10 Films You Didn’t Know Were Secretly Cursed

The Conqueror was a 1956 flop of a film that starred John Wayne as Genghis Khan. Although today The Conqueror can be seen as very racist in its portrayal of Mongolian warriors, that’s not the worst thing about this movie. The Conqueror was shot in many locations throughout Utah, but one specific location, St. George, was used for the exterior desert shots. Unfortunately, it was shot 137 miles downwind of the Nevada National Security Site, where nuclear fallout still existed from the nuclear weapons testing of 1953, also known as Operation Upshot-Knothole. The crew knew about the tests, but it was deemed safe to film by the federal government.

Even though the footage was completely useable and unaffected by the radiation, the crew weren’t so fortunate. This curse presents itself as the cancer that 91 members of the crew contracted, and of which 46 died of years afterwards, including John Wayne himself. The producer, Howard Hughes, has gone on record that he felt incredibly guilty about the whole affair.

There is one particular factor in this case that makes it incredibly strange, however. Dr. Pendleton of Utah University stated in 1980, “The connection between fallout radiation and cancer in individual cases has been practically impossible to prove conclusively, but in a group this size you'd expect only 30-some cancers to develop.” The Conqueror remains as one of the unluckiest productions in history.