Stuff You Should Know - Selects: Can movies be cursed?

Episode Date: May 9, 2026

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 classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to Sweet 305 with Lele Pons on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody. Happy Saturday. Chuck here with your Saturday Selects. And this week, I think it inspired me because recently we did an episode on the movie Roar,

the most dangerous movie ever made, supposedly. And so let's go back to November of 2017, the 16th, to be exact, to talk about movies being cursed. In this episode that runs at 56 minutes long, can movies be cursed? Please enjoy it right now. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,

a production of IHeart Radio. 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.

I know. It's like... I sound like Peter Overby, for God's saying. Who's that? You know that guy's voice anywhere. He's like an NPR reporter. Oh, yeah. And like he has me even beat for the large tongue's candy sucking sound.

Do you remember when we first came out? People would write it and be like, tell Josh stop sucking on candy while he's podcasting. And I'd just be like, that's my normal voice. 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 hate at the dentist

besides everything? Man, that was a pretty good segue. I know that I just totally mowed over. That's all right. I hate it 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? A gag reflex thing? Well, it's not even a gag reflex. It's just the... The hard swallow, the dry swallow? Yeah, the sort of swallow reflex, if that's such a thing. You feel like you're going to 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. And I hate it when they talk to you and expect you to talk back. They can talk, but, yeah, it 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. Like, it 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. 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 your 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?

Uh, yeah, is it Brookhaven? How do you know where my dentist is? Well, I just hadn't experienced in Brooklyn. 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 Kimchi,

she's wonderful. Kimchi? Uh-huh. That's one of my favorite foods. Well, but is that your dentist? Uh, no. Okay. But it's possible that we're talking about

like a hygienist that gets fired pretty frequently. Maybe. You know? She's making the rounds in Buckhead, Brookhaven. Right. Yeah, Dr. Darrell Kimchi, of Atlanta

Cosmetic Sports Dentistry. Wow, that is quite a shout-out. I think Dr. Kimchi owes us some free kimchi. 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 French.

when Joey tried to get his head shot up at the, I think it's like the dry cleaner or something, that wouldn'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 links to point out how there's no way that anything can ever be really cursed. Right. I think probably his couple lines where he's like, just so stupid. It was edited out, you know?

I get the feeling you got to sign this. It was like, oh, God, you kidding me? Mm-hmm. 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 movies. Sure. 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 happened on movies. 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.

One take, 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. But hold on, I have another one, okay?

Uh-huh. So this is another movie. Years later, they died with their boots on. I think it's about the Charges of the Light Brigade, maybe. Okay. It was a 1941 movie starring Errol Flynn, and during this cavalry 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 like 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 is 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 uh it was very sad that's when Vic Morrow and two children were chopped up by helicopter blade. Right. Very infamously, it was terrible, terrible tragedy.

Yeah, Shin-Ye-chan and Micah Din 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. Have I mentioned that curses are silly. Right. Over and over. So three of 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. Or 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. Yeah, 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. 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 murder's trial. Yeah, O.J. very famously, he covered that case. He did. And he, apparently the Duns 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. 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 going to follow you around.

Yeah, and, I mean, like, there was no question whether he didn't, 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, Dominic Dunn said, you know what? I'm going to waste my life, like, keeping tabs on this guy anymore.

Right. 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 Polter guys 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 Poultergeist, and she passed away in 1988 after Poultergeist 2 was wrapped. And she initially was diagnosed with the flu. We talk about this in her flu episode a little bit. Yeah. 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 paltry guys three i believe that hether aurorke died after filming they were basically done did ed get it wrong i got it wrong oh man uh and then dominique again died uh just a couple months after the first poultry guys came out so that's like one big hallmark of a 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 2, 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 the chief in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Yes. 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, you know, again, tied to the curse, but what can he say about someone who just dies sort of natural causes? after a heart and long transplant. I think there's pretty good odds. Yeah. And then there's Julian Beck who played the scary, scary, scary preacher. Yes. Kane also in Poultergeist 2. Man, he was creepy.

He died, I guess, before Poulter Guys 2 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 that doesn't really count, but are you really trying to make a case about curses? Yeah. Let's just talk about him instead, how about that?

Agreed. Okay. What's next? The Wizard of Oz is next. That's right. 1939, great, great movie, but a great movie that was marred by, 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 Epson, 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. That's right. 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 did give him a really bad eye infection. Man. Right, so the aluminum, just the Tim 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 Pirate Technics 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 going to do any more firework. Apparently the trap door that she was standing on, the timing of it wasn't right. Yeah. So it didn't open up and drop her right before the fireworks went off,

but did it simultaneously? 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 going to 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. Yeah.

And 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, he doesn't even look. It just looks like something that is not a tree. In other words, it's not attached to the ground. Right. 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.

Like, 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. Oh, yeah? It's looking up in 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 Neggie. It's definitely called the hanged man of Oz. All right. Well, 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 She uh 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 Almost the definition of being owned right She was Like we discovered at age 13 I think in Kansas, actually, at a state fair. And they said, well, we're just going to 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 she, and she, yeah, if they're, Ed makes a really good point. 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 um i think it's she had the equivalent of 10 sycanol capsules in her body lord yeah wow man that's sad i want to see that movie do you know who's going to play her oh man i just saw this other day i can't remember who but i remember thinking yeah good casting oh okay like it wasn't owen wilson that'd be pretty bad uh you troubles come on get happy so right uh she was uh 47 years young by the way which is far far too young sure to have lost judy garland yeah uh you want to take a break yeah on that downer yes

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All right, Chuck. 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'd like to watch reruns of stuff like Gilden's Island and Green Acres and Petticoat Junction Oh really? I've never seen Petticoat Junction

Is it good? Yeah, I mean, you know, it's one of those old shows They're all great. What about F Troop? F Troop's probably one of my favorites all the time. Yeah, I watched F Troop. I watch all that stuff. Superman, 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 Because that's where I watched it and that was the one starring George Reeves as the 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 they, 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 he's George Reeves Christopher Reeve is not plural singular version right yes George Reeves became synonymous with Superman

like everybody thought of them as Superman he like he wouldn't be cast in anything else right and he had some he had to put up with quite a bit being known as Superman or recognizes Superman

Apparently kids would come up and like punch him in the stomach to see if he was made of steel. 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 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 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 was standing nearby. Yeah, that was in the Ben Affleck movie, Hollywood Land. Is that right? It's about George Reeves, and that scene was in the movie. Okay. And he does. He'll have heard of it. Yeah, it's okay.

It's not great. You lost me at Ben Affleck. It's not bad. But yeah, he talks a kid out of it in the movie and said exactly what you 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. Yeah, that was, I can't imagine the relief that would wash over you after that.

Yeah, so George Reeves. Reeves, yeah, he's the plural. It's tough to keep up with. It is. He had a very sort of sad life, which is in that Hollywoodland 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 was not a happy guy. And eventually in June of 1959, he was having a party at his own house, his fiancee 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? Nah, I mean, that may have been the straw, but he was upset about life. I got you. And I got the sense, like, legitimately depressed, you know, clinically depressed. Right, yeah. I mean, like, it's, as we get to know more and more about, like, depression, 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. And then it's just sad to see 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've never done one on depression. I think we should. Have we not? I don't believe we have, man. 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 was very sadly injured in a horse riding accident in the mid-90s, which left them paralyzed from the neck down. And he became very much an inspiration to people because he became 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 that after Christopher Reeve died,

his wife, Dana, who saw him, through this whole thing. Yeah. 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 the grabster say? No, such thing is curses. So stupid. 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 well here's the story it is very unlikely that John Wayne would play 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 and he played Genghis Khan

and they shot the conquer in Utah less than 150 miles from the Nevada test site, sorry Nevada test site, where our own U.S. government set off 11 nuclear detonations above ground the year before. Just in the year before. Yeah, and that area was crawling with bad stuff,

lingering fallout in the dirt and in the rocks and like everything. It was in the soil. and they were just running around in their film and movies. 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 for 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, even though their houses and schoolyards were covered in radioactive. ash. And so from filming there, when this production came to town and they filmed there,

yeah, they were exposed to the same radioactive debris and dust and dirt that these people who lived in the area were as well. And as a result, supposedly something like 91 out of 220 cast and crew members who worked on location for the movie The Conqueror came down with cancer later on in life, which is highly unusual, statistically speaking. Yeah, that's like 40-something percent of the crew. And years later, in People Magazine in 1980, they actually did a special report on that movie and the cancer connection, like John Wayne, Agnes Moorhead, Gene Gerson, Susan Hayward, the director, Dick Powell, they all died of cancer.

And in that People magazine, Dr. Robert C. Pendleton, he was director of radiological health at the University of Utah, said that this would hold up in a court of law. That's such an outstanding number of people. Yeah, and apparently not even 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. him. But people who visited the set battle cancer later in life, too. Both of John Wayne's sons who came to visit him. There's a famous picture of him with two of his sons and a guy using a Geiger counter on set. Both of his sons had cancer later in life too. But supposedly the family

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 times a day, and that 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 said, essentially that 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've got to see this. I've seen pictures of John Wayne as Genghis Khan. Yeah, it's 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 way. result you know 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 kind of like polter guys like it wouldn't if this was when harry met sally and some of this stuff happened that when harry met sally was cursed with great laughs It was. I love that movie. One of the few romantic comedies that were legit good movies.

Yeah. You know? Yeah. So let's go back to the beginning of this one. Obviously, the Omen Everyone Knows was the great movie from 1976 about the Antichrist taking, well, I guess possession, you could call it. But it's not like an exorcist thing. Basically, the Antichrist is this little boy. He comes back as a little boy.

Yeah. Yeah. and a bad, bad, naughty little boy. Damien. Who dresses like Angus Young? Yeah, sure. Okay, so Damien is adopted by Gregory Peck in the movie. And in real life, Gregory Peck's son killed himself.

He died by suicide. Apparently out of the blue. No suicide note or anything like that. Yeah. And 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. He left the U.S. and went to London. And 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. Right. And the producer's plane was struck by lightning.

Separately, these are 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. How about this? The hotel where they stayed, 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 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, like a restaurant where the crew and the cats 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 crew that was going to go to dinner Didn't go to dinner They didn't make it there in time for the bombing The people who were staying in the hotel When it was bombed Weren't there yet there were a lot of close calls, but there was one close call that really 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 fly them around London to get some good aerial footage of London. And at the last minute, the charter service switched planes to accommodate a group of Japanese businessmen. Well, the plane that the Japanese businessman 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 is like a last-minute switch too, supposedly. Yeah, those make you think. Yeah, I mean, the cursor no, just knowing that you were that close, so just that'd get you. How about this? A worker that was an animal sanctuary,

where they filmed, and a worker there was killed by a tiger. Yeah. That one 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've 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 John Richardson, who was a special effects worker. He designed the effects for the omen. Including a very famous decapitation scene toward the end. Yes, very famous. And, oh, I thought that was at the beginning. Was it at the beginning? I think so.

I think it's out open, if I remember, but it's been a while. Oh, okay. Either way. He was in 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 there was a street sign where they crashed that said the distance to the next town, and it was the town of O-Men, 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 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 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, that no AP photographer went, I've got to get a picture of that sign. Nobody did. that there's no existing photo of that sign. For sure. Yeah.

That's the one that makes me think like, eh. Although 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. Hey, I'm Ruby Carr, the host of the podcast, Encore. Check out our brand new episodes featuring music from the show that everyone is reheating as we speak. Heated rivalry. Join me as I go behind the songs

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I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia. Ayo, rewatch on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back as I promised. And we're on to 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 curse 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, most famously known as being the great Natalie Wood's final film.

Right. Because she died in real life after the movie, obviously. When she drowned 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 had been drinking since at least four in the afternoon,

and they made it back to the boat pretty late, and they'd been drinking through dinner. They were all just pretty crocked, right? And supposedly, Natalie Wood was either a... afraid of water and or couldn't swim. And for some reason, she had tried to get into a dingy that was attached to the boat that they were staying on and probably hit her head and drowned. That's the story. That's the official story, right?

But apparently in 2012, it was reopened or her cause of death was changed from accident to undetermined. Yeah, I mean, there were stories that she and Robert Wagner had been fighting. The captain, even many years later, said that he actually killed her. No charges were ever brought. 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 must have been an accident. No one knows, but surely it was an accident.

That was what he said. And that's probably the only thing he said, because I didn't think he ever said anything. Yeah. He said, it's an accident, clearly. That was great. Because that was Christopher Walkin with just a hint of John Travolta. Yeah, it was a little Travolta escort.

Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, that's tied to brainstorm as being a curse, I guess, because they were both in the movie. 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 And Natalie Wood Then all died from that movie Relatively young 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 wasn't Salminio murdered He was murdered in 1976 at a pretty young age still. He was stabbed to death in the heart, in an alley behind his house. Yeah, so... By a pizza man.

To me... Oh, really? Yeah. Huh. So 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 was actually a serial-killing pizza man. Oh, wow. Yeah. I just saw recently, is there a serial... 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 at any given point in time? I don't know, but I do, I do know that 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 isn't that the darkest thing you can think of it's pretty dark uh the last high profile when 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 geoffrey domers and uh man that was head bundies and stuff like that yeah thankfully sure the son of samms 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 uh have you heard that i haven't heard that no it's good it's from uh our buddy chris bannon over at midroll put it out and um is he hosting it no no no glen washington uh narrates it 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 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 that's crazy I gotta hear that that podcast man that's just a fascinating story

but now that means we can't do heaven's gate because banning did it yeah and they did you know you can't cover in 45 minutes what they cover in whatever 10 episodes 10 sounds about right I'm not sure 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, uh, did we miss something? Uh, yeah, I think, yeah, I mean, uh, Natalie Wood's murders, or death, death, sorry, is unsolved still, and it's mystery. It may always be.

I had no idea about that, about Robert Wagner. I just knew Natalie Wood drowned. I 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, uh, 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. All right. Great idea. 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 Dunst's, the film adaptation of John Kennedy Tools 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, Toll 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 die.

So a Confederacy of Dunst has just kept getting put off and off and off, right? And 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 to 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 said in New Orleans

so they would have shot there he 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 Man 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 Kruger's in it as well. And Susan Sarandon is good. and I 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 I have a shot. She likes young hipster dudes. No way younger than you, my friend. Maybe not. Good for her.

I love Susan Stranding. So, oh, yeah, more power to her. 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 then that's a confederacy of Dunces, right? Yes. There's another script out there called A Took that has virtually the same story to it, right? But the story is totally different, but the curse story is virtually the same. Right. With a Took, 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? 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 curse 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. And Sam Kinnison kind of destroyed that because he wanted to,

he wanted to be really heavily involved in the scriptry rights in 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 suck on purpose. On purpose. And they said, oh, yeah, we're going to sue you. And he said, oh, yeah. Right. And then he died in a car wreck. Yeah.

Before anything could happen as a result. So I took, for the moment, died with him again. Isn't that bizarre? It is. 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 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 a 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. Until 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 U.S. election, listening to the news and current affairs has become a health hazard for me. I also have two youngest children, 11 and 9, 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? You are so gloriously accepting of different ideas and cultures. I've even adopted Chuck's I don't want to yuck someone else's yum. Which, by the way, Bridget, I did not make that up. No, that was another listener who sent that one over the listener.

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'll listen 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's 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. They're your passes 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 send us an email to Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, Portlandia fans.

Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here. The Dream of the 90s is alive in podcast form. We're launching Podlandia, AEO rewatch, our brand new podcast where we revisit every episode of Portlandia together, breaking down sketches, going deep on our iconic characters, and pulling back the curtain on how it all got made. And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life. Guest stars, collaborators, and friends, including director Jonathan Chrysler, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and.

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