William Rankin was a World War II and Korean War veteran, and a Lieutenant Colonel in the Marine Corps. In 1959, he was routinely flying a F-8 jet fighter when the engine failed, right as he was passing over a cumulonimbus cloud, erupting into a thunderstorm. He very calmly ejected, having previously bailed out of a jet whilst under enemy fire in Korea, and headed straight into the cloud. Due to intense decompression, he started bleeding from the eyes, ears, nose and mouth. His abdomen also began to swell up, causing a massive amount of discomfort. He immediately suffered frostbite due to the sub-zero temperatures of the cloud. He gasped up as much oxygen as he could, resisting the urge to deploy his parachute, as it would later self-deploy at a safe-breathable altitude. When his 'chute finally popped, continuous updrafts battered him up and down in the air for countless minutes, until at one point he vomited. In the midst of the cloud, he had to hold his breath so as not to choke on all the suspended water and drown in mid-air. Hailstones pelted his body. Lightning flashed all around him, lighting up his parachute (at one point leading him to believe he had died), whilst thunder that he couldn't hear but feel shook his body senseless. Eventually he emerged from the cloud and sailed on a gust of wind headfirst into a tree - luckily, he was still wearing his helmet. He got up, shook it off, checked his watch and deduced that he had been in the air for forty minutes. To cap it all off, he walked through the woods of North Carolina until he passed a road where a car picked him up. His wounds extended as far as mild bruising, frostbite and decompression shock - one lucky hombre, and the only man in history to survive a fall through a cumulonimbus cloud. He eventually wrote a book about his ordeal, titled The Man Who Rode the Thunder (which also happens to be a great title for a film). How To Make It Portrayed in a survival-story mode, a movie of Rankin's experience could have a decent first act introducing the character, his tenacity and his training, before depicting in real-time his dizzying ordeal. It'd make for a challenging performance for any actor, and a vertigo-inducing experience for audience members, but it'd be a hell of a cinematic experiment. Hand the reins over to someone like Gaspar Noé and give them an $80 million budget - trust me, you'll get one heck of a blockbuster. Which other shocking true stories deserve to be made into movies? Share your picks below in the comments thread.
Cinephile since 1993, aged 4, when he saw his very first film in the cinema - Jurassic Park - which is also evidence of damn fine parenting. World champion at Six Degrees of Separation. Lender of DVDs to cheap mates. Connoisseur of Marvel Comics and its Cinematic Universe.
