Today’s Accidental Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
By early 1993, Bruce Lee’s son Brandon’s life was in high gear both professionally and romantically. He was sharing a Beverly Hills home with year-older Eliza (Lisa) Hutton, a Hollywood casting assistant. The couple planned to be married in Ensanada, Mexico, on April 7. First, however, he was scheduled to star in The Crow, a movie based on a high-tech action comic book. Lee was cast as a rock star who is murdered by a gang and returns to Earth in the persona of a bird to avenge his and his girlfriend’s deaths. Producer Ed Pressman hoped this entry would be the first in a series of movies starring Lee as The Crow.
Brandon and his fiancée Lisa
The movie was shot at the Carolco Studio in Wilmington, North Carolina. The shoot was jinxed with problems from the beginning. On the first day of filming – February 1, 1993 – a carpenter on the crew received a severe electric shock and extensive burns when the crane he was riding struck high voltage power lines. On March 13, a storm smashed some of the movie sets. Another time, a cast member went to check his prop gun before the cameras began rolling, only to find a live bullet in the firearm. Adding to the production confusion, a disgruntled set sculptor drove his car through the studio’s plaster shop.
BPF1JJ BRANDON LEE THE CROW (1994)
On March 31, The Crow was eight days away from the end of the shoot. Everyone was working extremely long hours to complete the movie on time. Shortly after midnight on the morning of the 31st, Brandon reported to soundstage #4 to do a flashback scene depicting how his screen character had died. In the story line, a drug dealer fires a .44 Magnum revolver at Brandon’s character as the latter enters his apartment. The filming procedure called for Lee to open the door, carrying a grocery bag in his arms. The bag hid a trigger mechanism he was to pull that would set off a small dummy explosive charge just as the on-camera villain fired the blank shot.
At 12:30 A.M., the on-camera performer playing the drug dealer was standing approximately 15 feet away from the star. He aimed his firearm at Lee and pulled the trigger. Brandon set off the charge as planned, but then he collapsed on the set, bleeding profusely. It was quickly discerned that he had a hole the size of a quarter in his lower right abdomen. While crew members phoned for help, the emergency medical technician assigned to the set began CPR on the badly injured star.
Lee was rushed by ambulance to the New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington. Upon arrival, he still had detectable vital signs. After the staff stabilized him, he was taken into emergency surgery. During the five-hour procedure, 60 units of blood were used on the patient. Shortly after 7:00 A.M. he was placed in the hospital’s Trauma Neuro-Intensive Care Unit. His condition deteriorated progressively until finally his heart stopped, and he could not be resuscitated. Brandon was pronounced dead at 1:04 P.M. At the time of his passing, his fiancée was with him, and his mother, Linda, had flown in from Boise, Idaho, where she lived with her businessman husband, Bruce Cadwell.
The media had a field day with this freak accident, pointing up the parallels between Brandon’s death and that of his celebrated father. Soon after the mystifying tragedy, Detective Rodney Simmons of the Wilmington Police Department (the first officer at the scene of the accident) examined the final footage. To explain the tragic mishap, he suggested that “One of the lead slugs could have come off its casing and lodged in the gun.” (According to this theory, when the gun was reloaded after the close-up shot, the metal tip had remained behind the gun’s cylinder. When the blank went off, it was speculated, the explosive force propelled the dummy tip through the gun barrel and lodged it in Brandon’s body near his spine.)
An autopsy performed on the actor’s body on Thursday, April 1, in Jacksonville, North Carolina, discredited Detective Simmons’ theory and confirmed its alternative: that Lee had been shot accidentally with a “live” .44-caliber bullet. How such a thing could have happened remained unexplained, as did the fact that protocol had been broken by having the on-set villain point (and fire) the gun directly at Lee, rather than “faking” the shot (which was industry tradition).
Culled from: The Hollywood Book of Death
Morbid Trinket Du Jour!
Who wouldn’t want this incredible coin-operated automaton in their living room? Alas, the best morbid things in life demand a king’s ransom.
Special thanks to Michael Marano for the link.