Random Stunts That Went Wrong And Still Made Final Cut (14 items)

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  (#3) Back to the Future Part II

  • Clint Eastwood, Michael J. Fox, Elisabeth Shue, Christopher Lloyd, Elijah Wood, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover, Billy Zane, Flea, Joe Flaherty, Thomas F. Wilson, Tracy Dali, Charles Fleischer, Gian Maria Volonté, James Tolkan, Mary Ellen Trainor, Neil Ross, George Buck Flower, Casey Siemaszko, Jason Scott Lee, John Erwin, Donald Fullilove, Darlene Vogel, Jim Ishida, Al White, Jeffrey Weissman, J. J. Cohen, Ricky Dean Logan, Wesley Mann, Harry Waters, Jr., Tommy Thomas, Stephanie Williams, Jay Koch, Tamara Carrera, Sean Michael Fish, Judy Ovitz, Lloyd Tolbert, Freddie, Irina Cashen, Angela Greenblatt, Justin Mosley Spink, Shaun Hunter, E. Casanova Evans, Nikki Birdsong, Granville 'Danny' Young, Junior Fann, Charles Gherardi, Marty Levy, Jennifer Brown, David Harold Brown, John Thornton, Theo Schwartz, Lindsey Whitney Barry, Cameron Moore, Lisa Freeman, Annette May

  One of the most beloved scenes in Back to the Future Part II came with a heavy price. When Biff (Thomas F. Wilson) and his crew chase Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) on hoverboards, several of them burst through the windows of the clock tower.

  The stunt was supposed to be relatively straightforward - the performers would swing on wires to generate momentum, then smash through the candy glass windows while a member of the effects team released their wires and dropped them safely onto airbags concealed inside the tower - but it was unexpectedly difficult.

  One stunt performer walked away because of how dangerous the scene became, and she was replaced by relative newcomer (and women's kickboxing champion) Cheryl Wheeler-Dixon. While filming the stunt, Wheeler-Dixon didn't go through the glass like she was supposed to. Instead, she hit a pillar and was outside when a crew member cut her wire, causing her to plummet twenty feet onto concrete. 

  Gary Morgan, another member of the stunt team, recalled the incident later, "I got up and Cheryl was laying on the concrete and the pool of blood by her head was getting bigger." The accident required Wheeler to undergo reconstructive surgery, including having metal plates implanted in her face. It also led to her suing the studio.

  The scene, complete with Wheeler-Dixon crashing into the pillar, made it into the film.
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  (#9) Apocalypse Now

  • Marlon Brando, Harrison Ford, Robert Duvall, Martin Sheen, Laurence Fishburne, Dennis Hopper, Francis Ford Coppola, R. Lee Ermey, Scott Glenn, Colleen Camp, Cynthia Wood, Bill Graham, Frederic Forrest, G. D. Spradlin, Sam Bottoms, Roman Coppola, James Keane, Vittorio Storaro, Albert Hall, Christian Marquand, Tom Mason, Aurore Clément, Jim Gaines, Marc Coppola, Gian-Carlo Coppola, Evan A. Lottman, Jerry Ziesmer, Jack Thibeau, Damien Leake, Kerry Rossall, Jerry Ross, Franck Villard, Henry Strzalkowski, Nick Nicholson, Glenn Walken, Herb Rice, Linda Carpenter, Don Gordon Bell, George Cantero, Linn Phillips, Bo Byers, Ron McQueen, David Olivier, Pierre Segui, William Upton, Larry Carney, Dick White, Gilbert Renkens, Chrystel Le Pelletier, Robert Julian, Lonnie 'Lono' Woodley, Henri Sadardeil, Hattie James, Father Elias, Daniel Kiewit, Michel Pitton, Yvon LeSeaux

  Director Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now has behind-the-scenes extravagances so famous that they gave rise to their own documentary film, Hearts of Darkness. The documentary revealed that the scene in which Martin Sheen's Captain Willard falls apart in a Saigon hotel room was mostly ad-libbed. 

  It was Sheen's 36th birthday, and he was, by his own admission, so intoxicated that he "couldn't hardly stand up." Catching a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror, Sheen - as Willard - smashes the glass, cutting his hand and smearing it over his face. Everything about that moment was genuine. 

  "Francis said his impulse was to cut the scene and call the nurse," Coppola's wife later wrote in her memoir Notes on a Life, "but Marty was doing the scene."
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  (#14) The Passion of the Christ

  • Monica Bellucci, Jim Caviezel, Claudia Gerini, Rosalinda Celentano, Francesco Cabras, Sergio Rubini, Ted Rusoff, Hristo Shopov, Maia Morgenstern, Jarreth J. Merz, Francesco De Rosa, Mattia Sbragia, Toni Bertorelli, Giovanni Vettorazzo, Hristo Zhivkov, Luca Lionello, Sabrina Impacciatore, Francesco De Vito, Federico Pacifici, Abel Jafri, Giuseppe Lo Console, Lucio Allocca, Matt Patresi, Giacinto Ferro, Romuald Andrzej Klos, Dario D'Ambrosi, Aleksander Mincer, Davide Marotta, Paco Reconti, Pietro Sarubbi, Fabio Sartor, Luciano Federico, Angelo Di Loreta, Luca De Dominicis, Michelle Bonev, Lino Salemme, Valerio Isidori, Roberto Bestazzoni, Tom Shaker, Lucia Stara, Giovanni Capalbo, Emilio De Marchi, Nuot Arquint, Evelina Meghangi, Ornella Giusto, Roberto Santi, Andrea Refuto, Valerio Esposito, Paolo Dos Santos, Chokri Ben Zagden, Vincenzo Monti, Francesco Gabriele, Daniela Poti, Danilo Di Ruzza, Adel Ben Ayed, Emanuele Gullotto, Ivan Gaudiano, Nicola Tagarelli, Arianna Vitolo, Antonello Iacovone, Rossella Longo, Franco Costanzo, Abraam Fontana, Lello Giulivo, Luciano Dragone, Gabriella Barbuti, Francis Dokyi, Danilo Maria Valli, Adel Bakri, Omar Capalbo, Noemi Marotta, Roberto Visconti, Sheila Mokhtari, Maurizio Di Carmine

  Playing Jesus in a notoriously grisly film about the final hours of his life is inherently not pleasant, but for Jim Caviezel, it was particularly difficult. The actor endured plenty of hardships on set, including hours in makeup to recreate various wounds. By his own account, he was also struck by lightning in the Sermon on the Mount scene.

  During the scourging scene of Mel Gibson's divisive religious epic, Caviezel was actually whipped twice by accident. He ended up with a 14-inch gash on his back. "It just extended over the board and hit me with such a velocity that I couldn't breathe," Caviezel told Today. "It's like getting the wind knocked out of you."

  While the blows may have been accidental, Gibson kept them in the film.
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  (#13) Syriana

  • George Clooney, Matt Damon, Amanda Peet, Christopher Plummer, Viola Davis, Mark Strong, Matt LeBlanc, William Hurt, Cynthia Nixon, Chris Cooper, Jeffrey Wright, Christopher McDonald, Alexander Siddig, Bahar Soomekh, Tim Blake Nelson, Thomas McCarthy, Peter Gerety, Robert Foxworth, Max Minghella, Amr Waked, Jamey Sheridan, Kayvan Novak, David Clennon, Roger Yuan, Anna George, Jayne Atkinson, Richard Lintern, Nicky Henson, Nadim Sawalha, Will McCormack, Donna Mitchell, Ozzie Yue, Luke Barnett, David Michie, Akhbar Kurtha, Jocelyn Quivrin, Don Whatley, Michael Allinson, Kirk Lambert, Mohamed Majd, Michael Stone Forrest, Driss Roukhe, Sally Spaide, Alexander von Roon, Nicholas Art, Daisy Tormé, Bruce Allen Dawson, Paul Fahrenkopf, Steven Hinkle, Mazhar Munir, Charles McClelland, Saïd Amadis, Susan Allenback, Robert Baer, Katie Foster, Tootsie Duvall, Shahid Ahmed, Matt Cannon, Kerry Meushaw, Omar Mostafa, Katherine Hoskins Mackey, Sonnell Dadral, Tyler Gatton, William Charles Mitchell, Alan Gates, Wendy Kush, Tom Cutler, Ryan Murphy, Badria Timimi, Jon Lee Anderson, Randall Boffman, Bashar Atiyat, Johnny Pitrelli, Linda E. Williams, William L. Thomas, Lauren Minite, James Plannette, Mitesh Soni, Ahmed Ayoub, El Mahjoub Raji, Nabeel Noman, Atta Mohammed Saleh, Othman Bin Hendi, Bob Fajkowski, Ali Al Amine, Bikram Singh Bhamra, Jeff Baker, Tarik Tamzali, David J. Manners, Mohammed Asad Khan, Aziz Zacca, Tony French, Ahmed Aa Mohammed, Jamil Jabbar, Fritz Michel

  In Syriana, George Clooney plays a CIA operative who is taped to a chair and harshly questioned when he is captured. The scene is grueling, but it shouldn't have been dangerous for the actor; that is until he fell and hit his head. 

  "I thought I'd had a stroke," Clooney said, describing the accident. "It was like a train horn going off in your head and you can't see and you can't stand."

  Clooney knew that it was serious, and was flown from Morocco where the film was shooting to LA's Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Actor Lisa Kudrow directed Clooney to her brother, who is a neurologist. He discovered fluid "was leaking from [Clooney's] spine and he had torn his dura, the outermost layer enveloping the spinal cord." A complex surgery was able to repair the damage, but Clooney later told Rolling Stone he actually considered taking his own life due to the extreme pain.

  The fall made it into the film, for which Clooney won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.
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  (#12) Die Hard

  • Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Bonnie Bedelia, Robert Davi, Kym Malin, Terri Lynn Doss, Reginald VelJohnson, William Atherton, Al Leong, Hart Bochner, Paul Gleason, Alexander Godunov, Mary Ellen Trainor, Rick Ducommun, James Shigeta, Grand L. Bush, Lorenzo Caccialanza, Andreas Wisniewski, Clarence Gilyard, Rebecca Broussard, Wilhelm von Homburg, Tracy Reiner, Selma Archerd, Charlie Picerni, George Christy, Marshall Dancing Elk Lucas, Bob Jennings, De'voreaux White, Dennis Hayden, Betty Carvalho, Fred Lerner, David Ursin, Diana James, Carmine Zozzora, Matt Landers, Kip Waldo, Robert Lesser, Anthony Peck, Gary Roberts, Bill Marcus, Taylor Fry, P. Randall Bowers, David Katz, Bill Margolin, Stella Hall, Hans Buhringer, Dustyn Taylor, Rick Cicetti, Joey Plewa, Mark Goldstein, Gérard Bonn, Richard Parker, Gary Pinkston, Michele Laybourn, Shanna Higgins, Shelley Pogoda, Kate Finlayson, Mark Winn, Jon E. Greene, Cheryl Baker, Bruno Doyon, Bruce P. Schultz, Scot Bennett, Noah Land, Rick Bross

  John McClane (Bruce Willis) goes through a lot of trials in Die Hard, but one memorable scene wasn't actually in the script. When McClane is trying to get down the ventilation shaft, the stuntman was supposed to make it to the first ledge safely. Instead, he miscalculated and fell.

  Fortunately, no one was hurt, and editor Frank Urioste (who also worked on the original RoboCop) managed to cut the film so that the fall was included, switching to a shot of Willis grabbing the edge of the next shaft with his fingertips.
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  (#6) Blade Runner

  • Harrison Ford, Daryl Hannah, Sean Young, Rutger Hauer, Edward James Olmos, M. Emmet Walsh, Joanna Cassidy, James Hong, William Sanderson, Brion James, Joe Turkel, Morgan Paull, Monty Pyke, Kevin Thompson, John Edward Allen

  Daryl Hannah's breakout role came when she played Pris, the "basic pleasure model" replicant in Ridley Scott's sci-fi classic Blade Runner. Hannah was not the studio's first choice for the role, but she certainly committed to her part. In the scene where Pris runs away from J.F. Sebastian (William Sanderson), Hannah slipped on the wet pavement and accidentally smashed her elbow through the window of a van, chipping the bone in eight places.

  Hannah kept going, however, and the shot is in the final cut of the film. She says that she still has a scar on her elbow from the stitches.

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