Outside Santa Clarita, California, actor Vic Morrow and two children are killed when a helicopter crashes onto them while shooting a scene from Twilight Zone: The Movie.
Santa Clarita, California
Santa Clarita is a city in northwestern Los Angeles County, California, United States. With a 2020 census population of 228,673, it is the third-most populous city in Los Angeles County, the 17th-most populous in California, and the 103rd-most populous city in the United States. It is located about 30 miles (48 km) northwest of downtown Los Angeles, and occupies 70.75 square miles (183.2 km2) of land in the Santa Clarita Valley, along the Santa Clara River. It is a classic example of a U.S. edge city, satellite city, or boomburb.
Vic Morrow
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.
Twilight Zone accident
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
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.