1951, Stunts

Tom Steele for The Thing From Another World

December 31, 2015 Donovan Montierth Leave a comment

Tom Steele body doubled James Arness (The Thing) during the end scene in which The Thing is doused with kerosene and set ablaze and is believed to be the first full body burn ever filmed. Steele wore an asbestos suit with a special fiberglass helmet with an oxygen supply underneath. At the time, he used a 100% oxygen supply, which was highly combustible. It was pure luck he didn’t burn his lungs whilst breathing in the mixture.

In the 1960s and 70s he remained active as a stuntman but took on more acting bits, including a role as a truck driver in 1966’s Harper and a bit as a security guard in the 1971 Bond epic Diamonds Are Forever. He did driving stunts for Disney’s late-1960s Love Bug films. His last film before retiring was 1986’s Tough Guys, in which he played an elderly man caught up in a bank robbery. In his last years, Steele was a frequent participant at Western and Serial film festivals around the country.

James Arness is famous, of course, as Marshall Matt Dillon on the long-running TV Western Gunsmoke. He was hired as the Thing for his height, at 6’7″. He was reportedly so embarrassed by his work on this film, that he failed to appear at the Premiere. He often remarked that he felt his make up as “The Thing” made him look like a giant carrot. Interesting note, his brother is Peter Graves, best known for his role as James Phelps on the Mission Impossible TV series.

The Thing From Another World directed by Christian Nyby for Winchester Pictures Corporation.

Things to look up (click on item to go to IMDB page ):

Glossary of stunt terms as defined by www.RichmondStunts.com – Fire Stunt: any action sequence performed where the stunt guy / girl is on fire, in fire or escaping fire. Fire stunts are of high risk and considered to be one of the most dangerous stunts due to the unforgiving nature of fire. Stunt Performers do not have some super human ability to withstand extreme temperatures. They don a special fire suit typically soaked in a water based gel and have protective thermal barrier gels covering any exposed skin which may not be covered with the protective suit.

Check out our new Book, 100 Years of the Best Movie Stunts!

2008, Stunts

Stunt Crew and The Dark Knight

December 30, 2015 Donovan Montierth Leave a comment

Christopher Nolan, as in his previous movies, pushed his film crew to develop and perform the best stunts possible in order to avoid having to resort to CGI effects. One of the greatest stunts of these in The Dark Knight was a scene involving a moving eighteen-wheeler truck being completely flipped upside down. Initially, the special effects supervisor of the film, Chris Corbould, attempted to convince Nolan to use a smaller vehicle for the stunt, as this would make the attempt much easier. Nevertheless, Nolan insisted on using a full size eighteen-wheeler.
The unforgettable semi-truck flip in the Dark Knight was completely real, driver (Jim Wilky) and all. A driver-operated canon-like contraption on the trailer blasted a two-ton steel battering ram against the pavement to flip the truck, resulting in an awe-inspiring cacophony of crushed steel and twisted metal. The stunt was actually practiced on an airstrip to ensure that the truck flipped straight, lest the buildings on either side be decimated with an off center crash.
Because of the gravity of this scene, Christopher Nolan used several cameras to capture the stunt. He noted on the Blu-Ray commentary, “We covered it from I think seven different angles—4 IMAX cameras, 2 Vista Vision ones, a 35…I actually don’t like to use a lot of multi-cam setups, but doing a stunt that is not repeatable like this, you really have to cover yourself and make sure you’ve got it from all angles.”

In the final cut of the film, Nolan used two angles of the truck: a camera positioned on a separate vehicle moving along with the eighteen wheeler, and a camera located inside a cop car that was moving directly toward the truck. Nolan stated, “Much to our surprise we found this to be one of the most effective angles.”

The Dark Knight was directed by Christopher Nolan for Warner Bros.

Things to look up (go to IMDB page ):

Christopher Nolan
Christian Bale
Chris Corbould
Jim Wilky

Check out our new Book, 100 Years of the Best Movie Stunts!

1952, Stunts

Paddy Ryan and Ivanhoe

December 29, 2015 Donovan Montierth Leave a comment

I saw this movie as a child, and it was enthralling. One of my favorites when it came to the big mounted “epic”. This is when I started to realize that the classics could be cool. Although there are a lot of stunts in this film, there’s one that stands out for me and that is Paddy Ryan’s fall from the castle. This was reported to be the highest fall from a castle when he performed the stunt.

Paddy Ryan (born Frank Singletary) was one of the leading worldwide stunt men to come out of England. The men who thrived in the early European epics, war films and bond films. Stunt men the likes of Jock Easton, Joe Powell, George Leech, Ken Buckle and Vic Armstrong. They would travel far and wide, often on their own dime and stay on location for weeks, sometimes months at a time, competing for the one small “stunt adjustment”, as they called it.

Information on these stunt performers are rare and very hard to come by. A lot of these early stuntmen and women have died and taken their legacy with them, but there are a few members of the stunt crusade that are shouting their names from the rooftops. Recent autobiographies by Hal Needham and Vic Armstrong are helping to shine the light on some of these fantastic stories and the people who truly lived them.Ivanhoe was directed by Richard Thorpe for MGM.

Things to look up (click on item to go to IMDB page or Website):

Glossary of stunt terms as defined by www.RichmondStunts.com – Stunt Adjustment: stunt adjustments are an additional fee paid to the stunt performer in addition to the minimum daily rate to compensate for more dangerous stunts or when the stunt performer exceeds expectations of the daily rate and the budget allows for extra monies to be paid. Performing utility (basic) stunts such as playing a bad guy that takes a couple punches or falling down are usually covered by the daily rate. But for the fun stuff like being set on fire or falling off a roof, a negotiation between the stunt coordinator, stunt performer and production will take place. (typically the coordinator does this on larger shows). The factors used when determining the justified amount of adjustment will be based on technical difficulty, level of danger, etc.

Check out our new Book, 100 Years of the Best Movie Stunts!

1940, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1947, 1948, 1949, Stunts

Best of the Year List 1940-1949

December 28, 2015 Donovan Montierth Leave a comment

Here is the list for the Best Movie Stunts for the Decade 1940-1949 as listed in the book, 100 Years of the Best Movie Stunts!

1940: The Mark of Zorro

Not only the second time for Zorro, but the second time for this exact title. Different year, different actors…great stunts. The fencing duel between Tyrone Powers and Basil Rathbone, choreographed by Fred Caverns is just about one of the finest ever put to celluloid.

1941: The Adventures of Captain Marvel

Dave Hardin Sharpe provided the fighting and the flying in this nifty action serial. It’s also one of my all time favorite superheros…the original Captain Marvel!

1942: Spy Smasher

It’s the era of the Movie Serial, and no-one did it better than this one! It’s all out action and adventure with cliff-hangers galore! Carey Loftkin, Kane Richmond and Dave Hardin Sharpe combined to make Spy Smasher a fantastic hit!

1943: The Masked Marvel

Another great action serial. Tom Steele did so many stunts in this, he can even be found to be a bad guy chasing himself, as The Masked Marvel.

1944: Ghost Guns

At this time there were some impressive cowgirls in the movies. Evelyn Finley was one of the toughest. This was a B movie, but she’s worth the watch.

1945: Back To Bataan

We all know what a tough guy John Wayne was, especially in his later years. It’s fun to see him hit the list for the first time with this entry, a great little war film.

1946: Detour To Danger

This one is just like a film I would have made in college; get a whole bunch of buddies together with a 16mm camera and go film some crazy fight scenes. Harvey Parry and Richard Talmadge get all their stuntman cronies for this one and it’s a lot of fun. Not great acting, but great fun.

1947: The Perils of Pauline

Second time on the list, but the funny thing is, this one is a fictionalized account of the making of the first film. Polly Burson provides the stunts in this one and she would go on to some nifty westerns as she was a home-spun cowgirl in her own right.

1948: The Three Musketeers

Dave Hardin Sharpe makes the list for the 3rd time in one decade (is that a record?) along with Gene Kelly for their work in this film. And WOW, what a supporting cast!

1949: Twelve O’Clock High

This has got to be the largest plane ever crashed by a real person on film and walked away from it. Paul Mantz seemed to do it completely without flinching and as if it was as easy as parking a car.

For more info, find the book 100 Years of the Best Movie Stunts!

1996, Stunts

Stunt Team, Mission Impossible

December 27, 2015 Donovan Montierth Leave a comment

This is the start of another stunt spectacular series. The stunts in this series, seem to get better with each outing. At first Tom Cruise started out doing a few of his stunts and with every movie did more and more. But he seemed particularly adept at them from the very start. For example in the famous scene where he drops from the ceiling and hovers inches above the ground, Cruise’s head kept hitting the floor until he got the idea to put coins in his shoes for balance. He just kept doing it until he figured it out. He’s supplied the same ingenuity in every sequel since.

The scene that takes place in a glass-walled restaurant with a big lobster tank in the middle and three huge fish tanks overhead was Cruise’s idea. There were 16 tons in all of the tanks and there was a concern that when they detonated, a lot of glass would fly around. De Palma tried the sequence with a stuntman, but it did not look convincing and he asked Cruise to do it, despite the possibility that the actor could have drowned.

For the train sequence, Cruise wanted wind that was so powerful that it could knock him off the train. Cruise had difficulty finding the right machine that would create the wind velocity that would look visually accurate before remembering a simulator he used while training as a skydiver. The only machine of its kind in Europe was located and acquired. Cruise had it produce winds up to 140 miles per hour so it would distort his face. Most of the sequence, however, was filmed on a stage against a blue screen for later digitizing by the visual effects team at Industrial Light & Magic.

Mission Impossible was directed by Brian De Palma for Paramount Pictures.

Things to look up (go to IMDB ):

Tom Cruise
Brian De Palma
Mission Impossible
Paramount Pictures

Glossary of stunt terms as defined by Wikipedia:

1. Stunt Performers – A stunt performer, often referred to as a stuntman, or daredevil, is someone who performs dangerous stunts, often as a career.

A stunt-man, or stunt-woman, typically performs stunts intended for use in a motion pictures or dramatized television. Stunts are sometimes rigged so that, while they look dangerous, safety mechanisms are built into the performance, however, often stunts are as dangerous as they appear to be. Stunts often seen in films and television include car crashes, falls from great height, drags (for example, behind a horse) and explosions. Film and television stunt performers are often trained in martial arts and stage combat. There is an inherent risk in the performance of all stunt work in film, television and stage work; the most risk exists when performing stunts in front of a live audience. In filmed performances, visible safety mechanisms can be removed by editing. In live performances the audience can better see if the performer is genuinely doing what they claim to be doing.

Daredevils are distinct from stunt performers and stunt doubles; their performance is of the stunt itself, without the context of a film or television show. Daredevils often perform for an audience. Live stunt performers include escape artists, sword swallowers, glass walkers, fire eaters, trapeze artists, and many other sideshow and circus arts. They also include motorcycle display teams and the once popular Wall of Death.

The Jackass films and television series are well-known and prominent recorded examples of the act in modern cinematography. Some individuals, such as Buster Keaton, Harry Houdini, Jackie Chan, Akshay Kumar, Tony Jaa, and Jayan act as both stunt performers and daredevils at various parts of their career.

Check out our new Book, 100 Years of the Best Movie Stunts!

1940, Stunts

Tyrone Power, Basil Rathbone, Fred Caverns and The Mark of Zorro

December 26, 2015 Donovan Montierth Leave a comment

Robin Hood found it’s way on to the list twice and now Zorro has it’s second slot as well. The Mark of Zorro features a climactic duel between Zorro and Pasquale. Basil Rathbone was known already in Hollywood as an outstanding classical fencer, but Tyrone Power’s own excellent skills are displayed here for the first time. The duel is ornate and full of subtlety, as opposed to Rathbone’s duel with Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood, and the duel in The Mark of Zorro (1940) is considered by many movie buffs to be the finest swordfight in cinema.

Staged by Hollywood’s resident fencing master Fred Cavens and atmospherically shot by cinematographer Arthur Miller and director Rouben Mamoulian, the scene takes place in a single room and forces actors to fight rather than jump around in the scenery. In key shots, Cavens’ son, Albert, doubles for Power (such as the shot where he plunges his saber through the bookcase). Scenes of fast fencing were undercranked to 18-20 frames per second, requiring that all the sound for the scene be post-synchronized. Rathbone suffered two scratches on his forehead during its filming, and later said of Power, “He could fence Errol Flynn into a cocked hat.”

I had mentioned before about the Batman connection with the Mark of Zorro. In the DC Comics continuity it is established that The Mark of Zorro was the film which the young Bruce Wayne had seen with his parents at the cinema, moments before they were killed in front of his eyes by an armed thug. Zorro is often portrayed as Bruce’s childhood hero and an influence on his Batman persona. There are discrepancies regarding which version Bruce saw: The Dark Knight Returns claims it was the Tyrone Power version, whereas a story by Alan Grant claimed it to be the silent Douglas Fairbanks original. Bob Kane was himself inspired by Fairbanks’ Zorro, including similarities in costumes, the “Bat Cave” and Zorro’s cave, and unexpected secret identities.

Things to look up (click on item to go to IMDB page):

Glossary of stunt terms as defined by the Wikipedia – Fencing: Which is also known as Olympic fencing to distinguish it from historical fencing, is an activity using bladed weapons. The sport of fencing is divided into three weapons: foil, sabre and épée.

Fencing is one of five sports which have been featured at every one of the modern Olympic Games, the other four being Athletics, Cycling, Swimming, and Gymnastics.

Check out our new Book, 100 Years of the Best Movie Stunts!

1988, Stunts

Ken Bates in Die Hard

December 25, 2015 Donovan Montierth Leave a comment

Here’s the second action movie with a christmas theme (the first being Lethal Weapon). Both just happened to be hugely successful films and even more successful series. Another example of how successful a film series is, can be based on how many copycats come out after it’s been released. After this film came out, every studio wanted their own, “Die Hard With A…” and they scrambled to make their own films in this genre. High explosive action, and fantastic stunts.

One of the more spectacular stunts in this film, was the one where Hans Gruber falls from the Nakitomi Building. Ken Bates acted as the stunt double for Alan Rickman during the fall. He is also only one of a few stunt performers ever to have won an Oscar for creating safety equipment for the Industry. In 1993, he earned an Academy Award for Scientific and Technical Achievement for his Bates Decelerator System (more on that below), which is used to slow a fall of a stunt performer without the use of an airbag.

An interesting note about the film, it was based on a book by Roderick Thorp entitled Nothing Lasts Forever – a sequel to another book entitled The Detective, which in 1968 was made into a film starring Frank Sinatra. Because of a clause in Sinatra’s contract for The Detective which gave him the right to reprise his role in a sequel, he was actually the first person offered the McClane role, even though he was 73 years old at the time. Also, Coincidentally, Bruce Willis made his movie debut in The First Deadly Sin walking out of a bar as Sinatra walks into it.

Die Hard was directed by John McTiernan for 20th Century Fox.

Things to look up (go to IMDB page):

John McTiernan
Die Hard
20th Century Fox
Alan Rickman
Ken Bates

Check out our new Book, 100 Years of the Best Movie Stunts!

Glossary of Stunt Tools: Decelerator or Descender:

Kenny Bates won the Science and Technical Academy Award for the design and development of the Decelerator System, which provides two advantages. First, it allows a stuntperson to fall from much higher platforms. “To back up a little,” Mr. Bates explains, “just to give you an idea of how this came to be, if you date back into the early days of motion picture history, when stuntmen first started doing high falls, they would do it into water, or they would put up two sawhorses and put planks between the sawhorses, and they would actually jump, say, 15 or 20 feet onto these breakaway planks. These are how high falls basically originated.” As falls got higher, stuntmen began to use haystacks, nets, and cardboard boxes. “I’ve heard of stuntmen falling up to 10 stories, or 100 feet, into cardboard boxes. These boxes were actually set up in a configuration to break the fall.” Then came the airbag. “The highest high fall into an airbag is 311 feet. That’s 31 stories.

Most commonly, though, airbags are used for doing falls from, oh, 20 feet up to 150. The most common falls are between 20 feet and 80 feet.” While airbags are great and they’re still in use today, they still leave one problem. Shooting down. With any of these devices, the director must always shoot from the bottom up to avoid filming whatever it is the stuntman is going to land on. What’s where the Decelerator’s second advantage comes in. Since all you’ve got is a cable attached to the stuntman’s ankle, it doesn’t matter what direction you film in.

“When we did Die Hard, I started using a device called a Descender, to do controlled falls. In other words, we do a controlled fall from I’ve been anywhere up to 105 stories. The fall is controlled because your descending on a small cable. If the film is undercranked, it looks like you’re falling.” What Bates has done is used his knowledge of physics and film to calibrate the speed of the fall versus the degree to which the film must be undercranked. “In Die Hard, where Alan Rickman dies, falling backwards out of the building, that would have been a death defying feat. Instead we came in and packaged an illusion for Joel Silver. Since then I’ve done every one of his films.” He also doubled Bruce Willis when he leapt off the top of the building with a firehose.

Check Out the Book 100 Years of the Best Movie Stunts:

1959, Stunts

Joe Canutt and Ben Hur

December 24, 2015 Donovan Montierth Leave a comment

Over the Years, if you like movie stunts, you’ll hear about the rumor about the stuntman who died during the shooting of the chariot scene in this movie. Well, we’re going to lay that rumor to rest right, now, it’s not from this movie. There was a stuntman that died during the chariot scene during the filming of the original 1925 version. People will argue and swear that it’s the real man you see in full CinemaScope getting trampled under the chariot…Nope. Don’t believe it. There was a stunt “mishap” on this film, but no one died and it should really be called an “unplanned event”, ’cause that’s what occurs sometimes when a stunt doesn’t quite go as planned.

The Best Movie Stunt for 1959 goes to Joe Canutt and this “unplanned event”. This one is remarkable as well due to the fact that Yakima Canutt, Joe’s father and Stunt Coordinator on this picture, staged and shot this sequence along with Andrew Marton. Joe does the stunt work in this legendary chariot race scene. Father and son appear on the list exactly 20 years apart.

The original screenwriter, Karl Tunberg, had written just three words (“the chariot race”) to describe the now-famous sequence, and no other writer had enlarged on his description. To fill that gap, the director of the film, William Wyler relied on Andrew Marton and Yakima Canutt to come up with the sequence. Marton and Canutt wrote 38 pages of script which outlined every aspect of the race, including action, stunts, and camera shots and angles. According to editor John Dunning, producer Sam Zimbalist was deeply involved in the planning and shooting of the chariot sequence, and the construction of the arena. The chariot race ended up having a 263-to-1 cutting ratio (263 feet of film for every one foot kept), probably the highest for any 65mm sequence ever filmed. After the sequence was shot and edited together, Marton and Canutt showed it to Wyler who remarked that it was “one of the greatest cinematic achievements” he’d ever seen.

Now as for the “unplanned event”, in a very specific shot, Joe Canutt was stunt doubling for Charlton Heston as Ben Hur. The stunt called for Joe Canutt to drive his chariot over the wreckage of two others — actually a short ramp placed in his path and blocked from camera sight by one pile of debris. In concept it was a pretty simple stunt, not particularly designed to stand out in the mayhem but in the movie what really happens when Judah Ben-Hur’s chariot jumps over the wreckage of a chariot in its path, Ben-Hur is almost thrown out of his chariot. He hangs on and climbs back aboard to continue the race. While the jump was planned, Joe’s propulsion up and over the chariot front was not.

Marton wanted to keep the shot, but Zimbalist felt the footage was unusable. Marton conceived the idea of showing that Ben-Hur was able to land on and cling to the front of his chariot, then scramble back into the quadriga while the horses kept going. The long shot of Canutt’s accident was cut together with a close-up of Heston climbing back aboard and it now constitutes one of the race’s most memorable moments in the final film.

Things to look up (go to IMDB):

Ben Hur
Joe Canutt
Yakima Canutt
William Wyler
Andrew Marton
MGM
Sam Zimbalist
John Dunning

Check Out our new book!

1987, Stunts

Actors and Stunt Performers in Lethal Weapon

December 23, 2015 Donovan Montierth Leave a comment

Richard Donner and Joel Silver wanted the action in this film to be so realistic that in pre-production they hired stunt coordinator, Bobby Bass, to design all the action and 3 martial arts advisors, Cedric Adams, Dennis Newsome, and Rorion Gracie to oversee the fights and the training of the actors and stunt performers.

I’d like to add at this time that the film was also dedicated to legendary stuntman, Dar Robinson, although he did not die during any of the stunts in this film, he was killed executing a motorcycle stunt for the movie, Million Dollar Mystery. He trained actress, Jackie Swanson for the airbag jump at the beginning of the film. She jumped 35 feet backwards into an airbag. The stunt was done using an airbag covered with a life-size painting of the driveway and cars, which, like a foreground miniature, visually blends into the real scene. Thus, the editor was able to hold the shot until just as she makes contact with the airbag, for greater realism.

There was a second airbag jump, when Martin Riggs handcuffs himself to a guy on a building who is threatening to jump. The two stuntmen jumped together but once in the air the handcuffs disconnect so you can tell they weren’t really handcuffed together. A little movie goof as when Riggs and the man get off the airbag they are clearly handcuffed together again. Not only is the action in this film fantastic, but the action sequences seem to get better as the series moves along. The entire series was directed by Richard Donner for Silver Pictures.

Things to look up (go to IMDB ):

Bobby Bass
Dar Robinson
Richard Donner
Joel Silver
Jackie Swanson
Lethal Weapon
Cedric Adams
Dennis Newsome
Rorion Grace

Check out our new book!

1966, Stunts

James Garner and Grand Prix

December 22, 2015 Donovan Montierth Leave a comment

There’s no doubt that driving is a dangerous profession and not everyone is predisposed to be any good at it. Take Grand Prix for example, of the main cast, most of the actors couldn’t even drive, let alone be any good at it. Bedford couldn’t drive at all, Sabàto was very slow and nervous, Montand himself scared very easily early in filming and was often towed rather than driving the car, but James Garner was very competent and even took up racing and entering cars as a direct result of his involvement in the film.

James Garner found that he liked racing and was pretty good at it over the course of the film. Because of that he did all his own driving. During breaks in filming, the professional drivers in the film would race each other, Garner would take part. There were several mini races in which Garner either tied or bettered the professional drivers hired for the filming. Because of this, Garner spent the next ten or twenty years with a hobby of racing on the side between film shoots.

Garner was a part of two documentaries for racing over the years, The Racing Scene (1969) and Once Upon a Wheel (1971), but raced frequently in the desert racing circuit. Baja legend Vic Hickey remembers, “I had known Jim Garner for years. He was a friend of Bob Bondurant, and Bob and I were friends. The thing about Garner was that, while he wasn’t the world’s most fearless driver, he had the best retention of any man who drove for me. On a prerun, if he hit a bump, he’d come back five days later and tell you where it was within 10 feet.”

Garner only won one race in the Banshee he drove. That was the Riverside Grand Prix, run along a river bed near Riverside, Calif. But he usually ran near the front of the pack, and often placed high in the final standings. Oddly, his only competition accident came in the race he won. According to Hickey, Garner momentarily took his eyes off the course near the finish line at Riverside to look at the crowd, and flipped the Banshee into the river. Garner crawled out and threw his helmet in the mud in disgust. Yet he was so far ahead that he was eventually declared the winner. The actor had one other wreck in the Banshee a big one, in an early shakedown, when the car was going at least two-thirds of its 144-mph top speed. “He went into this corner at about a hundred miles an hour, lost it in the sand and flipped the car about five times,” Hickey says. “I was relieved to learn it was strong enough to protect Garner from injuries. The last thing I wanted to do was buy a movie star.”

Another cool note is that James Garner got to drive the Pace Car 3 times at the Indianapolis 500 race in 1975, 1977, and 1985. Grand Prix was directed by John Frankenheimer for Cherokee Productions.

Things to look up (click on item to go to IMDB page ):

History of film companies as defined by James Garner’s Website: CHEROKEE PRODUCTIONS was first incorporated by Motion Picture Icon and Television legend, James Garner in 1965 and has continued to be a recognized domestic and international brand to this day.

Check out our new Book, 100 Years of the Best Movie Stunts!

Brothers' Ink Productions

Monthly Archives: December 2015

Tom Steele for The Thing From Another World

Stunt Crew and The Dark Knight

Paddy Ryan and Ivanhoe

Best of the Year List 1940-1949

Stunt Team, Mission Impossible

Tyrone Power, Basil Rathbone, Fred Caverns and The Mark of Zorro

Ken Bates in Die Hard

Joe Canutt and Ben Hur

Actors and Stunt Performers in Lethal Weapon

James Garner and Grand Prix

Brothers' Ink Productions Official Website