10 Magic Tricks That Went Disastrously Wrong Live

6. Mexican Actress Narrowly Avoids Burning To Death

As The Great Moodini proved, stunts and tricks that revolve around a tight time limit present an inherent danger to the performer - if something goes wrong, they don't have a whole lot of time to warn people, escape, or rectify the problem.

But if they know how much time they have and they know what they have to do, then there shouldn't be a problem, right?

Unless, of course, they don't have as much time as they think they do.

This was the case for Mexican stunt woman Anadela, who - after being tied up in chains and sealed in a box rigged with explosives - was given 60 seconds to escape.

Or so she thought. After she was told that the explosives would go off in precisely one minute, the timer was accidentally set for 45 seconds, providing a smaller window for a safe escape.

She pokes her head out of the box around the 42 second mark, believing she has 18 seconds to get to safety. In reality, she's all out of time, and the box explodes - setting the performer on fire.

She's quickly swarmed by helpers who cover her in sheets and douse the flames, but not before the damage has been done. Anadela required 60 skin grafts and five operations to heal her wounds, and was hospitalised for a month.

 
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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!