How Robert de Niro almost died on ‘The Deer Hunter’ set
During the creation of Twilight Zone: The Movie, one of Hollywood’s truest tragedies occurred when a helicopter crashed on set, killing actor Vic Morrow and two child actors who were illegally hired to appear in the film. The accident was a brutal reminder that not all film stunts are safe, something that Robert De Niro knew all too well while filming The Deer Hunter.
During the brutal Vietnam sequence of the film, De Niro and John Savage performed a stunt that required them to jump 30 feet from a helicopter into the River Kwai. The duo performed the stunt 15 times across two days, but during one of the takes, the helicopter involved in the shot caught on the bridge cables.
“The helicopter pilot didn’t want to go too low because there were rocks on two sides and a narrow passage where the water rushed through,” De Niro recalled to Playboy in 1989. “The runners underneath the helicopter caught under the bridge’s cable and, without knowing it, the pilot lifted the whole bridge and twisted it around while John Savage and I were hanging from it.”
“It was dangerous. I looked down and shouted ‘Drop!’ and we just dropped,” De Niro added. “We came up out of the water and saw one of the stunt guys standing on the bridge and lifting the cable off the runner of the helicopter. I thought that was it.”
Footage of De Niro and Savage trying to shout at the helicopter pilot was actually included in the final cut of the film. When the helicopter got caught up, it was directly above where De Niro and Savage had dropped into the water. For the pair of actors, it was too close for comfort.
“I thought the helicopter would drop down on us,” De Niro admitted. “That happens in movies; you have to be very, very careful. Nobody plans an accident, and the thing is, sometimes the stunts don’t even look like anything on film. Or the shot isn’t even used. You could die doing one of those stunts, and when people look at it, they don’t even know how dangerous it was.”
Check out the helicopter scene down below.
