10 Insane Movie Stunts They Filmed FOR REAL

Next, we have a much older production that served as a progenitor for major action stunts. Before the likes of Jackie Chan and Tom Cruise took to the screen, there was Buster Keaton putting his body on the line in pursuit of art.

Back in the days of silent cinema, there was no such thing as "special effects" when it came to creating stunts. If you wanted to craft a sequence, you had no choice but do it for real. That's exactly what happened in 1926's The General, which features easily the most iconic moment seen in a silent film.

The Civil War comedy sees classical stuntman extraordinaire Buster Keaton sabotaging a union army train by damaging a railway crossing. His foe, insistent on pushing their forces on, orders the supply train to cross. There was no way around it; that full scale train really did plunge into the water and could only be done in one shot.

Directors Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton himself pulled it off in one take, showing a perfectly mounted sideways shot to show the destruction on display. With no means to retrieve it at the time of the film's release, the train itself remained at the bottom of the river until it was eventually salvaged for parts during World War II two decades later.