People Who Died On a Movie Set

They say there’s no business like show business but sometimes a movie set can even turn deadly. Sometimes the blame lies with negligent producers, sometimes its technical effects gone wrong, and sometimes the fault lies with the deceased themselves—as in the case of Jon-Erik Hexum.

With that been said here are 10 people whose lives were tragically cut short while working in or around a movie set.

Jon-Erik Hexum

Apparently he was bored during a filming delay, Hexum decided to play a game of Russian roulette with a .44 Magnum handgun loaded with one blank. Hexum reportedly didn’t realize that blanks can cause serious, fatal injuries if fired from close range. When he pulled the trigger, he had a one-in-six chance of surviving the incident. Hexum’s joke was actually deadly serious. Unfortunately, the chambered blank aligned with the firing pin, sending a wad of paper into the side of his head with the impact of a bullet. He was taken to the hospital and declared brain dead. Six days after the incident, he was removed from life support.

Brandon Lee
Like Jon-Erik Hexum, the son of Bruce Lee, Brandon Lee was killed by a blank though in Lee case, the gun was fired at the actor from a safe distance. Lee was killed by something called a squib load, which is a bullet fragment lodged in the barrel of a gun. Lee was hit in the abdomen and died a few hours later.

Bruce Lee
Technically he didn’t actually die on set but Bruce Lee was actively working on a film at the moment of his collapse from a cerebral edema, or swelling of the brain. While dubbing some tracks for his classic film Enter the Dragon, Lee collapsed in the studio and was rushed to the hospital. Doctors were able to get the swelling under control and Lee survived the incident. Unfortunately, he died a few weeks later after having an allergic reaction to the now discontinued pain-killing medication Equagesic. The reaction caused his brain to swell again, but doctors couldn’t save Lee’s life this time. He was having a meeting about his upcoming film, Game of Death, when he died.

Vic Morrow
Vic Morrow’s death was truly tragic one, while filming a scene for Twilight Zone: The Movie, in which his character and two children were running from a U.S. Army helicopter, an ill-timed explosion caused the chopper to fall on Morrow and the two child actors, killing all three instantly.

John Jordan
John Jordan was a second unit director who worked on a number of high-profile films, such as You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and Catch-22 which was is final film. While filming a scene in a B-25 bomber, Jordan refused to wear a safety harness and he ended up falling out of the open tail turret 4,000 ft to his death.

Art Scholl
Art Scholl was perhaps the best aerobatic stunt pilot in the business but died while performing a stunt in the movie Top Gun. Scholl intentionally brought his plane into a flat spin, but was never able to recover. His last words, spoken on his way down, were “I have a problem — I have a real problem.” The wreckage of his plane was never found, nor was his body. Some speculate the plane sank rapidly with Scholl trapped inside.

Conway Wickliffe
Wickliffe was riding in a car while holding a camera, filming a scene where the Batmobile explodes. Unfortunately, the car missed a crucial turn and crashed head on into a tree. Wickliffe died instantly after sustaining severe head injuries.

Kun Liu
In Hollywood, stuntmen are considered far from “expendable”. Sadly, things do go wrong from time to time. On the set of The Expendables 2, stuntman Kun Liu, who was standing in for Jet

Martha Mansfield
Her death is one of the strangest unexplained mysteries in Hollywood. While she sat in a car, taking a break from filming, an unknown person threw a match through her window. Her costume caught on fire almost instantly, and she died of severe burns in the hospital

John Ritter
John Ritter began feeling chest pains during a rehearsal for his show 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Daughter when he began vomiting and sweating profusely, he was rushed to the emergency room. Doctors diagnosed him for heart attack but the real problem, however, was an aortic dissection or a small tear in the inner wall of the aorta. By the time the misdiagnosis was discovered, it was too late.