Transcription
The Twilight Zone was one of the most enduring pieces of American television ever produced, from its iconic intro to the often imitated speech pattern of its host and creator. Twilight Zone defined with thoughtful, probing, and insightful science fiction could aspire to be for an entire generation. And then, in the 1980s, it was made into a feature film and disaster struck. Today we're exploring the fascinating true story of the tragedy of Twilight Zone, The Movie. But before we get started, be sure to subscribe to the Weird History channel. And let us know in the comments below what other '80s stories you would like to hear about. Now we're going back to the '80s.
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The Twilight Zone was a TV show that ran from 1959 to 1964. It was the creative brainchild of screenwriter Rod Serling. The show lasted a total of five seasons and featured the first appearances of many future superstars, such as Dennis Hopper, William Shatner, and Robert Redford. Twilight Zone earned the place in the hearts and minds of Americans from all walks of life. By the time the 1980s rolled around, the talk of bringing back The Twilight Zone was all over Hollywood. Ultimately, Steven Spielberg was hired to take on the reboot. While there were discussions of bringing it back to the small screen, ultimately, Spielberg decided to enlist some of his fellow Hollywood elite filmmakers and elevate Rod Serling's masterpiece to the big screen.
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Spielberg decided that the Twilight Zone movie would be a remake of three episodes from the original series and one completely new original story. The directors chosen for the project were John Landis, Joe Dante, George Miller, and of course, Spielberg himself. John Landis was tasked with directing Timeout, based on the classic A Quality of Mercy episode of The Twilight Zone TV show. Veteran character actor Vic Morrow was cast as Bill Conner, a deeply bigoted man who, in a karmic twist of fate, is mysteriously sent back in time, skipping from time period to time period. He finds himself as a Jew during World War II, contending with Nazi troops, and then as a black man dealing with the Klan, and then, finally, as a Vietnamese man during the Vietnam War. He finds himself protecting two small children from American troops. Originally, the ending of Time Out showed that Bill Connor stayed remorseless for the entire story. However, after the studio expressed concern, Landis added a scene where Connor saves the two children from oncoming fire, risking his own life, thus giving the character a bit more dimension. His character utters the words, "I swear to god, I'll protect you," which would prove to be ironic foreboding.
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As preproduction ramped up for the film, Landis and the rest of his team had a design problem that they needed to solve quickly and quietly. They had to figure out how they were going to shoot incredibly complex and time-intensive sequences with children. The Screen Actors Guild had stringent requirements for the conditions surrounding children in movies and they required a strict curfew. Someone on the crew suggested that, in order to get around this requirement, they could hire two non-union children and then pay them as extras. Landis agreed. The children's parents were not informed of the helicopter or its potential dangers prior to shooting. Landis and company completed a shot around 10:30 PM on the night in question. The children were sent back to their parents. Then, around 2:30 in the morning, a shot with a massive explosion was captured, which the helicopter pilot, Dorsey Wingo, deemed highly unsafe. The rain machines were making it difficult for him to safely perform his job. Wingo asked his co-pilot how they should go about informing the director of their difficulties. But before they had a chance to speak up, Landis approached them saying, "I need you to fly lower. I need you to get closer." They initially expressed hesitation, but Landis, armed with a bullhorn, yelled at the men. The vehicle in question was a Bell UH-1 Iroquois helicopter, better known as a Huey. To say that this helicopter was sturdy and capable of performing the stunts in question is true. The helicopter was literally battle tested after being used during the Vietnam War. On the night in question, they were shooting a sequence at the end of the story, where Morrow fled across a shallow river approximately 5 feet deep and 20 feet long. He was supposed to carry the two children actors across the river while being pursued by American GIs. The children and their parents were summoned to set to shoot the sequence. There are conflicting reports about just exactly what Dorsey Wingo, a real Vietnam War vet, thought was going to transpire. Some have said he thought the scene wasn't going to have explosions. Others said he did. As they were about to roll, a production member expressed concern that this was too dangerous to shoot, at which point Landis turned around, grinned, and said, "You ain't seen nothing yet." Wingo's helicopter was hovering approximately 25 feet off the ground. The plan was that it would fly over the actors as they crossed the river, set down on a patch of land, and Vic Morrow and the two children would flee into it as the climactic ending of the story. As action was called, Wingo turned the helicopter 180 degrees to prepare for the landing. However, an ill-timed mortar was fired which collided with the tail section of the helicopter, detaching it. The chopper spun out of control and careened towards the ground. At that exact moment, Morrow had accidentally dropped Chen into the water. He tried to scoop her up but wasn't able to react quickly enough. The actors were killed instantly as the helicopter blades decapitated Morrow and Lee. And Chen was crushed by the body of the great machine.
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The set was closed down immediately after the accident with the parents of the two children being rushed to a nearby hospital. They couldn't stop crying and screaming. The staff diagnosed them as being in shock. The story took on a life of its own, with the public and media taking an intense scrutiny to what happened that night. News of Landis and the production skirting of the labor laws and his fateful quote, "You ain't seen nothing yet," reverberated through evening news broadcasts for months. In October of 1984, the National Transportation Safety Board reported the tragedy and an investigation was started. The Federal Aviation Administration had just instituted regulations in March of that year to define how aircraft were to be regulated during film and television productions. However, the new regulations only covered fixed-wing aircraft, not helicopters. The National Transportation Safety Board recommended an amendment to the regulations to incorporate helicopters, which was accepted in 1986. But the action was too little, too late. People had died. And the public wanted justice.
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The tragedy and public outcry surrounding the accident on the set of the Twilight Zone, The Movie led to a civil and a criminal suit against the filmmakers that lasted for years. In 1986, a state trial took place. Landis and his confederates were brought up on three counts gross negligence and three counts under a death under unlawful circumstances constituting manslaughter. An initial trial was started. It was dismissed for a lack of evidence. But then, in an appeals court, it proceeded to a full jury trial. The jurors of the trial were under intense observation and, at one point, were even taken out to the location where the crash had happened and watched a re-enactment of the events in question. Landis was stoic and quiet throughout the trial. When asked if he had viewed the footage prior to the trial, he responded, "Only twice before. It's very hard for me to watch." Myca Lee's father, Daniel Lee, testified that he heard Landis instruct the helicopter pilot to fly lower. All four parents testified that they were never informed that there would be explosives or helicopters on set. They all testified that they were repeatedly told that no one was in any danger during the shoot. Landis, Folsey, Wingo, production manager Allingham, and explosive specialist Paul Stewart delivered testimony. The higher ups pled guilty to the illegal hiring practice of the minors, but insisted that they had done nothing wrong over the course of shooting. It was a bitter battle. The opening salvo from the defense alleged that the parents of the children were liars, that they were fully making up stories. Harland Braun, the defense attorney, said this. They will deny that they knew that there were going to be a helicopter and special effects in a scene which they had seen a similar scene five hours before. We just cannot explain that because Mr. Folsey, in fact, told them all of that. There was an independent witness to that. And there's another family that was recruited, whose children were standbys, who were all told that. Over the course of the trial, the defense repeatedly asked for a mistrial but was denied. Production assistant, Donna Schuman, testified that she thought the creatives involved absolutely knew what they were doing and that she heard George Folsey say they'd put him in jail for having children this close to explosives. The trial raged on with each side getting more and more contentious. Every day, after the trial would break, the defense and the prosecution would stand in the hallway and call the other side liars in front of massive bays of media cameras. Ultimately, the defendants were acquitted in the nine month trial that ran from 1986 to 1987. The prosecutor later went on the record saying that one of the key contributing factors as to why the jury declared them innocent was that they had somehow been told an untruth, that John Landis was going to make a film about the trial and that he was going to cast them to play themselves. If they wanted to see the movie made and appear in it, logically, they had to acquit him. He could make it from behind bars. Was this true? Of course not. But the jury purportedly heard this. And whenever Landis would be scribbling on a legal pad during the trial, they would collectively take note, assuming that he was writing a scene for this mythical film. So what of the victim's families? Marrow's family settled out of court, in a civil case, within a year. The children's families collected millions of dollars in several civil lawsuits, obviously, not ameliorating the horrible pain of losing a child.
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Landis spoke about the incident in 1996 saying, "There was absolutely no good aspect about this whole story. The tragedy, which I think about every day, had an enormous impact on my career, from which it may possibly never recover." His behavior during the trial was supposedly so remorseless that it permanently killed his friendship with Steven Spielberg. When asked about it, Spielberg said, "No movie is worth dying for. I think people are standing up much more now than ever before to producers and directors who ask for too much. If something isn't safe, it's the right time and responsibility of every actor or crew member to yell cut." When the Twilight Zone movie was finally released, it did not feature any of the footage that was shot with Morrow and the two children crossing the river. So what do you think? Was the tragedy behind this film preventable? Let us know in the comments below. If you like this video, please check out our sister channel, The Total Nerd Network, for more videos like this.