The scene, which was filmed at night time — and due to this fact a direct violation of kid labor legal guidelines within the first place — known as for Morrow’s character to hold his two kids out of an deserted village and flee throughout a river. On the identical time, American troopers had been imagined to be “chasing” them in a hovering helicopter. An precise Vietnam veteran, Dorcey Wingo, was piloting the helicopter through the scene.
Whereas hovering near a big explosive impact, Wingo positioned the plane near the bottom after which turned it 180 levels for the next shot. The particular impact was detonated whereas the helicopter’s tail rotor was flying straight above it, and a steel lid from the explosion struck the rotor, inflicting the plane to spin uncontrolled. On the ensuing trial, the protection claimed the particular impact had been detonated prematurely.
The three actors on the bottom couldn’t escape the plummeting plane or its blades and had been killed immediately. Chen was crushed to demise by the correct touchdown skid, and the helicopter’s still-spinning blades decapitated each Morrow and Le. The New York Occasions reported that the helicopter sequence was each “poorly deliberate” and “badly rehearsed.” Between 1986 and 1987, an investigation was carried out surrounding the occasions of the ill-fated scene, and 5 members of the crew — together with Dorcey Wingo — had been tried for manslaughter and later acquitted.
The strangest a part of the whole state of affairs? 9 years earlier, in 1973, Morrow insisted on having a life insurance coverage coverage whereas filming any scenes by which he needed to journey in a helicopter. When requested why he was so hesitant in the direction of any such scene, it was reported that Morrow replied, “I’ve at all times had a premonition I used to be going to die in a helicopter crash!”
