8 Movies That Put Their Extras Through Hell

6. Extras Were Stung By Scorpions And Bitten By Snakes - The Ten Commandments

Ten Commandments parting Red Sea
Paramount Pictures

Cecil B. DeMille wanted his films to be lush, extravagant, and thrilling - and considering that this is his second appearance on our list (with one more to go), he clearly didn't mind putting some extras in harm's way to get there!

His 1956 drama The Ten Commandments was no different, with countless extras suffering some pretty nasty injuries throughout the course of production.

In one incident, the director used ten wingless aeroplanes to generate a real sandstorm, which caused a nearby extra to trip in his efforts to escape the blast. Doesn't sound too bad at first, but unfortunately, this extra happened to be carrying a burning torch - and when he fell, he set the girl in front of him on fire.

To make this sequence even more of a nightmare to film, an unforeseen side effect of the man-made sandstorm was that it disturbed nearby critters like scorpions and snakes. These scorpions then proceeded to bite many of the extras working on the scene, and one particularly unlucky sod was nibbled by an Egyptian cobra - a creature whose venom has the potential to kill.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!