10) Brandon Lee In The Crow
Brandon Lee, like his father Bruce Lee, died partway through making a movie. Where Bruce died from acute swelling of the brain off-set, Brandon was killed directly because of the movie he was working on.
The film was Alex Proyas’ fantasy noir comic book adaptation The Crow, and the scene that resulted in the loss of Lee’s life involved the actor being shot with blanks, one of which – fatally – turned out to be a real live round.
Director Proyas finished Lee’s remaining scenes by digitally replacing a stunt double’s face with that of Lee’s. Those few shots aside though, Lee’s oddly charismatic, haunted performance is intact.
There are moments in The Crow when Lee’s Eric Draven – sadistic, face painted into a smile – looks like a proto-Ledger Joker, but there’s something ghoulish and compellingly weird about Lee’s performance that sets him apart.
9) Vic Morrow In Twilight Zone: The Movie
Much like Brandon Lee, Vic Morrow was killed in a horrific on-set accident, but what happened to Morrow on the set of Twilight Zone: The Movie was even more brutal.
Shooting a scene in his part of the anthology movie, which saw Morrow’s bitter racist Bill Connor in the midst of the Vietnam War, director John Landis inadvertently ended up getting Morrow and two child extras killed, when a helicopter hovering above the scene span out of control.
While the two children were crushed to death, Morrow was decapitated by the blades of the falling chopper. In this case, there was enough of the actor’s work in the can that Landis was able to put his completed chapter of the Twilight Zone movie out.
It’s not a great film, but Morrow is the best thing in it and is particularly good in the movie’s most effective sequence, playing a resentful bigot with a frightening conviction.
