Stunt - Notable Film Stunts

Notable Film Stunts

• Safety Last
  Silent comedian Harold Lloyd climbed the entire height of a Los Angeles skyscraper without wires or nets. Harvey Parry, Lloyd's stunt double, dangled from a broken clock face on the topmost floor above moving traffic
• Steamboat Bill, Jr.
  The front of a house fell down with Buster Keaton standing in the exact position of an open window, leaving him unharmed. His stone-faced expression remained unchanged.
• Zorro's Fighting Legion and Stagecoach
  Yakima Canutt escapes his shooting enemies by dropping between the first set of multiple pairs of horses of a moving stagecoach, moves backwards underneath all the horses until, unbeknownst to the drivers, he climbs on back to attack them. He originated this stunt earlier, but these are its most famous performances.
• Ben-Hur
  Joe Canutt, son of famed stuntman Yakima Canutt, doubled as Judah Ben-Hur when he rides his chariot over the wreck of a competitor. He was launched over the front of his chariot and barely managed to hang on to the front as he climbed back up.
• The Great Escape
  Pursued by Germans, Bud Ekins as Capt. Virgil “The Cooler King” Hilts jumped his motorcycle 60 feet (18 m) over a barbed-wire fence.
• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
  Trapped by a posse, Butch and Sundance leaped off a cliff into raging waters knowing that the "fall will probably kill ". Mickey Gilbert doubled for Robert Redford and Howard Curtis for Paul Newman.
• Papillon
  Papillon makes his final bid for freedom by leaping from a cliff into the sea. Dar Robinson doubled for Steve McQueen, his first major stunt in a Hollywood film.
• Live and Let Die
  Ross Kananga as James Bond used four crocodiles as stepping stones to reach safety on the other side. Kananga, who owned the crocodile farm seen in the film, and after whom the main villain is named, did the stunt five times wearing the same crocodile skin shoes as his character had chosen to wear. During the fourth attempt, the last crocodile bit through the shoe and into his foot. The fifth attempt is one seen on film, with the tied-down crocodiles snapping at his feet as he passed over them.
• Live and Let Die
  In the same film, Jerry Comeaux as James Bond jumped his speedboat 70 feet (21 m) over a police car, a record that lasted for 15 years.
• Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em
  One of the best known episodes for its use of stunts, "Fathers' Clinic", Frank Spencer (played by Michael Crawford, who performed most of the stunts in the show) skating at a roller rink, accidentally broke off from a conga line, bursting through the fire exit and on a hellish journey through the city streets, dodging buses and cars, ducking under lorries and crashing into a baby shop.
• The Man with the Golden Gun
  "Bumps" Willard as James Bond driving an AMC Hornet leaped a broken bridge and performed a 270 degree roll in mid-air. Willard was paid £30,000 for the stunt, which was held under Eon Productions copyright for several years afterwards. He successfully completed the jump on the first take.
• The Man Who Would Be King
  A major character dies when the rope bridge he is standing on is cut. British stuntman Joe Powell volunteered for the stunt after the rest of the stuntmen refused. He fell 80 feet (24 m) onto cardboard boxes balanced on the edge of a ravine. If he had missed the boxes, no safety wire or parachute would have stopped him falling to the bottom of the ravine. The stunt was made more dangerous because the rope bridge caused Powell to spin as he fell.
• The Spy Who Loved Me
  Rick Sylvester, playing James Bond, escaped the bad guys by skiing off a cliff on Mount Asgard then releasing a parachute. Sylvester waited two weeks for the weather atop Mount Asgard to change. Finally he had a 15 minute window to make the jump. Five cameras were meant to record the stunt, but only the master shot worked. Sylvester was allegedly paid US$100,000 for the stunt. As he fell, one of his skis hit the parachute on its way down.
• Moonraker
  The initial freefall stunt sequence was done with the stuntmen's clothing modified with special breakaway patches to conceal lightweight parachutes.
• Hooper
  A.J. Bakunas as Hollywood stuntman Hooper, leaped from a helicopter onto an airbag 232 feet (71 m) below, a record that endures to this day.
• Highpoint
  The hero fights the villain atop the world's then tallest freestanding structure, Toronto's CN Tower, and the villain loses. Doubling the villain was Dar Robinson who opened his parachute just 300 feet (91 m) from the ground after a fall lasting six seconds. Robinson was paid US$100,000 (£61,862.04).
• Chandrahasam (Moonsword)
  In this Indian action film, action star Jayan hangs on to a ship crane and is elevated to a height of around 200 feet.
• Conan the Barbarian
  Corrie Jansen leaped 182 feet (55 m) from a cliff, a record freefall for a woman.
• Raiders of the Lost Ark
  Indiana Jones climbs underneath a moving truck and is dragged along behind it before climbing back on board. The stunt was performed by Terry Leonard. Leonard agreed to do the stunt only if his good friend, stuntman Glenn H. Randall Jr., was driving the truck.
• Smokey and the Bandit II
  The Bandit leaps his Pontiac Trans-Am motorcar from the back of trailer, setting a record that has not been broken.
• Sharky's Machine
  Sharky (Burt Reynolds) shoots the villain, who then falls back through the window of the Hyatt Regency Atlanta. To achieve the effect, stuntman Dar Robinson ran at the window, then at the last moment, spun around to go backwards through the glass and land on an airbag. It is the highest freefall (220 feet (67 m)) from a building without a cable or parachute.
• Blue Thunder
  Renegade cop Roy Scheider, flying the state-of the-art “Blue Thunder” helicopter, is chased by a police helicopter down storm drains in Los Angeles, weaving between bridge supports until his pursuer eventually crashes.
• Project A
  A stunt featured Jackie Chan hanging off a real clock tower and falling through three ripped canopies used to break his fall before hitting the ground. Chan has described the stunt as a homage to Harold Lloyd in the film Safety Last.
• Romancing the Stone
  Vince Deadrick Jr. and Terry Leonard as Joan Wilder and Jack Colton jumped from a car as it fell over an 80-foot (24 m) waterfall.
• Back to the Future
  During the skateboard chase, Marty McFly runs over the top of Biff Tannen's convertible, front to back, and rejoins his skateboard behind the car.
• Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
  While rampaging through a mall, Genghis Khan rides up to a trampoline, does a somersault off of it, and lands back on his skateboard.
• Police Story
  Many dangerous and real life stunts in this Jackie Chan film were done without wires. Scenes include Chan hanging on to a double-decker bus window by an umbrella handle, as well as a mall fight scene at the end featuring many stunt team members performing tumbles, falls and flips through various objects including glass window displays, stairs, escalators, etc. The finale featured Chan jumping and sliding down a mall post covered with wired lights before smashing through a wooden canopy.
• Stick
  Dar Robinson asked to play the part of the albino killer so the audience would be more shocked by the villain's death. Without cutting away, Robinson was filmed falling backwards off a hotel balcony emptying his revolver at Reynolds' as he fell. A thin cable ran up Robinson's leg to a harness around his waist to arrest his fall just feet off the ground.
• The Living Daylights
  This was the third variation on a stunt that had appeared first in Moonraker and then in Octopussy; James Bond battles a bad guy while they are both hanging outside a plane. In this case, Bond and the villainous Necros fight as they cling to a cargo net filled with bags of opium hanging out the rear of a Soviet cargo plane. All three stunt sequences were done with ace parachutists Jake Lombard and B.J. Worth. Lombard, who had previously doubled for Roger Moore, took the part of Necros here, while Worth finally got to play Bond by doubling Timothy Dalton.
• Amsterdamned
  Nick Gillard as Eric Visser jumped his speedboat over a bridge in Amsterdam, breaking the record set in Live and Let Die.
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
  Vic Armstrong as Indiana Jones rode his horse onto a ledge and jumped onto a moving tank.
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day
  The killer robot T-1000 flies a helicopter in a freeway chase after a S.W.A.T. van driven by The Terminator and at one point flies under an overpass.
• Cliffhanger
  Corrupt Treasury agent Travers hijacks a jet carrying US$100 million, then slides down a cable to the villains' Learjet. British stuntman Simon Crane performed the stunt. When the film's budget was not large enough for the $1 million needed to complete the sequence, lead actor Sylvester Stallone agreed to cut his salary by the same amount.
• Speed
  Stuntman Billy Morts doubled for actor Keanu Reeves as L.A.P.D. cop Jack Traven, who rips the door off a Jaguar sports car then leaps to the open door of a speeding bus, his feet scraping against the ground.
• GoldenEye
  Wayne Michaels as James Bond bungee jumped over a dam to break into a Russian chemical weapons factory. Michaels reached 100 miles per hour (161 km/h) during the jump and came perilously close to the sloping surface of the dam, which was studded with irons struts that could have torn him to pieces. The stunt was further complicated as Bond had to take out a gun during the fall, which threw Michaels off trajectory.
• Khiladi 420
  Indian actor Akshay Kumar performs a dangerous stunt where he climbs onto a small airplane while it is moving, stands on top of the plane as it flies a thousand feet high, and jumps from the plane onto a hot air balloon, all in a single take.
• Ong-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior
  Thai actor Tony Jaa performed a number of stunts for the film, suffering injuries such as a ligament injury and a sprained ankle. One scene involved fighting while his trousers were on fire, which spread upwards and burnt his eyebrows, eyelashes and nose during filming. Despite this, he did several more takes after that.
• The World Is Not Enough
  Echoing The Man with the Golden Gun, Gary Powell as James Bond put his boat into a 360 degree roll, wrecking a gun emplacement on a villainess's boat.
• Casino Royale
  Sébastien Foucan as an African bomb-maker eluded Daniel Craig's James Bond using parkour. Foucan's (and the stunt's) notation in the opening credits were a first.
• Merantau
  In one scene, Indonesian actor Iko Uwais performs a jump from one building to another. Another stuntman, playing a henchman, chases him and attempts to do the same, but Uwais hits him with a bamboo pole in mid-air and the stuntman falls three stories to the ground.
• Singh Is Kinng
  Indian actor, Akshay Kumar jumps from one moving elevator to the other at a height of 110 feet without any safety measures.
• Sapoot
  Akshay Kumar jumps from a building and hangs on to a skid of a helicopter as it flies hundreds of feet above the ground. At one point, Akshay Kumar hangs only by his legs and then jumps off from the helicopter to a moving truck.