On this ride, your hosts Steve and Mal hurtle from Point A to Point B while exploring the makings of the macabre. Whether it involves rug burns or full burns, when the haunting happens, are you happy or harried — or a bit of both?
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Show notes:
Your co-hosts Steve and Mal around Halloween many moons ago:
If you need to hear an at least somewhat macabre story from the making of Amityville 3-D, that fine work of cinematic art, you’re in luck. Here it is in Steve’s Halloween-themed little video, “Tales From the Scrypt” at https://youtu.be/7Ncrey-2E3o?si=6Cf9jLFUXn_ej5rP. Come for the creepily ludicrous, or ludicrously creepy, lighting, stay for the story:
An account of the fatal accident during the making of the Twilight Zone movie can be found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_Zone_accident
Apparently there is a documentary series entitled “Cursed Films.” As the article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursed_Films reports, the series “focuses on alleged curses that afflicted the production of notable horror/non-horror films. Each episode focuses on a single film and includes interviews with individuals who worked on said films. The series also includes interviews with journalists and film critics who comment on the alleged curses.”
For a list of film and television accidents, look to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_film_and_television_accidents
Lest one think that the examples of film production accidents recounted in this ep (or in the “Tales of the Scrypt” video) are anomalous, this Wikipedia article proves otherwise. They abound. And although ironies in these mishaps can (and in one’s case sometimes did) occasion laughter, the cumulative effect is, as it undoubtably was to the victims in any but the most minor of the incidents in this collection, unsettling and painful.
Perhaps one of the most bizarre, not to say macabre, instances of the uncanny connection between scripted suffering and real- life suffering during the making of a film can be found in this opinion piece about the Werner Herzog film Fitzcarraldo: https://web.archive.org/web/20190511110445/https://www.themetropolistimes.com/the-metropolis-times/2017/3/13/fitzcarraldo
“The movie is about a 19th Century colonialist named Fitzgerald, who leads his indigenous workers up the river, to death and disease in order to achieve his dream of building an opera house in the jungle…. The film itself is clearly problematic, but the real-life experience of those who worked on the production is horrifying. The deadly ordeal was captured in the documentary Burden of Dreams. (a title echoing Kipling’s ode to colonialism) Like the semi-fictional Fitzgerald, Herzog too led his indigenous workers up the river, where they met death and disease.”
“It is more than possible to both make great art and to care for the safety and well-being of those who make it.”