20 Things You Didn't Know About Licence To Kill (1989)
12. The Haunted Filming Location
The climactic Kenworth tanker chase is, without doubt, the film’s key action sequence, but superstition arose around the choice of filming location for it.
La Rumorosa Mountain Pass near Mexicali was a road that only the sturdiest of drivers used when it was open, due to the strange occurrences that took place along it, culminating in a bus full of nuns plunging over a cliff, following which the highway was closed.
Naturally, a closed highway was a useful filming location, but the experience was an uneasy one for the Bond team. Various crew members reported seeing ghosts on the road who, when approached, would simply vanish. Then, whilst filming the gigantic explosion that kills Sanchez, Timothy Dalton was almost caught in the blast, following which he swore to take a lesser role in future stunt work.
Perhaps the eeriest element of it all was that, when filming the explosion, numerous onlookers reported that it resembled an ominous hand reaching down towards the ground. Director, John Glen and editor, John Grover studied the footage, but could not find this, even though production photographs do exist of the burst of flame resembling a grasping hand.