Deaths And Other Scary Movie Incidents

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4 days ago

Plenty of film crews go to extreme lengths to create scary movie scenes for horror films, thrillers, etc. Sometimes, however, the truly terrifying stuff is going on behind-the-scenes.
Here are 26 terrifying things that happened on movie sets:
Filming the hanging scene in The Mummy almost killed Brendan Fraser. He told The Kelly Clarkson Show, "I was standing on my toes like this, with the rope [around my neck], and you only got so far to go. And [director] Stephen [Sommers] ran over, and he said, 'Hey, it doesn't really look like you're, you know, choking — can you sell it?' And I was like, 'All right, fine.' So I thought, 'One more take, man.'...I was stuck on my toes — I had nowhere to go but down. And so [the crew member operating the rope] was pulling up, and I was going down, and the next thing I knew, my elbow was in my ear, the world was sideways, there was gravel in my teeth, and everyone was really quiet."
Here's the scene:
During Titanic's final shooting day in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, tens of cast and crew members were unwittingly drugged when they ate chowder spiked with the mind-altering substance PCP. Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet weren't on set that day, but Bill Paxton was among the poisoned. Director James Cameron told Q with Tom Power, "This is a 100 percent true story. You haven't lived until you've been high on PCP, which by the way, I do not recommend to anyone."
Everyone was rushed to the hospital under the initial concern that they might've eaten contaminated shellfish. James continued, "There was an emergency room with no one in it and, like, a nurse, and 85 crew members walk in. We don't know what's going on. And basically, somebody had taken a pound of PCP and dumped it into the chowder...We have a pretty strong suspicion who it was, although it was never proven."
While filming the water tank magic trick in Now You See Me, Isla Fisher almost drowned because her release chain got caught in her clothing. She told Chelsea Lately, "I was actually drowning. Everyone thought I was acting fabulously…no one realized I was actually struggling...Who wants to die in a swimming costume?"
Here's the scene:
While filming Youth in Revolt, Justin Long was drugged and abducted by people he met at a bar. On Armchair Expert, he said, "I came back to the bar, and it was fairly empty. And it was my last night of shooting this movie. And I went out with one of the actresses and these two PAs — a guy and a girl. And of course, I go to the bar, get my two shots, and these guys sidle up next to me. I just remember the feeling of — sounds so new agey — but they had this weird energy, the dark energy. And they said, 'What happened to you the other night, Mr. Big Shot?' And I said, 'What do you mean?' 'You guys were moved into some, like, fancy area. Like, this is our fucking bar, bro.' And I said, 'You know, of course, I'm so...' And they played right into my vulnerability, which was, 'I'm just like you. I grew up in a town like this.'"
He continued, "And I said, I'm so sorry. Let's do a shot together.' They're like, 'All right, man,' and they must have sensed that that was my weakness because they kept coming over to our table, and, 'Oh you guys know the big shot, huh? Mr. Hollywood.' And I was like, 'No, I'm not. I'm like....' At the end of the night..We were there for a couple hours, and I was a little bit, you know, buzzed. And we were leaving, and the guys — it was two in the morning in Birmingham — and they said, 'Do you want to go to a casino? We're going to a casino.' Thank God the actress said, 'No I'm going to go home,' and the PA said, 'Yeah, we'll go.' And I was eager to go because I love playing Blackjack. and I hadn't been there. I hadn't been to those Detroit casinos, and I thought two in the morning, kind of drunk with strangers, was a good time to go..."
"I'm headed to the PA's car, and they said to — I'll call them townies for the sake of the story...The townies said, 'Why don't we all take the same car?' PA were like 'No,' I said, 'Ehh..' and they said, 'Oh, what you think, we're going to do something to the Hollywood boy?' And I said, 'Yeah, guys, come on. We're all going in the same car.' We got into their car. They dropped me off at the hotel for a second to get my per diem to gamble with. Got back in; we're heading to the casino...I'm like, 'Where's my money? Guys are waiting for me. I don't want them to think I'm a, you know, Hollywood diva keeping them waiting.' So I run out to the car, got my money, and they stop at their condo. They said, 'We're gonna make a stop.' I forget why."
"As we were going in, I remember they made a big deal about, 'Take your shoes off. Go in quietly.' They had a roommate that was sleeping. Took my shoes off. They took out a bong, and they passed it to me. They lit it, and I said, 'Oh no, you know, I'm okay. I want to have my wits about me because I play Blackjack.' And they said, 'Are you fucking kidding, bro? You're not going to smoke with us, bro? Come on.' So there I go...So, of course, I smell. I take a big hit of this; the second it hits my mouth, I know the taste was kind of chemically, kind of clear tasting is the best way I can describe it. And I ripped this crazy hit, and my mind — I just remember the feeling of, like, immediately losing control of my body, but not to the point where I shit my pants..."
"My mind wasn't working. It was the strangest thing...I've since told the story to people. This one guy in particular in private security, and he thought it was PCP...So I'm panicking..The girl did [smoke], and she...[looked] like a demented, like, some cartoon character, you know, like like Ren and Stimpy kind of like frighteningly over the top. And I'm thinking to myself, 'Do I look like this?' You know, right, I feel like that. And the guy didn't. He hadn't been drinking, nor was he saying much. Then I passed the bong back to the two townies, and they were studying me kind of, like, looking at each other, like, conspiratorially, like, 'Is it working?' kind of thing. And I said, 'Are you gonna smoke?' ..."
"And they said, 'No no, bro, we're straight. Are you cool? Is everything okay?' ...There's a part of me that is, I'm, like, hoping that's the drug, that's just the drug. It keeps getting worse. Then they say, 'Let's go get Shawn. Let's go wake up Shawn.' I said, 'No no. The roommate? Don't get him. I thought he was sleeping.' One of them stood up to go get the roommate, and I stood up. And the remaining townie started doing these karate kicks at my face. It was like in Boogie Nights, you know, where that crystal meth scene. He was saying things like, 'Whoa whoa, bro. Well, sit down. Calm down.' Karate kicks in my face. And the roommate came out fully dressed, wasn't sleeping. I'll never forget. He said, 'Oh yeah, you're right. That is the guy. Let me go get my camera...'"
"So now I'm fully panicking, and this is before everyone had cameras with them, mercifully...I convinced the two to drive me back, and they were guilting me the whole time, like, and saying things like, 'You can't handle your weed, bro. What about that movie you did, Strange Wilderness?' They kept mentioning this movie, Strange Wilderness, and we get in the car. I'm in the backseat with the two PAs. The girl's next to me. So the two guys are driving. They're in front, and they were kind of whispering back and forth, and they're texting somebody. They're saying things like, 'Yeah I think...you know.' I could hear snippets like, 'We're coming over. We got it.' And they would lean back to me and say, 'It's all right, bro. We're going to make one more stop, and that'll be it, okay? Okay, Justin?'"
"And they said they started saying, like, 'How about we make another movie? You want to be a movie for TMZ or YouTube?' And I'm panicking, and the girl senses that I'm panicking. It was probably clearly, like, I was freaking out. I remember this is the worst part. She leaned forward to them and said, 'I could hear everything. What are you guys doing? He's freaking out. Don't do this to him. Why are you doing this?' And they say, 'Shut the fuck up. We know what we're doing. We're doing this thing. We got it. We got it under control.' And she leaned back to me, and she goes, 'It's okay, Justin. They said they were gonna take you home. Everything's gonna be fine.' And now, she's the girl, as is the silent other PA, who they're in the kidnapping movie, they're the ones who are like, 'Guys we're not really doing this, are we? Come on, right?' 'Cauze they were locals."
"I didn't really know them. I'd been working with them for two weeks, and I liked them, but yeah, I didn't really know them. So now, I think I'm gonna die. I mean, that's where I went. And they started saying, 'How much money did you take out for the casino? How much money you got on you?' So I'm like, 'Aw fuck.'...I thought about giving them the money, but this was also my body at this point. The idea of taking out my phone, and dialing numbers is an impossible feat. So I'm just like, I don't know what to do. So I started, like, freaking out, punching the seat in front of me, and the worst part was they said they tried to mollify me. They were like, 'Okay, Justin, calm down. We're gonna take you back. It's gonna be okay.' And sure enough, and I knew the town well enough to know they had been going in the wrong direction."
"And then they reversed course, and they started going back to my hotel. And I was somewhat relieved, and I remember thinking, 'Okay, thank God, they were fucking with me. They just wanted to see me scared or whatever.' And so they started going up to the hotel. They slow down, and I'm thinking, 'Here we go,' and they kept going. And I said, 'What are you doing? It was back there.' 'It's okay; we're just gonna make one more stop.' It was that. They wanted me calm, and that was the scariest part. So then I saw a red light coming up, and there's no one. It's three in the morning. There's no one on the road, so I'm coming up to this red light, and I think, 'Okay, I'm going to get out, and I'll just run to the whatever.' And they go right through the red light."
"They blew the red light, blew the stop signs. They turn the corner, and they're going about 35 miles. I open the door, and I jump out..I rolled under the car, and they ran over my leg, totally over my leg. And then I roll more...I just remember thinking it was one of the happiest moments of my life. I remember right after I got run over, I stood up, and my leg was, like, just bent, twisted...I remember looking down and seeing blood just pooling, like, seeping out of the sides of my leg out to my jeans and thinking, 'Oh I love those jeans. I ruined these jeans.' Which is so weird have an attachment to, but also filled with the being alive...I had seen a car coming, headlights coming. And I'm hobbling toward it, flag it down, and weirdly, it] was a cab. And I got in the cab, and I locked the door."
"And I said, 'Take me to the [hotel], you know. It's right.' I remember the cab driver...'What is happening? Get out of my car.' He didn't want me in there, and I can only...I must have had the craziest energy, you know...Then the PAs came up. He wasn't moving, and the PAs came up, and I'm panicking. I'm thinking, 'What if they come after me now?' And they did. The two PAs came up and started banging on the window. They were freaky, especially the girl with PCP in her system, was freaking out...She said, repeating, 'I thought we killed a movie star! I thought we killed a movie star! Oh my God!'"
"And the guy — the one who had been kind of calm — and he was freaking out...I got the sense then that they were safe by their [reactions]. They seemed safe at that point. And I was so close to the hotel, and he wasn't moving, so I had no real choice, right? So I go back. I wake up six hours later in more pain than I've ever been in and blood all over the sheets. I made my way to a doctor...He x-rayed it, and no broken bones, which is crazy, but such bad nerve damage that, to this day — and I never dealt with it because, a couple days later, I went through a breakup," he said.
The Leonardo DiCaprio-led Romeo + Juliet was filmed in Mexico, but the production could've been a movie itself. Director Baz Luhrmann told Arts Beat LA, "Look, first let me say I would not swap a day that I spent in Mexico for anything in the world. It was the most adventurous time. Having said that, it is true we were there months longer than we needed to be. We had hurricanes that wiped out the set. We all got sick. Shooting shut down for a week while I had a temperature of 110. The hair and makeup person, Aldo Signoretti, who worked with [director Federico] Fellini, was kidnapped. We paid $US300 to get him back. I thought rather a bargain."
He continued, "I was not there; he was kidnapped. The bandidos rang up and said, 'For $US300, you can have him back.' So Maurizio [Silvi, the makeup artist], who is about this high, goes down clutching the money to outside the hotel, holds it up, chucks them the bag, and they threw him out of the car and broke his leg. So we had adventures. It was an incredible quest. It wasn't a walk in the park, and the fact that the kids did what they did and put up with what they did was amazing."
"The reason the film is like it is, is that we embraced everything in the film. For example, Mercutio dies in that storm. Well, that was the hurricane that came and blew our sets away. The wide shots, which you could never get, I asked the guys if the cameras could handle it – we got out and did the wides and caught the storms, then we came back and did the close-ups with wind machines. For a budget of ours, which is between $15–17 million, you can't achieve that short of massive CGIs," he said.
Here's the storm scene:
The Exorcist director William Friedkin told Castle of Frankenstein magazine, "I'm not a convert to the occult, but after all I've seen on this film, I definitely believe in demonic possession. There are things that cannot be treated by medical or psychiatric means. It seems strange, foreign and impossible, but it exists. We were plagued by strange and sinister things from the beginning, it is simply the hardest thing I have ever done in my life."
One of the scariest things that happened on set took place before cameras even rolled. Per SyFy, during pre-production, a sudden fire claimed the set of the MacNeils' house — and supposedly, only Regan's bedroom survived. Rebuilding took six weeks.
Only a few days into shooting Maze Runner: The Death Cure, a stunt went wrong, seriously injuring Dylan O'Brien. He was reportedly pulled from a vehicle and hit by another. His injuries included brain trauma, a facial fracture, and a concussion. Production was paused for months so he could recover.
Dylan told Men's Health, "It was a life-changing incident. I've approached everything differently, you could say, particularly with regards to standing my ground on set. It's very commonplace in the culture for young actors to be controlled, and the way they strive to do that is by always being like, 'Oh, don't become difficult. Don't be a pain in the ass.'..I learned after the accident to not conflate taking care of yourself and looking after yourself. Don't let them manipulate you into thinking that is being difficult, because I can look at that day and know I was a 24-year-old kid who was raising concerns about how we were approaching things, and they were not listened to, they were not respected. And then what happened happened. And by all accounts, it was all pretty gotten away with, I would say, as well."
Noah's Ark (1928) director Michael Curtiz reportedly had a million-plus gallon water tank built for the Great Flood scene. When cinematographer Hal Mohr brought up safety concerns, he allegedly replied, "They're just going to have to take their chances." Hal walked off set, but Michael continued with the stunt, injuring many extras and breaking two of Guinn Williams's ribs. Additionally, lead actor Dolores Costello caught pneumonia after spending hours in the water. There are also unconfirmed reports that one extra allegedly died during the stunt.
You can watch the flood scene at the 1:26:00-mark below:
There were "a lot of weird things that happened on" The Amityville Horror (2005). Actor Melissa George told Radio Free Entertainment, "We were filming at the boathouse, and the police came by. They were on the water there, and they said that they found a dead body that had floated to the surface. We were like, 'Awesome!' That's making everything much more comfortable in this movie!'"
Some people believe that The Twilight Zone cursed its stars because so many of them died in unnatural ways. One of the most heartbreaking examples happened on the set of the 1982 film. Per Slate, during a scene where Vic Morrow's character was saving two Vietnamese children – played by Renee Chen and Myca Dinh Le — from an American air raid, the three actors were wading in a river when a helicopter caught fire and crashed into the water. It killed the three of them. In the scene, Vic was supposed to say, "I'll keep you safe, kids. I promise. Nothing will hurt you, I swear to God."
The studio and director John Landis settled the civil lawsuits brought against them, but — alongside helipcoter pilot Dorcey Wingo and three other people — they faced criminal involuntary manslaughter charges. The case went to trial in 1985, but the defendants were acquitted of serious charges. However, the tragedy led Warner Bros. vice president John Silvia to create a committee to set industry safety standards.
Jim Caviezel got struck by lightning while filming The Passion of the Christ. He told The Words, "We were shooting the Sermon on the Mount. About four seconds before it happened, it was quiet, and then it was like someone slapped my ears. I had seven or eight seconds of, like, a pink, fuzzy color, and people started screaming. They said I had fire on the left side of my head and light around my body. All I can tell you is that I looked like I went to Don King's hairstylist."
Here's the scene:
Jeffrey Dean Morgan told The Hollywood Reporter that, while filming The Possession, "There were enough weird things going on around our set that I've never seen happen on sets before." He claimed that, in the middle of filming key scenes, lights would explode, or there would be a sudden cold draft. However, the most chilling incident happened after the movie wrapped. He said, "We had all of our props a couple days after we finished wrapping — they put everything in storage for if you're gonna do reshoots or anything. It burned to the ground. It was investigated, and there were no signs of arson, no electrical fire." Among the wreckage was the imitation dybbuk box that was central to the plot.
Bo Derek hand-picked a lion that had already been in several movies to act alongside her in Tarzan, the Ape Man. However, when she arrived to set, he'd been replaced. She told Yahoo Entertainment, "I saw this gorgeous, young, spectacular male lion, and he just fixes on me. Not anyone else in our group, just me. They said, 'Oh, he's fresh from a zoo in Texas, but he's so sweet. You're going to love him.' And I said, 'I don't like the way he's looking at me.' You get that feeling on the back of your neck that you're prey — and that's the way he was looking at me." However, no one took her concerns seriously. During a scene where her costar Miles O'Keeffe was bringing her onto the shore, the lion attacked her.
Bo said, "When the lion went to attack me, he pushed Miles on top of me, and I crawled out from underneath. The lion is swatting me — and they can break your neck with their paws. I'm getting beat up, but I knew he didn't like the water. So I'm trying to crawl into the surf, but the [waves] keep going out! The lion went to leap again, but [Miles] held him just long enough around the waist to confuse him, and that gave me time to get into the ocean. Right before the wave came, [the lion] did get on my back and went to take my shoulder off, but the angle was wrong. He just sliced me on my shoulder." Her husband, John Derek, who directed the movie, "was furious." Bo continued, "He was like, 'Screw movies, nothing is worth this!' But by the time we got to dinner, John was there with a storyboard, figuring out how to use the attack in the film."
According to the Guardian, Fitzcarraldo director Werner Herzog nearly murdered lead actor Klaus Kinski. He allegedly crept up to the actor's house, planning to set it on fire, but he stopped when Klaus's dog attacked him. The director said, "We had a great love, a great bond, but both of us planned to murder each other. Klaus was one of the greatest actors of the century, but he was also a monster and a great pestilence. Every single day, I had to think of new ways of domesticating the beast."
And according to Collider, the Indigenous people who worked as extras on Fitzcarraldo strongly disliked Klaus Kinski because of his constant complaining and poor behavior. The chief of a local tribe reportedly offered to kill the actor, but Werner Herzog turned him down solely so he wouldn't have to start production over with a new actor.
Per the Guardian, Werner Herzog also claimed that, while filming Aguirre, Wrath of God, he pulled a gun on Klaus Kinski and threatened to kill him in a murder-suicide — all because the actor threatened to walk out on the film. Werner said, "My crew would almost mutiny when they heard that Klaus was on board. They would say, 'How could you do this do us? We can't take this man a minute longer.' I don't like the term wild man, but Dennis Hopper was in the kindergarten compared with Klaus. I remember scenes where Klaus was attacked, and how the other actors used to take such pleasure in punching and kicking him. He was often quite badly hurt."
While filming the Back to the Future Part III scene where Marty McFly is hung, a stunt actor did the wideshots, but Michael J. Fox did the closeups. At first, he stood on a box for safety, but it wasn't looking right on camera. So, Michael decided to have them remove the box while he put his hands between his neck and the rope. In his book Lucky Man, he wrote, "This worked well for the next couple of takes, but on the third, I miscalculated the positioning of my hand. Noose around my neck, dangling from the gallows pole, my carotid artery was blocked, causing me briefly to pass out...I swung, unconscious, at the end of the rope for several seconds before Bob Zemeckis, fan of mine though he was, realized even I wasn't that good an actor." Bob had Michael taken down just in time.
According to director John R. Leonetti, there were two "really creepy" supernatural experiences on the set of Annabelle. He told The Hollywood Reporter, "The first [incident] was when we were prepping. We went into the apartment where we were shooting, and in the transient window above the living room window. It was a full moon, and there were three fingers drawn through the dust along the window, and our demon has three fingers and three talons. [The markings] were being backlit by the moon. I have a picture! It was sick."
Producer Peter Safran said the second experience was "much worse." He continued, "We shot in this amazing, old apartment building near Koreatown and we had some funky stuff go down. In particular, the first day that the demon was shooting in full makeup, we brought the demon up in the elevator. He walks out and walks around to the green room to where we're holding the talent, and just as he walks under — a giant glass light fixture is being followed by the actor playing the handyman of the building — and all of a sudden, the entire glass light fixture falls down on his head, the janitor's head. And in the script, the demon kills the janitor in that hallway. It was totally freaky."
The Green Inferno writer/director Eli Roth told Yahoo Entertainment, "Thank God no one got killed, but we had many close calls, like when Lorenza Izzo almost drowned in the river during a take — and yes, we used it in the film. We had a safe word for her to yell, but it was so loud [that when] she was screaming it at the top of her lungs, none of us heard her. When you see her clinging to the rock screaming, that's real."
Ed Harris almost drowned while shooting The Abyss. He told the New York Times, "The worst moments for me were being towed with fluid rushing up my nose and my eyes swelling up. Once, the regulator was put in upside down so that one-half of what was going into my lungs was water. For a brief second, I thought, 'This is it,' before Al [Giddings, a pro diver] swam over and put the regulator in right. And then I was mad at myself for feeling that panic."
As a child actor, Sarah Polley had a lot of scary experiences due to the use of explosives while filming The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. She told the Guardian, "One took place in a rowing boat, which was placed in a giant tank of water to mimic the sea. Jack Purvis, Eric Idle, and I were seated in the rowing boat behind Angelo Ragusa [John Neville's stuntman], who sat astride a large Arabian horse. As I remember it, a series of smallish explosions were to go off beside the boat, followed by a larger explosive that was so powerful, it was placed deep underwater at the bottom of the tank. On the first take, the small explosions scared the horse, and it began backing up into us. Angelo forced it to jump overboard into the water to save us from being trampled. As the horse hit the bottom of the tank, its hooves pulled the larger explosive up, and as it surfaced, it detonated quite close to me."
"I remember not hearing anything, Eric's terrified face, the crew looking panicked at the edge of the tank. I remember a hard, crushing sensation in my chest and being carried towards an ambulance as the crew looked on, alarmed. I remember that the doctors were kind, that my parents were told there was nothing wrong with me and that I went back to work the next day. The scenes with explosions continued, each one terrifying me more than the last," she said.
Years later, Sarah reconnected with special effects artist Richard Conway on a different set. He told her, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry about what happened to you on that movie...A lot of things went wrong. Everyone in my job carries around an image that haunts them of something that went wrong at work. For me, it's the look on your face as you were carried out of the water tank and into the ambulance after the explosive surfaced so close to you. You were crying. No – you weren't crying. You were hysterical. Screaming in terror." They watched the movie together, and he apologized again. Sarah said, "I hugged him, so grateful for the apology, even though I didn't think it was his to make...Because he was so childlike and full of genuine wonder, it was hard for me, for many years, to see how responsible [director] Terry Gilliam was for the terror of being on that set."
For the scene in Poltergeist where Diane falls into the excavated pool, actor JoBeth Williams was swimming through the muck with real skeletons — which she thought were just fake props until years later. She told Vanity Fair, "I always assumed that the skeletons were made by the prop department. A few years later, I ran into one of the special effects guys, and I said, 'You guys making all those skeletons, that must have been really amazing.' He said, 'Oh, we didn't make them, those were real.' I said, 'What?' He said, 'Yeah, they were real skeletons.' ... I don't know where they were bought from, but that really grossed me out. I'm glad I didn't know that then, because I would've really been screaming a lot — for real."
Watch the scene below:
The Apocalypse Now prop department stored real corpses in a tent behind where the cast and crew ate. When producer Gray Frederickson found out, he told them, "You guys are nuts. Where did these come from? We've got to get rid of this immediately." However, they refused, saying, "No, no, they'll be very authentic, we'll have them upside down in the trees." He replied, "You can't do that!" The situation landed the production in legal hot water when it turned out their supplier was a grave robber. Gray told the Independent, "The police showed up on our set and took all of our passports. They didn't know we hadn't killed these people because the bodies were unidentified. I was pretty damn worried for a few days. But they got to the truth and put the guy in jail."
Soldiers arrived to take the bodies away. Gray told the outlet, "I don't know what they did with them. So for the scenes in the movie, we had extras hanging from trees, not dead bodies."
Here's the scene:
A scene in Ghostland called for actor Taylor Hickson to put her face against a glass door and pound it with her hands. However, when she hit the glass, it shattered. Taylor fell through the broken glass, getting cuts on her face and neck. In 2018, she sued the production company, alleging she got a huge cut on the left side of her face that took 70 stitches to close.
The Craft actors and crew reportedly had to return to location to reshoot the ritual scene because of setbacks that had even their witch consultant concerned. Allegedly, as Fairuza Balk said her lines invoking Manon, bats settled over the scene. The tide rose so high that it put out the candles. Director Andrew Fleming said, "Every time the girls started the ceremony, and only when they would start the ceremony, the waves would start coming up tremendously fast, pounding heavily. Then, right when Nancy says her line, 'Manon, fill me,' right at that exact moment, we lost power. It was a very strange thing."
Here's the scene:
And finally, Roar has been called "the most dangerous movie in history." Writer/director Noel Marshall cast himself and his family — including wife Tippi Hedren and stepdaughter Melanie Griffith — alongside over 150 untrained big cats and elephants. Over the course of filming, the cast and crew suffered more than 70 animal attacks. At one point, his son John tripped, and a lion closed its mouth over the back of his head. John told the New York Post, "I looked up, and there was blood on his teeth. It took six guys to pull him off me, and I got 56 stitches. I had to work with that lion on and off for five years because we kept running out of money."