(Quick trigger warning, this post will discuss the deaths of several real life children.)
People love to talk about cursed films. The idea that some form of media is mystical and breaks everything it touches or everyone who works on it. The Exorcist is probably the most famous example of the phenomenon, with its production being famously filled with injuries and pain. The truth of these "cursed" films is that most of the time it is a combination of little care for performers or safety that results in this pain. There is no mystical reason behind it, just cut corners leading to tragedy. What happened during the production of The Twilight Zone: The Movie is one of the most heartbreaking examples of this.
John Landis is most known for such feats as The Blues Brothers, An American Werewolf in London, and having a sex offender child but he should be most known for that time he ended up killing children with unsafe working conditions. For some context, The Twilight Zone: The Movie is a series of vignettes with higher budget and longer run times than episodes of the original show. Each vignette is directed by a different person and John Landis was brought on to direct the first of the sections known as Time Out. The plot of Time Out is that an American man gets sent back in time into the body of Vietnamese man attempting to protect two children during the Vietnam war. The man in question would be played by the actor Vic Morrow. There were other aspects of the vignette, but the most important aspect was the helicopter chasing the group of three.
Prior to the incident, Landis had gone through great lengths to make everything about as unsafe as possible. The two children actors hired for the film, Myca Dinh Le (7) and Renee Shin-Yi Chen (6), were illegally hired and paid under the table without telling their parents the full truth of what would happen. The scene itself was going to shot during the night, already an unsafe time to fly a helicopter. Child actors were also not legally allowed to work at night but Landis did not care at all. They also aren't allowed near the explosives that would be used in the scene! The man flying the helicopter, Dorcey Wingo, had even complained that the pyrotechnics used in the scene were far too close to the helicopter. This warning was ignored by Landis who instead increased the explosives in the sequence.
On July 23rd, 1983 at 2:00 AM, Landis calls action. After moving through the first part of the sequence, Wingo is then ordered to abruptly turn left for another shot. An explosion goes off and hits the tail rotor of the helicopter causing it to spin out of control. Already flying dangerously low to the ground, as ordered by Landis, the helicopter crashes and falls apart. The helicopter fell directly on top of Morrow and the two children. Decapitating Morrow and Myca and crushing Renee. All three died instantly. The children's parents, who had been assured that it was safe while also battling the language barrier between themselves and the crew, watched it all. Landis' response to watching the crash? He stood up and proclaimed "That's a wrap!".
Landis would not face any jail time or really any punishment for his role in killing two children and the actor Vic Morrow. He would in fact go on to direct the music video for Michael Jackson's Thriller in the coming months. He was acquitted in 1986.
Sources
Evans, Robert, and Caitlin Durante. “Part One: The Twilight Zone Movie.” Behind the Bastards, season 1, episode 424, 17 May 2022, https://open.spotify.com/episode/5b3BorDXiSX35wOBRfjcTs. Accessed 10 Dec. 2023.
Evans, Robert, and Caitlin Durante. “Part Two: The Twilight Zone Movie.” Behind the Bastards, season 1, episode 425, 19 May 2022, https://open.spotify.com/episode/4YEuhaWTAKdJTSRC8Ci4ff. Accessed 10 Dec. 2023.
IMDb. “John Landis - Biography.” IMDb, IMDb.com, www.imdb.com/name/nm0000484/bio/?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. Accessed 10 Dec. 2023.
“Twilight Zone Accident.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 9 Dec. 2023, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_Zone_accident.
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