A Bell UH-1 Iroquois helicopter crashed at Indian Dunes in Valencia, Santa Clarita, California, during the making of Twilight Zone: The Movie. The crash killed three people on the ground and injured the six helicopter passengers. The incident led to years of civil and criminal action and was responsible for the introduction of new procedures and safety standards in the filmmaking industry.
About Twilight Zone accident in brief
On July 23, 1982, a Bell UH-1 Iroquois helicopter crashed at Indian Dunes in Valencia, Santa Clarita, California, during the making of Twilight Zone: The Movie. The crash killed three people on the ground and injured the six helicopter passengers. The incident led to years of civil and criminal action and was responsible for the introduction of new procedures and safety standards in the filmmaking industry. The film featured four sequences, one of which was loosely based on the 1961 Twilight Zone episode \”A Quality of Mercy\”, named in supplementary material as \”Time Out\”. In the script, character Bill Connor is transported back in time to the midst of the Vietnam War, where he has become a Vietnamese man protecting two children from American troops. The helicopter was piloted by Vietnam War veteran Dorcey Wingo. The probable cause of the accident was the detonation of debris-laden high temperature special effects near a low-flying helicopter. The National Transportation Safety Board reported on October 1984, the probable cause was the foreign object damage to one rotor blade and delamination to the other blade of the other rotor, due to the heat of the rotor, separation of rotor blade, and other factors.
The filming location was the ranch Indian Dune that was used through the 1980s in films and television shows, including The Color Purple, Escape From New York, MacGyver, and China Beach. The location was within the 30-mile zone, its wide-open area permitted more pyrotechnic effects, and it was possible to shoot night scenes without city lights visible in the background. The scene called for Morrow’s character to carry the two children out of a deserted village and across a shallow river while being pursued by American soldiers in a hovering helicopter. Morrow and Le were decapitated by the helicopter’s main rotor blades, while Chen was crushed to death by the right landing skid; all three died instantly.
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This page is based on the article Twilight Zone accident published in Wikipedia (as of Jan. 09, 2021) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
