9 Worst Accidents That Keep Happening On The Sets Of Hollywood Movies

8. Never Play With Guns

Considering the number of movies that feature gunplay front and centre in their narratives, there are an astonishingly low proportion of actual firearm related incidents in filmmaking. Everyone€™s heard the tragic tale of Brandon Lee€™s accidental shooting on the set of The Crow in 1993, of course€ but few remember actor Jon-Erik Hexum, star of ill-fated television spy caper Cover Up in 1985. Bored in waiting for filming to resume on his show, Hexum took to playing with a prop .44 Magnum between takes. Incredibly, he decided to play Russian Roulette with the gun, loading one of the chambers with a blank round. He€™d obviously not been told that blanks are nearly as dangerous as live rounds at a short distance: the resulting inevitable gunshot fractured part of his skull, forcing bone fragments into his brain and causing a huge cerebral haemorrhage. He was pronounced brain dead upon arrival at a Beverley Hills hospital. Both Bruce Willis and Linda Hamilton would suffer the effects of firing prop guns in a confined space in Die Hard and Terminator 2, of which more in a moment. But it€™s Buster Keaton€™s 1926 black comedy The General that takes the Darwin award for failing to point the bangstick in the right direction. The assistant director Harry Barnes was hit in the face by a blank charge from a gun, while Keaton himself was knocked out when he failed to keep the correct distance from a cannon being fired. Not only that, but several extras were hurt when caught by on-set explosions and misfiring muskets: extras that had been recruited from the National Guard. You€™d think they€™d know better.