Stuff You Should Know - Can movies be cursed?

Episode Date: November 16, 2017

First of all, movies can't be cursed because curses aren't real. However, that can't stop Josh and Chuck from taking a look at some movies throughout history that have had a disturbing number of bad things surrounding their production and release. Dive into the world of cursed movies in this very fun episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hello, Seattle, hello, Portland. We're coming out to see you this January live. That's right, what are the dates, my friend? January 15th, we're gonna be at the Moore Theater in Seattle, and on January 16th,

we're gonna be at Revolution Hall again in Portland. That's right, tickets are being snapped up fast, everyone, cause you love us out there, and we love you right back. So just go to sysklive.com for all ticket details. We can't wait to see you. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.

There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry. My tongue is super big today for some reason. Gross. And this is Stuff You Should Know. It's like, I sound like Peter Overby for God's sake. Who's that? You know that guy's voice anywhere.

He's like a NPR reporter. Oh yeah. And like, he has me even beat for the large tongues, candy-sucking sound. Do you remember when we first came out, people would write in and be like, till Josh stops sucking on candy while he's podcasting. And I'd just be like, that's my normal voice, man.

Thanks a lot. Yeah, appreciate that. But now, now that we're high rollers, they provided me with a private nurse to suction out the saliva every 30 seconds. Oh my God. And then Jerry has to edit it out. So gross.

Gross but true, right? Like a cursed movie story, true? Yeah, do you know what I hated the dentist besides everything? Man, that was a pretty good segue. I know that I just totally mowed over. I'm sorry. I hated the dentist now.

You know, you don't have to spit anymore because they do have those suction things. But it's still, like I still do the fake swallow. You know how it feels like it builds up in the back of your mouth? So like they'll be in your mouth and you'll just go like that. I hate that.

That's funny. Do you do that? Does everyone do that? The gag reflex thing? Well, it's not even a gag reflex. It's just the- The hard swallow that drives swallow? Yeah, the sort of swallow reflex if that's such a thing.

You feel like you're gonna break your vocal cords or your throat muscles? God, I hate that. I know what you mean. I don't hate it though. I think it's kind of- Yeah? Not enjoyable, but I don't know.

I don't hate it. I know when they talk to you and expect you to talk back. They can talk, but yeah, there can't be any questions involved. Maybe rhetorical questions that you can shrug at. That's it. My last hygienist, I really didn't care for her.

Like that was a personality thing. And they have TVs at my dentist that they'll put down in front of you, which is fine, I don't really care. But she would stop and look and make comments about the news and stuff. Oh yeah? Yeah.

Like in the middle. Why don't they just let him do his job? I didn't like it. It was really annoying. And then I came back in not too long ago and there was a new hygienist for me and she was awesome. And on the way out, I was like, by the way, I was like, I won't say her name.

I was like, but this new hygienist, I really like a lot. She was like, what about before? I was like, I wasn't crazy about her. And she went, no one was, and you guys need to tell us that. And we let her go because we got all these complaints, started flooding in. I was like, well, I feel bad.

Like I don't want to get anyone fired. Sure. But I didn't, that was, she wasn't good. Huh. So anyway. Was this in Brookhaven? Yeah, is it Brookhaven? How do you know where my dentist is?

Well, I just had an experience in Brookhaven and I'm like, this town is just small enough for that to be possible. Well, I'll go ahead and shout out my dentist, the great Dr. Daryl Kimchee. She's wonderful. Kimchee? Uh-huh.

That's one of my favorite foods. But is that your dentist? No. Okay. But it's possible that we're talking about like a hygienist that gets fired pretty frequently. Maybe, she's making the rounds in Buckhead Brookhaven. Right.

Dr. Daryl Kimchee of Atlanta Cosmetics Sports Dentistry. Wow, that is quite a shout out. I think Dr. Kimchee owes us some free Kimchee. Maybe. As a thank you. She's sort of a celebrity dentist. She does a lot of the sports people in Atlanta. And the real housewives?

Maybe, but I went in and they have memorabilia up everywhere and when the TV show was out, I gave them a poster and they never put it up. Oh, no way. That's hilarious. Yeah. Wow, that's great. That reminds me of the friends

when Joey tried to get his head shot up at the, I think it's like the dry cleaner or something. Right. I couldn't do it. Man, that is so stuff you should know. All right, well, this has got a nice loose start. Indeed, Chuck, but this is a fun one. But let's begin, shall we?

Well, yeah, this was written by The Grabster. The article is 10 movies that were supposedly cursed and Ed goes to great lengths to point out how there is no way that anything can ever be really cursed. Right. I think probably his, a couple lines where he's like, just so stupid kind of where it was edited out, you know? I get the feeling he got a sign this was like,

oh, God, are you kidding me? I want to write about real stuff like Satanic Panic. But he does love writing about movies. He's definitely a movie guy. Yeah, especially horror movies. And it seems like more than any other movie, horror movies, they're the variety that tend to be associated with curses more than other types, right?

Or at least the marketing department cooks that up. So yeah, that's definitely par for the course these days, but there was a more innocent, gentler time when rumors of Satan influencing the production of a movie was a legitimate rumor. You know, it wasn't a PR stunt. Right. So like you said, Ed goes to some trouble to point out

what's actually behind the idea of a movie curse that some things are bound to happen on just about any movie chart. Oh yeah. Especially when you stop and consider, especially in the early days, the kind of stuff they were doing with the technology they were working with at the time,

of course bad things happen on movies. That's of course people died. Yeah. Like for example, I looked this up, right? There was a 1928 movie called Noah's Ark and they used 600,000 gallons of water to create the flood scene. They did one take and three extras drowned.

One guy who did survive had to have a leg amputated. It was broken so badly, because this is the flood scene and you needed to basically get it as real as possible. Isn't that crazy? That is, yeah, especially back in those days, but they didn't care back then. Right.

They were just like, oh, they're just extras who cares. Although John Wayne, it turns out, was an extra on that movie, but he survived obviously, yeah. And he factors into another curse. He does. He also worked in the special effects department on that movie, or prop, prop, sorry, prop.

Like special effects was what? He did early CGI. Right. He would clap the coconuts together. For all the horse scenes. Right. Hold on, I have another one, okay? So this is another movie.

Years later, they died with their boots on. I think it's about the charge of the Light Brigade maybe. Okay. It was a 1941 movie starring Errol Flynn and during this Calvary Charge that they recreated, three extras in that movie died, just in that one shot, that one scene. One of the guys was thrown from his horse

and he threw his sword away from him. Unfortunately, he threw it ahead of himself and the sword stuck into the ground, handle first and he was impaled on the sword. Wow. This happened on a movie set and it's not just like back in the day either, 1983, the Twilight Zone movie, very famously,

there was a disaster, right? Yeah, that was very sad. That's when Vic Moro and two children were chopped up by helicopter blade. Right. Very infamously, it was terrible, terrible tragedy. Yeah, Shin Yee Chan and Micah Den Lee were the two child actors who were killed.

So things do happen on movie sets and again, when you stop and think about what they're doing, it's often very dangerous. So what Ed is saying is, when you start to put these things together and then you get rid of all of the things that don't support your point, you got a curse on your hands.

Should we start with Poltergeist? Yes. Poltergeist, that's one where people always list this as a cursed movie because quite a few of the actors died sort of unexpectedly after the movie. And then Ed goes on to say very astutely, but it's also a textbook example

of why the idea of curses is silly. And if I mentioned that curses are silly, so it's all over and over. So those first three Poltergeist, 82, 86 and 88, I didn't see the remake, did you? I didn't even know there was one. Yeah, of course there was. They remade it a few years ago.

No, I didn't see it. No, I don't think it was very popular. But Dominic Dunn, Dominique, excuse me, her father was Dominic Dunn, correct? Yeah, and her brother was Griffin Dunn. Yes. There is Griffin Dunn. Yeah, she was, well, she was murdered. She was murdered by her boyfriend.

John Sweeney. Yeah, and that was a very disturbing case. Have you ever poked around that case? Yes. Like the signs were all there. It was one of those things that could have been prevented. And he got away with it for the most part. He did like three years in prison.

And Dominic Dunn, her father, he was there every day for the trial of the man. Oh, yeah. And was just crushed by the injustice of the sentence that the guy received. Well, it changed his life. He became a crusader. It did, yeah.

You can read some of the best coverage of high-profile murder cases in the pages of Vanity Fair that he covered for years and years and years as a direct result of him basically covering his own daughter's murderous trial. Yeah, O.J. very famously. He covered that case. Yeah, he did.

And apparently the Dunns spent a great deal of time basically keeping tabs on John Sweeney for years. He was a chef for a while. He was. And I even started tracking him down. I just went down the rabbit hole like six or eight months ago on this for some reason. Really?

Yeah, this is one of those things where you see something on Facebook and then all of a sudden you go, oh yeah, and then you go down the rabbit hole. And I was trying to find this guy. I was like, where is this guy? Where is he? And the last I saw, he was some chef somewhere.

I think he had changed his name even, of course. Yeah, to John Mora, M-A-U-R-A. Yeah, well keep changing that name, buddy, because it's gonna follow you around. Yeah, and I mean, like there was no question whether he did it or not. He admitted to it, like he told this guy who had been in the house at the time

in Dominique Dunn's house rehearsing lines to call the police that he just killed his girlfriend. Yeah. But yeah, he was hounded for many years. And I guess toward the end of his life, Dominique Dunn said, you know what? I'm not gonna waste my life like keeping tabs on this guy anymore and just dropped it.

But yeah, there's a lot of people out there who don't like that dude. Yeah, I would imagine so. So she died by murder. Then the young girl. And this was like a couple months after Poltergeist came out, right? So it was very close to the production.

Yeah, yeah, she was not in the sequels, obviously. Heather O'Rourke was the little girl in Poltergeist. And she passed away in 1988 after Poltergeist II was wrapped. And she initially was diagnosed with a flu. We talk about this in our flu episode a little bit. But what she really had was an intestinal blockage. And at the tender age of 12,

she had a heart attack and sepsis and passed away. Super tragic. Yeah. And so those two dying so close to the production of the actual movie. She died, it was Poltergeist III, I believe, that Heather O'Rourke died after filming. They were basically done.

Did Ed get it wrong? Ed got it wrong. Oh man. And then Dominique again died just a couple months after the first Poltergeist came out. So that's like one big hallmark of a movie being cursed story is the deaths that happen, typically need to happen either during production

or right around production. Right. Okay, so those two are the big ones. But then people say, oh, oh, still not convinced? Well, listen to this. In Poltergeist II, there was an actor named Will Sampson who played Taylor, the medicine man who helps the family. Yeah.

And he is better known for playing chief in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, one of the great characters of all time. He died, I guess, after filming, a few years after filming, the year after filming. In 1987, he died following a heart and lung transplant. Yeah, and he had a history of health issues. He was a giant man.

Yeah. And so that was, again, tied to the curse, but what can you say about someone who just died sort of of natural-ish causes? After a heart and lung transplant. I think there's pretty good odds. Yeah. And then there's Julian Beck who played the scary,

scary, scary preacher, Kane, also in Poltergeist II. Man, he was creepy. He died, I guess, before Poltergeist II actually came out. So that would have been close to the production as well. So it checks those boxes, but he died of stomach cancer and he apparently had a long-standing issue with battling it as well. So you can make the case it doesn't really count,

but are you really trying to make a case about curses? Yeah, let's just talk about them instead. How about that? Agreed. Okay. What's next? The Wizard of Oz is next. That's right, 1939, great movie,

but a great movie that was marred for such a happy movie, it had some rough stuff going on because it was in the early days of making movies. And like you said earlier, back then it was, they didn't know or care as much about safety. Like, for instance, the Tin Man, Buddy Ebson, they said, all right, we need to make you look silver. And so we'll just coat you with aluminum powder.

And that stuff was really dangerous. He went to the hospital, it irritated his lungs and he could not even continue in the role. No, luckily he survived to go on to play Jed, the dad in Beverly Hillbillies, thank God. But he was out of the Wizard of Oz. He was. So Buddy Ebson was replaced by Jack Haley

and they said, well, we probably shouldn't use that same aluminum powder. So they used an aluminum paste, which didn't get into his lungs, but to give him a really bad eye infection. Man. Right, so the aluminum, just the Tin Man role itself had a bunch of problems,

but that was just one of many. Margaret Hamilton, the Wicked Witch of the West. She was burned pretty badly with some of the pyrotechnics from the movie. And I think she was hospitalized, but she came back and completed work on the movie. Yeah, but she said she wasn't gonna do any more firework. Apparently the trap door that she was standing

on the timing of it wasn't right. So it didn't open up and drop her right before the fireworks went off, but did it simultaneous to the fireworks going off, which is not what you want. No, but it was 1939. Right, so they were like, whatever, what are you gonna do?

There's the very famous urban legend, which is not true, but it bears mentioning that one of the Munchkins hanged himself in the background of a scene. If you just Google image that junk, hanged Munchkin, Wizard of Oz, it will have a screen cap with a little circle around. I mean, it just looks like something

that is not a tree, in other words, it's not attached to the ground. It doesn't necessarily look like a hanging Munchkin, but apparently there was a bird. Yeah, it doesn't look like a bird to me either, though. Supposedly it's a silhouette of a bird. And if you watch a close-up of the video of it, it does sway back and forth above the ground.

So I mean, you can see where people came up with that for sure. Yeah, but that is not the case. There was no Munchkin that just couldn't take it anymore. There's actually, there's a really great horror fiction story by, I think, a guy named Steve Nagy called The Hanged Man of Oz. Looking up and reading, it's pretty good,

but it's about this dude kind of becoming obsessed with that rumor and seeing it on video and not being able to unsee it and all the stuff that happens after. Wow. I think it's Steve Nagy. It's definitely called The Hanged Man of Oz. All right, I'll check that out.

Other tragedies in Wizard of Oz. Auntie M, Ms. Clara Blandic. She killed herself. At age 81. Yeah. And she left in her suicide note that she was going on her greatest adventure. Well, that's kind of nice.

I guess so. It's about as pleasant as it can get with the suicide note, I think. The Wizard himself, Frank Morgan. He was injured in a car wreck just a few months after they released the movie. And then of course, Judy Garland had one of the more tragic lives in Hollywood history.

Yes. They're making a movie about her soon, I think. I can't believe they haven't already. I think they've done it on TV, but not a big movie thing, I don't think. She was basically owned by MGM. Yeah. Like almost the definition of being owned, right?

She was discovered at age 13, I think in Kansas, actually, at a state fair. And they said, well, we're just gonna buy you from your parents, basically. And they took her and they said, you can't get fat. So smoke 80 cigarettes a day. Yeah. They basically prescribed her that.

They got her on amphetamines to keep her going. They let her have one square meal a day. Terrible. Yeah, really. So Ed makes a really good point. If there was any real tragedy that came out of the Wizard of Oz, it was Judy Garland's life. Yeah, absolutely.

So she eventually would die by suicide herself on an overdose of barbiturates. And I think she had the equivalent of 10 Seekin' All Capsules in her body. Good lord. Yeah. Wow. Man, that's sad.

I want to see that movie. Do you know who's gonna play her? Oh, man, I just saw this the other day. I can't remember who. But I remember thinking, good casting. Oh, okay. Like it wasn't Owen Wilson. That'd be pretty bad.

If you get your troubles, come on, get happy. So she was 47 years young, by the way, which is far, far too young to have lost Judy Garland. You want to take a break? Yeah, on that downer, yes. All right, we'll come back and talk about The Man of Steel right after this. On the podcast, Paydude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor

stars of the co-classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever.

Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing.

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And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step, not another one, kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now.

If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. And so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, Chuck. Um, so there's actually a role, Superman that's considered a cursed role. Did you know that? I did know that because I remember as a kid, even though I'm not, you know, 65 years old,

I like to watch reruns of stuff like Gilligan's Island and Green Acres and Petticoat Junction. Oh, really? I've never seen Petticoat Junction as a kid. Yeah. I mean, you know, it was one of those old shows. They're all great. What about F Troop? F Troop's probably one of my favorites.

Yeah. I watched F Troop. I watched all that stuff. Uh, Superman, uh, the name of the show that I watched was called Adventures of Superman. And that was straight up from the 1950s and still in reruns in the mid-70s, at least. Yeah. Because that's where I watched it. And that was the one starring George Reeves, um, as the, uh, not even very muscular and

slightly tubby Superman. Yeah. Like that kind of like 50s fit, which kind of barrel-chested, chunky and just weird, like weirdly shaped. Yeah. Like what were the, what kind of exercise were they doing back then? Well, I don't think they did exercise back then. Wasn't that the deal?

Oh. Is that what it was? Yeah. They were just like, you know, you're going to play Superman. So eat a bunch of steak. Right. Like buff up a little bit. Right.

Do some push-ups maybe. So he, George Reeves, uh, Reeves, he's George Reeves. Christopher Reeve is not plural, singular version, right? Yes. Um, George Reeves became synonymous with Superman. Like everybody thought of him as Superman. Yeah. He like, like they, he wouldn't be cast in anything else, right?

Um, and he had some, he had to put up with quite a bit being known as Superman or recognized as Superman. Apparently kids would come up and like punch him in the stomach to see if he was made of steel. There, I looked into it. I learned this years ago from the uncle John's bathroom reader and I looked into it and I think it actually may be correct. But at one, like public appearance, he, um, had to talk a kid out of shooting him.

Like this kid had brought his father's loaded 38 caliber pistol to shoot Superman to see if the bullets really bounced off of him. And George Reeve got the kid to put, to hand the gun over to like a cop or something because he told them that sure, of course the bullet would bounce off of him, but it could ricochet and hurt somebody else who is standing nearby. Yeah. That was in the Ben Affleck movie, uh, Hollywood land. Is that right?

Yeah, George Reeves and that scene was in the movie. Okay. And he does. He does. He talks. Yeah. It's okay. It's not great, but you, you lost me at Ben Affleck.

It's not bad. But yeah, he talks the kid out of it in the, in the movie and, um, and is said exactly what he said. Like, of course, blah, blah, blah. And then he takes it. Then you can see him. He's just like, oh God, Jesus, like almost got shot. Right.

Yes. Yeah. That was, I can't imagine the, the relief that would wash over you after that. Yeah. So George Reeves. Reeves. Reeves. Yeah.

He's the plural. It's tough to keep up with. It is. He, he had a very sort of sad life, uh, which is in that Hollywood land movie. He, like you said, he couldn't get other work and he was only known as Superman. So I think he turned to the booze and, um, was, was not, uh, a happy guy. And eventually in June of 1959, um, there was a, he was having a party at his own house. His fiance was throwing a party and he said, I'm going to go upstairs and shoot myself

in the head. Yeah. And Ed makes it sound like he was upset about the noise or something like that from the party. No, I mean, that may have been the straw, but he was upset about life. I gotcha. And I got the sense like legitimately, uh, depressed, you know, like clinically depressed. Right.

Yeah. I mean, like it's, it's as we get to know more and more about like depression, um, it's so much easier to look back at like, you know, people who were depressed before, but you just never really kind of pegged them like that because people didn't know about that kind of thing. Then it's just sad to see like how many people suffered like that because no one knew what was going on or they just thought it was the blues or you should just snap out of it. Right.

Yeah. We, we've never done one on depression. I think we should. Have we not? I don't believe we have me, uh, well, then we should definitely do that. We have done one on cats and then Christopher Reeve played Superman and that is why some say it is a cursed role because he, uh, was very sadly injured in a, in a horse riding accident in the mid nineties, uh, which let them paralyze from the neck down and he became

very much an inspiration to people because he became a, an advocate for research into spinal cord injuries and he went on to direct and even act some as well after that. And Ed also points out, um, that after Christopher Reeve died, his wife Dana, who saw him through this whole thing, um, she died of cancer like two years afterward. Yeah. I've just, man, I felt so awful for that family and those kids. Yeah. I mean, just to get like that random to be thrown from a horse and then just be paralyzed

from the neck down. Yeah. So you put those two together and everyone says, well, Superman is a cursed role. Correct. What would, what would the grabster say? You know, such thing as curses. So stupid. Uh, the Conqueror is a movie that, like we said, John Wayne factored in and this one

was definitely, I don't know about cursed, but, um, well, here's the story. Okay. And, uh, very unlikely that John Wayne would play a Mongolian, Genghis Khan. He did though, but it was Hollywood back in the day where they just would cast white people to play whoever. Right. Um, and he played Genghis Khan and they shot the Conqueror in Utah, uh, less than 150 miles from the Nevada test site, sorry, Nevada test site, where our own US government set off

11, uh, nuclear detonations above ground the year before. Just in the year before. Yeah. And that area was crawling with, uh, with bad stuff, lingering, um, fallout in the dirt and in the, the, the rocks and like everything. It was in the soil and they were just running around in their film and movies. Uh, yeah. I read this really interesting article in The Guardian called Hollywood and the Downwinders

about the people who lived in that area who suffered tremendously from health problems from the fallout and the government went to great lengths to cover it up and just assured everybody that there was no danger whatsoever to them, uh, even though they were there, their houses and school yards were covered in radioactive ash. Um, and so from filming there, when this production came to town and they filmed there, yeah, they were exposed to this, the same radioactive debris, um, and dust and dirt that these people who lived in the area were as well. And as a result, supposedly something like 90, 91 out of 220 cast and crew members who

worked on location for the movie, The Conqueror, came down with cancer, uh, later on in life, which is highly unusual, statistically speaking. Yeah, that's like 40-something percent of the crew. And um, years later in People Magazine in 1980, they actually did a special report on that movie and the cancer connection like John Wayne, uh, Agnes Moorhead, Gene, uh, Gene Gerson, Susan Hayward, the director, Dick Powell, they all died of cancer. And in that People Magazine, uh, Dr. Robert C. Pendleton, he was director of radiological health at the University of Utah said that, like, this would hold up in a court of law

that's such an outstanding number of people. Yeah, and apparently not even, um, just the people who worked on the production, it came to be known, The Conqueror came to be known, by the way, it's considered one of the best bad movies of the golden age of Hollywood. Um, but people who visited the set, battle cancer later in life too, both of John Wayne's sons, uh, who came to visit them, there's a famous picture of him with two of his sons and a guy using a Geiger counter on set. Wow.

Um, both of his sons had cancer later in life too, but supposedly the family, uh, and Dick Powell's son, Norman, who's interviewed in that article I read, they discount the idea that it was, that people got cancer from that test site. They say maybe it was a contributing factor, but these people all smoked heavily, ate steak like eight, eight times a day, um, and that they, they had a lot of other risk factors that probably led to it, but it's also entirely possible that they may not have died of cancer as early had they not filmed at that site. Well, that Dr. Robert Pendleton, Pendleton said essentially this is about three times

the rate of cancer that you would expect, so I think that it definitely contributed. It's pretty curious. I want to see it. Have you ever seen the Conqueror? No. I got to see this. I've seen pictures of John Wayne as, uh, Genghis Khan. Yeah.

It's pretty, pretty cringy. Yeah. Super racist, but apparently like even if you take all that away, just like the dialogue is awful. Yeah. Like the whole premise of it is he kidnaps a woman and forces her to marry him. And of course, romance blossoms as a result, you know, it's just the usual stuff from the 50s.

The Omen. Yes. This is a good one because, um, this is one of those where it's a movie about the devil. And so all these stories are going to be heightened, right? Because it's, um, kind of like poltergeist. Like it wouldn't, if this was when Harry met Sally and that some of this stuff happened. Yeah. When Harry met Sally was cursed with great laughs.

It was. I love that movie. Uh-huh. Uh, one of the few romantic comedies that were legit good movies. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So let's, let's go back to the beginning of this one.

Obviously, the Omen, everyone knows was, uh, the great movie from 1976 about the Antichrist, uh, taking, um, well, not, uh, I guess possession, you could call it, but it's not like an exorcist thing. It basically, the Antichrist is, is this little boy. He comes back as a little boy. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, a bad, bad, naughty little boy.

Damien. Who dresses like Angus Young. Uh, yeah. Sure. Okay. So, um, Damien is adopted by Gregory Peck in the movie. Um, and in real life, Gregory Peck's son, um, killed himself. He died by suicide, uh, apparently out of the blue.

No suicide note or anything like that. Yeah. So this was before production had started, but after Peck had agreed to do the movie. Right. And he still went ahead and did the movie. Um, he left the U S and went to London and even, even on the way to London before he even got to London to start shooting, something happened to him. Right.

Yeah. He said, I'm going to get on a plane and fly to London. His plane was struck by lightning and the producer's plane was struck by lightning separately. These are two different, two different planes struck by lightning on the way to start shooting in London. So this curse thing is feeling legit this time. This is the one that even Ed got a little shaky on. If you ask me about this, the hotel where they stayed, uh, at least where the producer

and some other folks stayed was bombed by the Irish Republican army. Yeah. Hilton, the London Hilton. I don't know about, uh, a curse in that case because the mid-70s, there was a lot of that going on. Yeah. The IRA was bombing all sorts of stuff back then. Yeah.

So it was like a restaurant where the crew and the cast went to eat one night. Yeah. They were about to go eat there. So there's actually like all these close calls actually make it seem like this, this movie production wasn't cursed, but instead was actually being looked out for on high by the dark lord. Right. So like the, the, the crew that were, was going to go to dinner, um, didn't go to dinner.

They didn't make it there in time for the bombing. Right. The people who were staying in the hotel when it was bombed weren't there yet. Um, there were a lot of close calls, but there was one close call that really is, is just mind numbing. I would have freaked out had I been one of the people involved. The private jet. Yeah.

So they chartered a private jet to, um, fly them around London to get some good aerial footage of London. And at the last minute, the, um, charter service switched planes to accommodate a group of Japanese businessmen. Well, the plane that the Japanese businessmen took that the crew was supposed to be on crashed on takeoff actually crashed into a car and killed everybody on board the plane and everybody in the car crashed into. How about that?

And this was like a last minute switch too, supposedly. Yeah. Those make you think. Yeah, that, I mean, the cursor, no, just knowing that you were that close would just get you. How about this? A worker, there was an animal sanctuary where they filmed and a worker there was killed by a tiger. Yeah.

That one, uh, I think that fits. I think that was the actual animal wrangler for the movie was killed. Oh, really? Yeah. Which makes it even closer. This is the one though, Chuck, you got to take this one home. This is the one that really gets everybody, even though I think it's like a lot of it's made up.

Yeah. There was a car crash with, uh, John Richardson, who was a special effects worker. He'd signed the effects for the Omen, including a very famous decapitation scene toward the end. Yes. Very famous. And, uh, I thought that was the beginning. Was it the beginning?

I think so. I think it's not open if I remember, but it's been a while. Oh, okay. Either way. John Holland, after working on a movie called a bridge too far, and he was involved in a head on collision in his car and was injured, but his assistant, Liz Moore, was decapitated and killed in that car wreck. And he claims, and I don't know if this is lore or not, sounds lorish.

It does sound lorish, but he claims that he awoke from that crash and looked up and those a street sign, uh, where they crash that said the distance to the next town and it was the town of Omen, O-M-N-E-N, at a distance of 66.6 kilometers. Bam. Now, is that true? There's no way it's true because I looked up on the internet that sign trying to find any picture of that sign. If that sign existed, there would be so many pictures from tourists taking, taking photos

of it on the internet. There's not a single one. Do you think from back then those pictures would still be around? The sign would probably be still be around. Well, see, I think that's the presumption that may not be true. Like they may have taken the sign down for that reason. Maybe. I guess that's possible, but no picture of it whatsoever.

No AP photographer went, I gotta get a picture of that sign. Nobody did. That there's no existing photo of that sign. It does have a hanging, for sure. Yeah. That's the one that makes me think like, man. Well, there is a town called Omen in the Netherlands, so it's entirely possible a crash took place by there.

So that checks out. That definitely checks out. So we're going to take a break, everybody. We just decided, but we're going to be right back. So don't worry because we're going to talk some more about cursed movies. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and

dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you.

Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step, not another one, kids, relationships, life in general can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, we're back as I promised and we're on the brainstorm, which I think Ed was just kind of showing off with this one because he even says like, you're not going to find

this on many lists of cursed movies. Yeah, I'm not sure I get the curse in this one, but we'll talk about it. Brainstorm was the 1983 sci-fi movie, um, most famously known as being, uh, the great Natalie Woods final film, right? Because she died in real life after the movie, obviously, uh, when she drowned, uh, after being out on a boat one night, partying with her husband, Robert Wagner and her co-star, Christopher Walken. Right.

Under some say, many say, mysterious circumstances. Yeah, I was reading up about that case and they apparently have been drinking since at least four in the afternoon and they made it back to the boat pretty late and they've been drinking, um, through dinner. They were all just pretty, pretty crocked, right? Um, and supposedly Natalie Wood was either afraid of water and or couldn't swim. Yeah. Um, and for some reason she had, had tried to get into a dinghy that was attached to

the boat that they were staying on and, uh, probably hit her head and drowned. Um, that's the story. That's the official story, right? But apparently in 2012 it was reopened, um, or her cause of death was, was changed from accident to, um, undetermined. Yeah, I mean there were stories that she and Robert Wagner had been fighting, uh, the, the captain even many years later said that he actually killed her, uh, no charges were ever brought.

Um, Christopher Walken for his, I think he's never talked about it publicly if I'm not mistaken. No, he finally did years and years later in a Playboy interview and he basically said it was, it must have been an accident that no one knows, but it was, she, surely it was an accident. Gotcha. That was what he said. And that's probably the only thing he said because I didn't think he ever said anything.

Yeah. Uh, he said, it's an accident, clearly, that was great, um, that, cause that was, I was Christopher Walken with just a hint of John Travolta. Yeah, it was a little Travolta, so yeah, I mean, that's tied to brainstorm as being a curse, I guess, because they were both in the movie, um, even though the Grabster points out that some people tied this back to a rebel without a cause curse because that makes way more sense to me. Yeah.

Because James Dean and Salminio, um, and Natalie Wood, then all died from that movie. Relatively young. She, she made it the longest. She was in her early 40s, I think when she died, but James Dean died very young in a car crash right after rebel without a cause was released, I think. Yeah. And I think wouldn't sell many murdered. He was murdered in 1976, um, at a pretty young age still.

Um, he was stabbed, uh, to death in the heart, uh, in an alley behind his house. Yeah. By a pizza man. To me. Oh really? Yeah. Huh. It's a weird.

Well, it is, but I mean, we're talking about curses, so. Well, I mean, usually the pizza man gets stabbed. You know what I'm saying? Right. I think this guy, it was actually a serial killing pizza man. Oh, wow. Yeah. And what I saw recently is there a serial killer in like central Florida?

I don't know. I hadn't heard anything, but aren't there like at least 50 serial killers operating it in any given point in time? I don't know, but I do, I do know that if I saw something that I heard that like three murders in the Tampa area were just linked, oh man, I think, and that made me think it's been a while. Yeah. You don't hear about them very often, but as I grow older and wiser, I'm starting to

think like there's a lot more serial killers out there than you would imagine that like human life has very little value to more people than you would hope, you know? Yeah. Isn't that the darkest thing you can think of? It's pretty dark. The last high profile one I remember is BTK, but surely there's been one since then, right? Yeah. Because he was like early 2000s, right?

I know, but I can't think of one. I can't either, man. But it's been a long time since, you know, we've heard of like Jeffrey Dommers and- Man, that was shocking. ... headbundies and stuff like that. Yeah. Thankfully. Sure.

The son of Sam's and the Zodiacs, it seems like the 70s and 80s were sort of the time where that was happening more. Yeah. I don't know why maybe it was harder to get away with it or easier to get away with it or who knows? I'm listening to that Heaven's Gate podcast. Have you heard that yet? Oh, I haven't heard that.

No. It's good. It's from our buddy Chris Bannon over at Midroll, put it out. Yes. Is he hosting it? No, no, no. Glenn Washington narrates it. Okay.

But I've been through three episodes now. It's really good. But it's kind of funny, man, that time of the 60s and 70s, it was just- and we talked about it some in our cults episode, it was- people just believed more in trying stuff out like that and UFOs and it was all just kind of in the mainstream. Right. And it just all seemed so unbelievable now, but back then it wasn't- it was kind of believable that someone might join up with a cult.

Well a lot of people were on grass back then. On the grass? Yeah. That's crazy. I got to hear that podcast, man, that's just a fascinating story. But now that means we can't do Heaven's Gate because- Bannon did it. Yeah, and then they did- you know, you can't cover in 45 minutes what they cover in whatever 10 episodes.

10? Sounds about right. I haven't- I don't think they released it all at once, but it feels like a 10. Let's say 7 to 10. So anyway, can we close on Brainstorm or are we still- did we miss something? Yeah, I think- yeah, I mean, Natalie Wood's murders or death, death, sorry, is unsolved still in its mystery, it may always be. I had no idea about that, about Robert Wagner.

I just knew Natalie Wood drowned and never heard anything about it being mysterious. Yeah, it's- it's long been mysterious, and well, here's how we'll finish it then. She wasn't even able to finish filming on that movie, and they did use a body double to complete some of those scenes, and it was a big flop. Yeah. Yes, it was. Okay, Chuck, so for the last one then, we're going to combine two together, because strangely they are almost the same story, but with two different films, and both of them were films

that were never made, or have yet to be made, I guess is a better way to put it. The first one is a Confederacy of Dunces, the film adaptation of John Kennedy Tool's book, I guess novel. Great book. Yeah, I've never read it. So good. I really want to, I've just never read it for some reason. Yeah, it's a classic, classic book, and very sadly Tool killed himself in 1969, and the

book was not out yet. And part of the reason he killed himself is because he could not achieve success as a writer. His mother gets it published, it wins a Pulitzer Prize in 1981, and posthumously, he became a famous author. Yeah, so people, when it first was published in the early 80s, people were like, oh, we've got to turn this into a movie, this is a great idea, a great book will be a great movie, and they said, who could possibly play the main character, Belushi, he'd be perfect,

Belushi dies. Well, who's next, let's wait a few years, and let's see, who else could play this main character, John Candy, John Candy died. Okay, all right, everybody, let's just take a breather, we'll wait a year or two. Who's the next guy who's going to play this, I got it, this young up-and-comer named Chris Farley. Yeah. Chris Farley died.

So a confederacy of dunces just kept getting put off and off and off, right? Then finally, Will Ferrell steps in, and it looks like it's going to happen because Will Ferrell is obviously indestructible, right? Yeah, and if you haven't gathered by hearing the people cast as Ignatius Riley, he was a heavy man in the book, so obviously Belushi, Candy, and Farley were all big dudes, and they all died. So finally, they go to Farrell, and they're like, well, he's in shape, and we can bulk him up, maybe use some special effects, I have no idea, but at least he's probably not

going to drop dead of a heart attack or something. Right, he was a safe bet. Yeah, but that didn't happen either. I think it was sort of in turnaround forever, it took a long time in development, and eventually the head of the Louisiana State Film Commission, it's set in New Orleans, so they would have shot there. So it was murdered, and Hurricane Katrina came along to wipe out a lot of where the film would be shot, and so I think that kind of just helped to put it on indefinite hold

at the very least, but they are, I just saw, I was looking this up, see if it was back on track, and I saw there's a movie called The Butterfly and the Typewriter about John Kennedy Tool. Oh, neat. So they're doing a biopic on him with... Owen Wilson. Thomas Mann, no, Thomas Mann playing Tool. Who's he?

He's an actor. Right, obviously, but what has he been in? The thing that I saw him in was a movie out a couple of years ago called Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. Oh, okay. It's a good little indie film, so he's good, so he's playing Tool, and then I think Susan Sarandon plays his mom, and Diane Krueger's in it as well, so... A.N. Susan Sarandon's going to totally try to date him, too, I'll bet.

Why would you say that? Oh, she likes younger dudes. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Well, maybe have a shot. She likes young hipster dudes, no way younger than you, my friend. Maybe not. Good for her.

I love Susan Sarandon. So, oh, yeah, more power, too, I think she's great, but she is totally going to try to date Thomas Mann. All right. Well, good for him, too, then. Sure. I'm not being judgy. No, I know.

Okay. So, that's a Confederacy of Dunces, right? Yes. There's another script out there called A Tock that has virtually the same story to it, right? But the story's totally different, but the cursed story is virtually the same. Right. With A Tock, it's like a fish out of water movie about an Inuit man who comes to New

York and has to make his way in the big city, right? Yes. That script was early on, it was optioned, and John Belushi was scheduled to play the main character, right? That's right. Well, what happened to John Belushi? He died. So, who was up next, Chuck?

John Candy. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. Okay. Well, John Candy passed. God rest his soul. Who was after John Candy? Chris Farley.

That's right. Chris Farley. And so, the narrative to this cursed story takes a huge, sudden turn when the next person up after Chris Farley is Sam Kinnison. Yes. And Sam Kinnison, they were actually, I mean, they were actually going to make the movie. It was happening. Mm-hmm.

And Sam Kinnison kind of destroyed that because he wanted to, he wanted to be really heavily involved in the script he writes, the direction of the film, he wanted creative control, he battled with the studio, I think there may have even been lawsuits going on. Yeah. And he eventually got to the point where he was like, you know what, if I'm going to, if you're not going to give me creative control, I'll be in your movie and I'll, I'll suck on purpose. On purpose.

And they said, oh yeah, we're going to sue you. And he said, oh yeah. And then he died in a car wreck before anything could happen as a result. So I took, for the moment, died with him again. Isn't that bizarre? It is. I, the idea that those two things crossed over like that, that one, obviously it's not a curse, but I think that it's pretty interesting at the, at the very least.

Yeah, for sure. Well, if you guys want to know more about movie curses, just go start watching movies and ask people, is this one cursed? And then if they say no, go watch another one and ask about that. And then eventually someone will say, yes, this one's cursed and then ask them the story behind it. And in the meantime, since I said all that, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this just a very kind email from a kind Aussie.

Nice. Hey guys, discovered your show a couple of months ago and I reckon I have listened to two or three podcasts a day since then. Awesome. I absolutely love you guys. And to say that your show is addictive would be an understatement. So very recently I was a news junkie. I live in Melbourne, Australia and would listen to radio national at every opportunity.

But since Brexit in the recent US election, listening to the news and current affairs has become a health hazard for me. I also have two youngest children, 11 and nine, having grown up in the shadow of the mushroom cloud myself. I don't want to subject my kids to the same fear. So finding your podcast has been a true joy. I love how enthusiastic and optimistic you both are about everything and your curiosity is truly infectious.

That is so nice. Isn't it? Yeah. You are so gloriously accepting of different ideas and cultures that have even adopted chucks. I don't want to yell at someone else's yum, which by the way, Bridget, I did not make that up. No, that was another listener.

That's from us. But we love to say it. For sure. And I'm glad you've adopted that. But I love the podcast so much. I've got my husband and kids into it as well. My husband is a radio ham. We listened to your episode on ham radio together.

He was impressed with your efforts. Keep it up guys and thank you for all the joy and information you brought to my life. Cheers. That is from Bridget Foster and Melbourne. Cheers with some fosters. And I tell you what, Bridget, we're coming to Melbourne in September of next year for shows. Yep.

And you write in with a friendly reminder and you and your family can get on the old guest list. How about that? Awesome, man. Chuck, you're the guy. You're the guy. You're the guy. Your pass is too.

All right. Cool. Well, thank you. Thanks a lot, Bridget. It was Bridget and family, right? Yeah, Bridget with a D. Bridget, thank you for writing in. And if you want to get in touch with us like Bridget did, you can tweet to us.

I'm at SYSK Podcast and at Josh Clark. Chuck's at Charles W. Chuck Bryant on Facebook and at facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com and as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help.

And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye-bye-bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.