In Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade, Kazam is a member of The Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword, a secret society dedicated to stopping anybody from getting the Grail. Towards the end of the movie, he is ambiguously shot during the sequence preceding the desert tank chase - Spielberg's camera moves towards Kazam, his chest exposed and bloody, as he mutters his last words. Then he dies. Originally, though, Kazim's death was supposed to be completely different, and Spielberg spent a lot of time trying to get it right before time pressures forced him to move on. As a result, it was never completed and his death scene was re-shot - all that remains is a photograph showing the circumstances of his alternate demise. The original plan was for Kazim to have a big, dramatic death that would have seen him collapsing into Elsa's arms after being shot by Walter Donovan (at least according to the comic book adaptation) in a scene that was supposed to echo the one that saw Louis Bernard stabbed to death in Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much. Kazim was to leave blood stains on Elsa's hands, but Spielberg couldn't make it work and scrapped it.
Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.
