Part of the fun of being a film director is controlling the world your characters live in. As the leading creative force on the set of a film, they also control, in a very real way, the world their actors live in. That’s fine if you’re working for Tim Burton and he just keeps calling “Cut!” to paint more horizontal stripes on the set or whatever, but the director’s vision can sometimes be straight-up terrifying. Below, you’ll find six true stories of casts and crews at the mercy of a director who may or may not have had a method to his madness.
Eiji Tsuburaya in: Death by Rubber Suit
You’ve no doubt had more than a few laughs about the dubious quality of the monster suits in the Godzilla series. Admittedly, they don’t create a seamless simulation of monster-grappling reality; the seams are part of the charm. However, those silly costumes are also heavy-duty hardware. While today’s models come with air-conditioning and ventilation for the stuntmen inside, the same was not true of the old school suits. Made of foam rubber molded over a bamboo frame, these cumbersome getups could weigh more than 200 pounds.
Eiji Tsuburaya was the special effects director for much of the kaiju eiga golden age, and his visions for the men in these heavy suits often put them in mortal peril. His lead suit actor, Haruo Nakajima, had his head catch fire in Mothra vs. Godzilla (1963), was nearly buried under gallons of muck in Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster (1970), and, most traumatically, nearly drowned while filming Rodan (1956). While filming a flying scene as the titular pterodactyl, Nakajima’s wire harness snapped and he fell into the indoor pool that served as on-set ocean. Unable to right himself with his huge, waterlogged wings, Nakajima nearly drowned before crewmen managed to fish him out of the water. Surprisingly enough, there was no ill-will between Nakajima and Tsuburaya; despite the director’s effects nearly killing him numerous times, the actor had an abiding love for his boss, and retired from suit acting out of grief in the wake of Tsuburaya’s death.
Norman Taurog’s Enforced Method Acting
Norman Taurog was a journeyman film director who helmed a number of unremarkable films, most notably several Elvis Presley vehicles and the Vincent Price mad science camp classic, Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965). Although it’s mostly forgotten today, Taurog’s most critically successful film was Skippy (1931), starring his nephew, the child actor Jackie Cooper. The film earned Taurog his one and only Oscar, and even netted a Best Actor nomination for the 9-year old Cooper.
The film turns on a sequence where Skippy, Cooper’s character, has a beloved dog killed by a mean-spirited dogcatcher. In order to ensure a believable performance in this scene, Taurog threatened to have Cooper’s real dog killed. Still unimpressed by the boy’s acting, Taurog had a stagehand haul the dog out of sight and fire off a blank, ensuring that Cooper’s inconsolable grief would be palpable onscreen. After he got his take, Taurog returned the dog, but Cooper never forgave his uncle; the experience was so formative that it would provide the title of Cooper’s autobiography, Please Don’t Shoot My Dog.
Rob Reiner Stands By Horror
The nostalgic boyhood tale Stand By Me (1986) remains one of the less outright terrifying Stephen King adaptations out there. It’s the story of four friends who set out on a summer adventure to find a dead body, and must overcome such dangers as speeding trains, leeches, and threatening hoodlum Keifer Sutherland. As it turns out, the villainy of Greaser Sutherland was all in good fun, but the train and leech sequences were actually fairly traumatic.
Director Rob Reiner, not quite the monster that Norman Taurog was (or perhaps unable to find a dog on-set) simply berated his preteen stars until they cried for the train sequence. And, to ensure realism in the leech infestation scene, he went ahead and put actual leeches on children. He was probably pissed when he found out that shrieking eels weren’t real and would have to menace Robin Wright with puppets in The Princess Bride (1987).
William Friedkin and the Scariest Movie Ever Made
That’s the hype surrounding the seminal demonic possession film, The Exorcist (1973), but the film may have been more terrifying for its cast and crew than it was for audiences. Director William Friedkin was determined to extract real, visceral terror from his players, and didn’t hesitate to downright abusive methods to get it.
Ellen Burstyn was violently yanked across a room without warning, injuring her coccyx; this shot appears in the finished film. Reverend William O’Malley, a real priest who doubled as an actor and a technical advisor on set, was slapped in the face by Friedkin to elicit appropriate emotion for the last rites scene. At another point in filming, the director fired blanks without warning to get footage of his actors looking believably shocked. At least there were no dogs involved.
Werner Herzog Dramatized His Mania
German director Werner Herzog is known for his near-pathological intensity. A perfectionist with morbid tendencies, he had a volatile relationship with his most frequent collaborator, actor Klaus Kinski. All of those factors came together on the set of Fitzcarraldo (1983), the story of a European rubber baron who forces Peruvian natives to haul a steamship up a steep incline to access the rubber-rich valley on the other side.
Herzog seems to have identified heavily with his protagonist, to the point of planning to play the title role before Kinski signed on. Herzog continued to play the role in real life, however, as he made actual Peruvian natives haul an actual steamship up an actual hill in the name of realism. Ironically, Herzog was actually more demanding than the obsessive magnate the film was based on; Fitzcarraldo had his workers drag the components of a 30-ton boat uphill and assemble it on the other side, while Herzog’s crew hauled an entire 320-ton ship uphill. Oh, and then he built a village on tribal land without permission and had to hire armed guards after they burned the set down.
Michael Curtiz Plays God, Literally
Today, he’s best-known as the man who helmed epics like Casablanca (1941) and The Sea Hawk (1940), Michael Curtiz’ history in Hollywood stretched back to the silent days. He was never known as a particularly actor-friendly director; two of his most prominent stars, Humphrey Bogart and Errol Flynn, despised him. But nothing in his later career approaches the callousness he showed on the set of Noah’s Ark (1928).
When it came time to film the climactic flood scene, Curtiz decided to aim for realism and for-real flood a set filled with extras with thousands of gallons of water. The water flow was so torrential that fifteen camera men were swept into the drink, and extras were jostled around for hours. Confirmed casualties include broken ribs and a case of pneumonia, but rumors abound that the studio covered up the deaths of three extras in the water that day.
