8 Movies With Seriously Insane Details You Didn't Notice

8. Those Were Real Arrows Being Fired At Toshiro Mifune - Throne Of Blood (1957)

Akira Kurosawa is often considered to be the greatest of all Japanese directors, what with a body of work that includes Hidden Fortress, Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, Rashomon and Ran. Even if you haven't seen movies, you've got to admit that even the names sounds good.

Throne of Blood, which transposes Macbeth to feudal Japan, is considered to be another Kurosawa classic, and starred Toshiro Mifune in the lead role. Towards the end of the flick, Mifune is fleeing from archers, which would be rather frightening should it happen in real life. For some directors, like Kurosawa, "acting" frightened just wasn't considered good enough. In fact, the only way to really achieve the kind of genuine horror that he'd conjured up in his mind's eye was to subject his leading man to some genuinely terrifying circumstances.

Which is to say, Kurosawa ordered the use of real archers and real arrows in the scene where Mifune tries to avoid the damn things from, you know, killing him.

Yes, to get the most realistic reaction possible, the director hired some of the best archers around and had them fire into the wood right next to where Mifune was standing, who had to be absolutely fine with this, apparently, 'cause Kurosawa. Anybody who thought that Mifune's acting in this scene was "realistic" had no idea what the poor guy was being subjected to.

Kurosawa later commented that Throne of Blood was "very hard to make." But for who, exactly?