‘Seizure’: the horror movie that “almost killed” Oliver Stone
Over the years, Hollywood’s most controversial director, Oliver Stone, has found himself in several scrapes. After all, this is the firebrand political force who feared a contract had been put out on his life during the Salvador shoot after he tangled with a Filipino production manager.
However, Stone was involved in another shoot that was somehow even hairier than Salvador. In fact, the bad feeling on this set led to him being threatened with stabbings by two different people – one of whom would be forever etched in the minds of audiences for his appearance in a James Bond film that very same year.
In 1974, Stone stepped onto the set of his directorial debut, Seizure—a horror film about a writer whose recurring nightmare becomes reality over one terrifying weekend. At this point, Stone was a complete rookie, and he made some unconventional choices. He insisted that the entire cast live together in the same house while shooting and decided to film the movie in sequence—both of which are highly unorthodox in traditional filmmaking. Neither decision paid off. Reflecting on the experience with Filmmaker magazine, Stone admitted that his grand plan was a complete disaster. “Everyone started to crack up,” he recalled. “It’s very hard to shoot and live in the same house.”
One of Stone’s cast members was Hervé Villechaize, the French actor with dwarfism who would shoot to fame in 1974 as Nick Nack in The Man with the Golden Gun. Villechaize was, as Stone delicately put it, “a character” – and if a noted nutcase like Stone is saying that about someone, it should tell you a little something about how crazy their behaviour likely was. In fact, Villechaize was reportedly so incensed with Stone at one point during production that he ranted, “I kill you, Stone. You no pay me, Stone, I kill you. I take a knife and stick it in your heart. Fuck off!”
Stone was also threatened with a machete at another point during Seizure’s fraught production – but, amazingly, that threat came from a completely different person. While Stone admitted that Villechaize was a knife collector and a dab hand at throwing them, the machete threat actually came from an irate special effects artist. So, yes, two different disgruntled members of the cast and crew supposedly contemplated stabbing the young director. Talk about a baptism of fire.
“I was almost killed, actually, on Seizure, on my first film, which I didn’t much talk about,” Stone told Deadline in 2020. “But the special effects man came after me with a machete. When you’re struggling, it’s part of the deal.” Stone claimed that the “insane” unnamed man was blind drunk and thought the director was fooling around with the lead actress, who he must have held a candle for.
Thankfully, though, the crew got wind of his violent intentions and quickly spirited Stone out of sight. “He never found me,” a relieved Stone explained. “I knew he was looking for me. He was drunk, and…they got me out of the house because they didn’t want to have a confrontation.”
Naturally, when the guy sobered up, he was fired. Threatening to murder your employer isn’t exactly the best way to build a Hollywood career. Amusingly, though, Stone couldn’t even remember the man’s exact role—only that he was responsible for some aspect of the special effects. When asked about it, he racked his brain but eventually shook his head and admitted, “I don’t know what the hell I hired him for.”
