On July 23, 1982, a Bell UH-1 Iroquois helicopter crashed at Indian Dunes in Valencia, California during the making of Twilight Zone: The Movie. The crash killed actor Vic Morrow and child actors Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen, who were on the ground, and injured the six helicopter passengers. It led to years of civil and criminal actions against the personnel overseeing the film shoot, including director John Landis, and the introduction of new procedures and safety standards in the US filmmaking industry.
Twilight Zone: The Movie is a 1983 American sci-fi fantasy horror anthology film produced by Steven Spielberg and John Landis. Based on Rod Serling's 1959–1964 television series of the same name, the film features four stories directed by Landis, Spielberg, Joe Dante, and George Miller. Landis' segment is an original story created for the film, while the segments by Spielberg, Dante, and Miller are remakes of episodes from the original series. The film's cast includes Dan Aykroyd, Albert Brooks, Scatman Crothers, John Lithgow, Vic Morrow, and Kathleen Quinlan. Original series cast members Burgess Meredith, Patricia Barry, Peter Brocco, Murray Matheson, Kevin McCarthy, Bill Mumy, and William Schallert also appear in the film, with Meredith assuming Serling's role as narrator.
Valencia is a neighborhood in Santa Clarita located within Los Angeles County, California. It is one of the four unincorporated communities that merged to create the city of Santa Clarita in 1987. It is situated in the western part of Santa Clarita, stretching from Lyons Avenue to the south to north of Copper Hill Drive, and from Interstate 5 east to Bouquet Canyon and Seco Canyon Roads. Valencia was founded as a master-planned community with the first development, Old Orchard I, built on Lyons Avenue behind Old Orchard Elementary School.
Vic Morrow was an American actor. He came to prominence as one of the leads of the ABC drama series Combat! (1962–1967), which earned him an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actor in a Series. Active on screen for over three decades, his film roles include Blackboard Jungle (1955), King Creole (1958), God's Little Acre (1958), Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry (1974), and The Bad News Bears (1976). Morrow continued acting up to his death during filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) when he and two child actors were killed in a helicopter crash on set.