10 More Movies With Creepy On-Set Stories
4. Nuclear Exposure - The Conqueror
Roar may have presented its cast and crew with immediate physical danger in the form of big, angry cats, but it's nothing compared to the health risks the team behind The Conqueror put themselves through in 1956.
Widely considered to be not only one of the worst of its generation, the movie is a consensus pick for one of the worst of all time. Its issues go far beyond the mind-boggling casting of John Wayne as Genghis Khan, and anything else that made it to the screen.
Production was reportedly a nightmare, suffering plenty of setbacks and problems, but the biggest of them was the location. Exterior scenes for Dick Powell's critical failure were filmed in a desert in Utah, 137 miles downwind of the Nevada National Security Site.
At the time this was a test site for nuclear bombs, something that of course greatly affected the cast and crew of the movie. All the while filming was going on, the 220 people working on the picture were constantly exposed to high levels of radiation that would ultimately prove fatal for many of them. It's reported that of these 220, 91 developed cancer in the following years, and 46 sadly lost their battle.