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

5. Never Work With Children Or Animals€ But Especially Animals.

Hear about a drunken Peter O€™Toole nearly killing himself when falling off a camel filming Lawrence Of Arabia in 1962? Good good. What about James Chapman, a sound technician, being mauled to death by a lion on a South African movie set for The Last Lion a decade later? That€™s pretty nasty, but it pales in comparison with the stuntman that was killed by a shark that was supposed to be sedated, while filming the 1969 Burt Reynolds vehicle Shark!: a scene that the shark-slasher flick Deep Blue Sea would pay homage to decades later. On a less tragic note, Ben Stiller needed a rabies shot after being bitten on the chin by a ferret on the set of Along Came Polly in 2004, and eighty-five years earlier, comedian Billie Ritchie was working on a short comedy film for silent movie producer and director Henry Lehrman when he was kicked in the stomach by an ostrich and sustained serious internal injuries. Ostriches. Why€™d it have to be ostriches? And then there€™s Roar (1981). A massive, expensive and humiliating folly of a film written and directed by Noel Marshall, starring himself, his actor wife Tippi €˜The Birds€™ Hedren, and their children (his daughter, a young Melanie Griffith, and sons John and Jerry), Roar was a cavalcade of real life animal attacks and injuries in the form of a very, very bad movie about animal attacks and injuries. Over seventy of the cast and crew were hurt during filming, including cinematographer (and later 1990s action director) Jan De Bont having his head redesigned by a lion€™s claws, requiring 220 stitches to reattach his scalp. Hedren also suffered scalp wounds and a fractured leg when an elephant bucked her off as she rode it, as well as a bite to her neck from a lion that needed 38 stitches, an attack that actually made it into the finished movie. Melanie received 50 stitches to her face and nearly lost an eye after an attack, but recovered in full. John was bitten, needing 56 stitches, as was his brother Jerry, while the assistant director Doron Kauper had his face nearly bitten off by a lion, which ripped open his throat and almost cost him an ear. Marshall himself actually contracted gangrene due to the number of poorly treated animal attacks he suffered, although after all that, most people would assert that he might have brought a bit of that upon himself. Funnily enough, his marriage to Hedren wouldn€™t survive the failure of the film that brought them so much grief, and they divorced a year after it was released.