Category Just for Fun

Great precautions are taken for stunts involving fire – they are among the most dangerous of all. Fire gel, usually alcohol based, is rubbed onto the stuntmen’s outer clothing. It produces a vapour barrier between material and flames – the alcohol burns above the clothing, much like brandy on a Christmas pudding, scarcely singeing the fabric. The stuntman wears a fireproof suit beneath the outer clothing, and beneath that, woollen underwear, which does not burn easily.

For head-to-foot engulfment, more sophisticated suits, with helmets and built-in air supplies, are worn. Film-unit members with fire extinguishers stand by.

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A scene of someone being blown through the air by an explosion is usually achieved by the stuntmen launching himself from an off-screen trampoline. Protective clothing shields him from flash burns. Sometimes, powerful springboards, activated by compressed air, are used. The stuntmen usually land in pits of sand or peat moss.

Normally, insurance companies do not like the stars risking injury. But in Douglas Fairbanks’ The Black Pirate (1926) he slid down a ship’s sail, apparently supported only by a dagger which sliced the sail. The ‘dagger’ was a handle attached to a counterweight behind the sail, which gave him stability, while the sail had a seam which tore evenly.

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Falls can range from a tumble down a flight of stairs to a plunge from the top of a high building.

For high falls, giant nylon air bags, which inflate to the area of a living room, are used to cushion the impact, as in Jerry Hewitt’s plummet from an exploding ski lift in The Soldier (1982).

Before air bags were introduced in 1971, stacks of cardboard cartons covered with mattress served the purpose. These were then covered by tarpaulin and roped together. One layer of boxes for every 10ft (3m) of fall was the standard procedure.

When the Olympic swimming gold medallist Johnny Weissmuller – the cinema’s popular to dive off Brooklyn Bridge in Tarzan’s New York Adventure (1942), there were rumours that the actor actually did the 110ft (33m) plunge. But it was a trick. Weissmuller dived into a tank of water – then the film cut to a shot of a dummy plummeting off the bridge.

In Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), a leap to freedom from a cliff into a raging torrent was also faked. The actors Paul Newman and Robert Redford simply jumped onto a small platform a few feet below the cliff edge. Then two stuntmen were filmed jumping 72ft (22m) into a California lake.

Until about 1960, 60ft (18m) was the maximum unaided high fall. But modern stuntmen now fail more than 100ft (300m) – using low-level parachute rigs and ‘descender wires.’

The American stuntmen Dar Robinson specialised in spectacular falls. He developed a technique of doing head-first falls from high buildings on a thin wire – a ‘deceleration cable’ – attached to a harness under his clothes. A winch slowed the fall as he neared the ground, bringing him to a halt, hanging upside down, a few feet up.

In Highpoint (filmed in 1979), Robinson, doubling for Christopher Plummer, fell from the CN Tower in Toronto – at 1815ft (553m), the world’s highest free standing building. He plunged the equivalent of 120 storeys before making a delayed parachute descent. Robinson was killed seven years later, at the age of 39, while riding home on a motorcycle.

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Fights, whether with weapons or fists, are carefully choreographed – especially if a star is involved. Punches are pulled in a technique first perfected for cinema by Yakima Canutt – and the sound of fist connecting with jaw or body is added later. Protective pads for shins, shoulders, back and elbows are sometimes needed.

However, accidents happen. Christopher Lee, who began his film career as a stuntmen, described a slip-up during a fencing sequence with Errol Flynn during the 1954 making of The Dark Avenger: ‘The director, Henry Levin, hired me as an expert to ensure that none of his stars, particularly Flynn, got hurt. In one scene, I doubled first for Flynn and when he stepped in for close-ups I switched over to take the place of his opponent. I fought for hours. During the final take I could hardly raise my arm. When I did, Flynn ran his sword into it. Just above the elbow.’

In scenes in which people are hit over the head with bottles or flung through windows, the ‘glass’ is a special resin which looks and shatters like the real thing. But it is perfectly safe. It is expensive to produce so in stunts involving large amounts – such as entire shop windows – one take is preferable. Previously, fake glass was made from sugar.

Furniture and other props – known as ‘breakways’ – lay an important role in fight scenes. Chairs, tables, doors, or banister rails – often made of balsa wood – are sawn almost through so that they will shatter or impact. The cuts are painted over to conceal them.

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A world rodeo champion, ‘Yakima’ Canutt became one of Hollywood’s most famous stuntmen – specialising in working with horses. He began his career in the silent era. At that time, studios liked audiences to believe the stars did their own stunts.

Canutt’s most celebrated feat was in John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939), when he leap from his war pony onto one of six horses pulling the coach. Shot by the hero John Wayne, Canutt fell between the horses and was dragged, before finally losing his grip. The stagecoach thundered over him, its wheels passing on either side, and Canutt struggled to his feet, proving it was no dummy in a trick shot. The stunt has been imitated many times since. Canutt won an Oscar in 1966 for his lifetime stunt achievements and developing protective safety devices for stuntmen.

Even the best-planned horse stunts carry element of danger. Former doyen of British stuntmen Bob Simmons described how his friend Jack Keely was killed during the desert adventure film Zarak (1956): ‘All appeared to be going well. Both our horses fell beautifully. The call came, “Cut!” And then the familiar, “Everyday all right?” I looked around for Jack. I saw that he had gone down just short of the camera pit. He didn’t get up. He was lying there motionless. Tragically, his horse had fallen on top of him and broken his neck.’

Training a horse to fall is done by strapping up one of its forelegs so that it stands on only three legs, then tugging the reins to the opposite side.

The animal, off-balance, with fall. After constant repetition, the horse will fall to order while galloping or cantering when it feels the bit being jerked sharply to one side. The technique is called falling ‘on the hit’. So that the animal is not injured, the spot where it will fall is dug up and filled with sand or peat moss.

In the early days of the cinema, trip wires were used, rigged to the horse’s foreleg, with the other end firmly tethered. But the cruel technique was banned because it could injure a horse’s back or neck and the animal would have to be shot.

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Because ordinary flames tend to appear transparent on film, chemicals are added to enhance movie blazes.

In the early 1970s, the British special-effects expert Cliff Richardson and his son John developed the ‘Dante’ fire machine – a device which enabled him to produce spectacular fires that remain perfectly under control. A car engine mounted on a two-wheel carriage drives a pump through which two 200 litres drums of fuel mixtures can be squirted. Jet primers ignite the fuel and the machine can create a 60ft (18m) wide wall of fire.

City Hall ‘blaze’

Dante machines were used in the James Bond movie A view To A Kill (1985) when John Richardson was required to set fire to San Francisco City Hall – without causing any damage. He fireproofed the roof with insulation boards, corrugated iron and sand. He also fireproofed window frames through which the Dante units which spout flames to give the impression that a fire was raging inside. Powerful flares created a large aerial glow overhead.

Richardson ‘set fire’ to the City Hall 25 times during three nights of shooting, with city fire-fighters standing by.

 Los Angeles Fire Department was also on standby during the blaze sequences of The Towering Inferno (1974). Officials insisted that each blaze – created by propane pumped from valve-controlled hoses – lasted only 20 to 30 seconds.

Some 57 sets were built, including a five-story, full-scale section of the tower, and a 110ft (33m) tall model of the whole building. Four camera crews shot the movie in only 70 days, and no one was hurt except a studio fire chief who cut his hand on broken glass.

London firemen stood by when Cliff Richardson rigged a Thames-side warehouse with 50 liquid propane gas burners to re-create a Blitz scene for The Battle of Britain. Richardson described it as ‘one of upon to do.’ The disused warehouse, already damaged by a real fire, was flanked by others still in use.

The illusion of an entire city ablaze was created for the 1936 Clark Gable movie San Francisco. It also featured a spectacular and realistic earthquake, for which an entire set was built on a rocking platform. It shook up and down and shifted to and fro up to 3ft (1m). Houses and walls collapsed, roads cracked open and furniture smashed around in a 20 minute quake.

Of 400 extras who were required to stand on balconies which crashed down at the touch of a button, none was injured.

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