8 Movies That Put Their Extras Through Hell

4. Extras Were Thrown Down A Pyramid Covered In Sandpaper - The Woman God Forgot

The Woman God Forgot 1917 extras thrown off pyramid
Paramount Pictures

Here he is again: the MVP of our list, Cecil B. DeMille. What horrors is he inflicting on his poor actors this time? Well... let's find out.

Towards the end of his 1917 silent film The Woman God Forgot, there's a scene that required a bunch of extras to be tossed down the side of a prop pyramid. That might not sound too reckless at first - when you look at it, it's almost like a giant slide - but remember that this is 100 years ago, and the standards of safety and craftsmanship weren't what they are today.

The pyramid had been built out of wood and covered in paper, and upon this paper, sand had been glued, to give it the appearance of stone. So when the extras slid down it, they were scraping against sandpaper the entire time. You can imagine how painful that must've been.

Clearly aware that the pyramid slide would injure those who used it, a member of the crew stood at the bottom with a bucket of iodine, ready to patch the extras up. Top lad.

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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!