5. Almost Being Trampled By Horses - Stagecoach
There are few stuntmen more daring than Yakima Canutt, who is most famous for both the chariot race sequence in Ben Hur, and this stupendously entertaining (and enormously dangerous) chase scene in the classic John Ford flick, Stagecoach. Doubling for John Wayne, Canutt has to jump from several horses to fix a harness, something that's achieved without any effects or special aid, and yet, this is just the warm-up. The most thrilling and death-defying part comes when Canutt has to double for an Indian, and is shot by Wayne's character, falling between the horses, holding onto the yoke for a few moments, and then falling between the horses, scarcely being trampled to death. Oh, and then he lets himself fall between the
stagecoach as well, again just avoiding death, before managing to pull himself up on the back end. Outrageous. And in a move that was surely a giant middle-finger to God, Cannut ended up dying of natural causes at the ripe old age of 90.