by Robert Laurence
It was two o"clock in the morning of July 23, l982, director John Landis
and his crew working late to finish a scene of Twilight Zone: The Motion
Picture on the set of a Vietnamese village built beside a river outside
Los Angeles, California. Actor Vic Morrow was to save two children from a
Viet Cong attack by carrying them across the river while a helicopter
hovered above shooting at them.
Morrow carried the child actors into the water, special effects explosions
detonated all around them, six cannons recording the actions. Director
Landis wanted a realistic scene, shouting "Lower! Lower!" to the
helicopter pilot, "Fire! Fire!" The pilot descended, circling, but he came
too close to the ground and a special effects explosion shook the copter,
which went out of control, the pilot struggling in vain to keep it aloft.
The helicopter went down in the river, its huge blade spinning wildly,
landing directly on top of Morrow and the children in his arms. It all
happened so quickly that there was nothing anyone could do about it,
though Landis and several crew members rushed into the water. Vic Morrow,
seven-year-old Myca Dinh Le, and six-year-old Renee Shinn Chen were killed
instantly.
Landis was charged with criminal neglect for using the actors in a scene
unreasonably dangerous but was found not guilty after a long trial. If any
moral is to be drawn from the disaster it can be found in the words of
Steven Spielberg, the film's executive producer. "No movie is worth dying
for," Spielberg said later. "If something isn"t safe, it's the right and
responsibility of every actor and crew member to yell, "Cut!""