that Quantum of Solace is jinxed – most of the incidents have occurred either when high-powered equipment was being used or during action sequences. It’s more likely that the film’s only curse is an unmemorable title.

But there is a long Hollywood tradition of cursed films and a certain cachet that comes with working on them, especially if it’s a supernatural horror film. This is probably why the Bond crew have been so quick to claim the badge of honour.

In some cases – such as Tarkovsky’s Stalker, for example – it’s a combination of bad luck and some very bad planning. In others – anything featuring the late Brandon Lee, Bruce Lee’s son, for instance – it’s individuals who appear to have the hex on them.

The most intriguing film curses are those that do not reveal themselves until after the project has finished; mysterious, often tragic occurrences, supposedly caused by evil spirits determined that the film should never see the light of day. Hollywood hokum? Here are 10 of the spookiest productions.

THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939)

This was one of the earliest film hexes. Margaret Hamilton (the Wicked Witch of the West) suffered severe burns when her make-up overheated. Since then, the legend of the curse has grown and grown, and there have been several mysterious accidents on theatrical versions of the story. Those playing the Wicked Witch have been especially unlucky.

THE POLTERGEIST TRILOGY (1982-88)

Four actors attached to the Poltergeist films died within six years. The most notable death was that of Heather O’Rourke, 12, who played Carol Anne. O’Rourke went into hospital with what was thought to be flu and died the next day. Dominique Dunne, 22, was killed by her jealous boyfriend. Julian Beck, 60 (Detective Kane), died of stomach cancer. Will Sampson, 53, who played the medicine man, performed an on-set exorcism; he died a year later with kidney failure. Some say the spirits of the dead grew agitated when real skeletal remains were used in filming.

THE CROW (1994)

Schoolfriends of Brandon Lee say he’d had a premonition that he would die suddenly on a movie set, just as his father, the martial-arts legend Bruce Lee, did. The Crow had its fair share of on-set incidents, including fires and accidents, but the death of Lee, eight days before filming ended, was attributed to the Lee “family curse”. Brandon was shot dead while filming a flashback scene showing how his character, Eric Draven, really died. He was killed because the metal tip of one of the dummy bullets had mysteriously pulled loose from its brass casing. But could it have been a curse on The Crow that led to Lee’s death? In the spin-off TV series, the veteran stunt co-ordinator Marc Akerstream was killed in a freak accident when some debris from an explosion shot up in the air and struck him on the head.

SUPERMAN (1951 and continuing)

The curse of Superman mainly strikes the actors cast as the good guys – play one of them, and there’s a good chance your career will stall or you’ll suffer serious misfortune. The most famous victims are George Reeves and Christopher Reeve. George played Superman in the 1950s. In 1959, eight days before he was due to be married, he was found dead from a gunshot wound, a mystery that provided the plot of last year’s Hollywoodland, starring Ben Affleck. Christopher was paralysed after being thrown from his horse in 1995. In 2004, he died from heart failure.

Margot Kidder (Lois Lane) now suffers from bipolar disorder. Marlon Brando played Superman’s dad before a series of tragedies befell his personal life, involving the imprisonment and death of his son Christian. Richard Pryor (Superman III), was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The careers of actors Kirk Allen and Dean Cain nosedived after playing the Man of Steel. Supposedly, it was Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, unhappy with the compensation they received for creating the character, who cursed the films.

ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968)

Roman Polanski’s films in the Sixties were famed for their investigations into mysterious forces. But it’s his story of a pregnant wife whose baby is sacrificed to the Devil that came back to haunt him when, in August 1969, Charles Manson murdered Polanski’s pregnant wife Sharon Tate. Indeed, from Repulsion (1965) on, the parallels between the work of Polanski and the life of Manson become uncanny. The interest in the occult of director and killer developed over these years. The curse spreads to the death of John Lennon; Manson and followers named their death spree “Helter Skelter” after the Beatles song, and Lennon was killed outside his New York apartment building, The Dakota, where Rosemary’s Baby was filmed.

THE MATRIX TRILOGY (1999-2003)

The deaths of two cast members – Gloria Foster, who played The Oracle in the original film, and the 22-year-old singer-turned-actress Aaliyah, who had filmed a couple of scenes before she died in a plane crash in the Bahamas – combined with the rumour that Brandon Lee was originally the Wachowski brothers’ first choice to play Neo, have resulted in claims of a Matrix hoodoo. Perhaps: the trilogy certainly had millions of people around the world cursing the time they had wasted watching the appalling sequels.

STALKER (1979)

The production of Andrei Tarkovsky’s metaphysical sci-fi classic was continually beset with problems. In the picture, mysterious and unfathomable events take place in the Zone. But weird events spilled over into reality. The film had to be shot twice: the first version was “lost” when the experimental Kodak film stock being used could not be developed. But it was only years later that rumours of a curse started to appear after many of those working on the film met with untimely deaths. Part of the action had been shot near a hydroelectric station on the river Pirita, near a chemical plant that was releasing poisonous liquids downstream. The pollution can even be seen floating down the river in one shot. The film’s star Tolya Solonitsyn, its assistant director Larrisa Tarovskaya and Tarkovsky himself all died from cancer of the bronchial tube.

THE RING TWO (2005)

A Shinto minister had to be flown in during the shoot of this American remake of the Japanese horror movie to perform a purification ceremony. Life first began to mirror the film’s storyline when the production offices were flooded after a pipe burst. Soon after, the make-up truck was flooded. Possessed animals feature in the plot, making it all the more eerie when bees invaded a props truck and a crew member was attacked by a deer. Director Hideo Nakata, who also directed the Japanese originals, was used to strange happenings on his Ring sets; when making Ringu 2 in 1998, a microphone on the sea surface seemed to pick up a ghostly voice.

THE OMEN (1976)

The 2005 documentary The Curse of The Omen posited that supernatural forces were trying to prevent the original 1976 movie about Christianity’s Armageddon prophecies being filmed. On the first day of shooting, a car crash injured principal members of the crew. Then the two aeroplanes carrying screenwriter David Seltzer and actor Gregory Peck were both struck by lightning. The crew had been due to fly in a private plane before a last-minute cancellation; the plane crashed and killed all on board, as well as the pilot’s wife and child who were in a car driving on a road below. Two lions attacked and killed a warden in a safari park after appearing in the film – and the director Richard Donner’s hotel was bombed.

THE EXORCIST (1973)

Considered by many to be the scariest film of all time – and even scarier is that many say a demon was hard at work trying to stop work on this film about the Antichrist. Different sources say that between four and nine people died during filming. Jack McGowran had just wrapped his part when he died of a heart attack. There are rumours that Linda Blair, who played Regan MacNeil, had a premonition that a set member would die a few weeks before he did so. The crew has subsequently revealed that working on the production was a creepy experience. The Exorcist curse even struck in cinemas, with reports of spectators vomiting, fainting and breaking into hysterics. During the Italian premiere at the Metropolitan Theatre in Rome, lightning destroyed a 400-year-old crucifix.