- I think the one film that really hit me hard,
that came out of those formative years
of me being a cinephile was The Crow.
I was in high school.
I was a big fan of the James O'Barr comic book.
I remember travelling to New York to meet the man
and have my graphic novel signed.
- I first came across the comic, The Crow,
when it was...
a very small printing of its first edition
and immediately was engrossed in the story
of this first issue.
- Its plot is about a guy who is killed too soon,
and he comes back and he exacts vengeance.
- It's just about a guy who was in love with a woman
and, you know, she gets killed
and you come back from the dead
and, you know, you avenge her death.
And as a high schooler, that uh...
it was just angsty enough to connect with me.
- The Crow is kind of a hand of God
that allows that person,
who's been taken to heaven, to return
to put something horrible right.
Within that lies a beautiful
underlying story of love and...
the conviction that if a... loved one is harmed,
there is an opportunity to extract justice
for those who have lost people dear to them
through tragic circumstances.
So that began my odyssey to option material,
develop it and turn it into a feature film.
We started filming
on February 1st, 1993
in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Everyone was invested a thousand percent
in trying to make, you know, a film
that would stand shoulder to shoulder
with any studio release
on a fraction of the budget.
- I think there's plenty of material
if you wanna find a curse
in the making of the movie "The Crow".
When they set up pre-production offices,
they had a voicemail message that said,
don't make this movie, bad things will happen.
- On the very first day of principal photography,
two of our electricians had a very un...
a... a terrible accident. - Everything's ready to go.
Remember, they only shot at night.
So night had fallen.
- They were driving their...
uh, pickup truck with a cherry picker.
- He backed his cherry picker up into a live wire.
He caught on fire.
- He had ended up hitting the high-tension wire,
a high electric wire that, uh,
would, uh, carry the voltage
to run all the lights and the backlot set.
- He was rushed to the hospital.
He had second and third degree burns all over his body.
He didn't die. He lost his ears.
But it was a terrible tragedy
and then they had to start shooting.
- We went through the storm of the century.
Reporter: The hurricane is now at its peak
with winds reaching speeds
of more than 115 miles an hour.
- That was a terrible hurricane
that destroyed our backlot set.
Word had gotten back to people in Hollywood and...
there was an article from Entertainment Weekly
that called what was going on in our location
"the curse of The Crow."
One of the staff in the production office
decided to make an ill-timed comment
that things have happened, but...
she said, it's not like anyone has died.
- When I had learned that they were making "The Crow",
I followed that like crazy.
You know, I read Fangoria, I read Entertainment Weekly.
I was following everything that was going on with Brandon Lee.
- What we needed for the role was...
someone who was a true athlete
and a great actor.
We'd got an opportunity to see "Rapid Fire".
We were absolutely sold.
The only person we made an offer to was Brandon Lee.
- Brandon Lee was trying to make a name for himself,
was trying to kind of come out from the shadow of his father,
and was making films which,
in the realm of action films, weren't so bad.
"Rapid Fire", "Showdown in Little Tokyo".
He, like his father,
had so much potential.
You were seeing his star rise,
and then...
he got robbed,
just like his father did.
I'm Lance Anderson and I worked on "The Crow"
as a Special Make-Up Effects Artist.
My job was to take care of Brandon,
to do all of his make-up throughout the film.
This is the original script
that I've kept.
It has a lot of my original continuity shots.
This is establishing make-up.
As it progresses, the make-up starts to get...
more worn.
This is when he falls out the window.
- It's kind of strange looking at those photos.
- Yeah.
- We hired the immensely talented actor Michael Berryman
to play the role of the skull cowboy,
which was a...
character that appears intermittently
in James O'Barr's comic, "The Crow".
- Well, I got a call from my agent
and went to a meeting,
and the next thing I knew I was flying to um...
North Carolina, to Wilmington.
I spent hours and hours and hours
getting a full body cast and head cast.
- We made this suit for Michael Berryman
and it had a complete bodysuit sculpture
for the whole ribs and the whole thing.
He basically wore a giant suit
and articulated fingers.
- It was very difficult to wear.
And then on my head, I had a mandible jaw
that was acrylic
and it was bolted front to back
with a top piece that had...
these little servo transmitters.
And these little paddles would move the flesh
underneath the latex.
- It was pretty extensive make-up.
- I've been asked where did the skull cowboy originate from,
and it obviously came out of the...
creativity of James O'Barr.
James wrote because...
it was part of his therapy.
His fiancée was killed by a drunk driver.
And in order to remain here on this earth,
in this physical plane,
he had to come to grips with it,
and so he wrote.
Sometimes, in life,
you can take from what you have experienced
and bring a piece of that into the character
that you're developing
and it can help you heal.
It can help you...
have a cathartic experience
and it enhances the performance.
- There had been lots of press material
touching on the cursed nature of the film.
That perhaps it was a continuation
of the curse of Bruce Lee,
who died under mysterious circumstances
while shooting a film.
- Pretty much everyone's discovered Bruce Lee
after he passed away.
Then you start doing research on who he was...
- Whaaaaaaa!
- ...and then, as you look into how he passed away,
that's when the theories start.
There's theories that there was a hit on him
from the Chinese Mafia
for betraying martial arts' secrets.
One of the interesting fantasy theories
is that Bruce Lee was struck
by a death blow.
And a death blow is a specific type of strike...
- Ahhh!
Agh! Oh!
- ...which its impact doesn't take effect
until days, weeks, months,
years later.
There's one theory that Bruce Lee's passing
was part of the Lee family curse.
Bruce Lee's parents
lost their first male son.
This was attributed to a belief
that there was a curse or a demon
after the males in the Lee family.
- You had an older brother, you see.
He died in childbirth.
The demon took him away from us.
The first-born man child is very valuable.
- He was sometimes dressed in girl's clothing,
sometimes referred to by a female name,
again, in order to deflect
and break the curse on the males of the family.
- We dressed you in dresses
so the demon wouldn't know I had another son.
But now he knows!
And he's coming for you.
- In "Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story,"
Bruce Lee is portrayed as being haunted by a demon,
this kind of dark figure in Samurai armour,
and there's a scene where he's trying to protect his son
in these kind of dream-like pursuits.
- Brandon, run!
Dad's gotta go! Gotta go! ??
- The actual circumstances around Bruce Lee's death
are much more banal.
Yes, he was found dead at the apartment of a young starlet,
who he may or may not have been having an affair with.
While at this apartment, he took a painkiller.
He went for a nap
and didn't wake up.
They attributed his death
to having a hypersensitivity
to this particular painkiller.
Recently there's been a biography published -
"Bruce Lee: A Life" by Matthew Polly -
and he puts this theory forward
that it was a heat stroke
which killed Bruce Lee.
Leading up to the last year of his death,
he had his sweat glands removed
because he wanted to look good onscreen.
A month or so before the day that he passed away,
he actually had a seizure and a stroke,
and so...
this potentially could just be the reverberations
of the previous misdiagnosed heat stroke.
- "Game of Death" is Bruce Lee's final film.
He doesn't live to finish it.
And that's already a weird parallel
with what happens to Brandon Lee in "The Crow."
- Get ready for the reverse angle.
- It gets even weirder when you consider
that Bruce Lee's character is shot
on the set of a film in "Game of Death",
which is exactly how his son dies in 1993.
- Gentlemen, these are blanks.
Only aim upward.
There's a wad of paper that comes out
and can injure someone.
- Okay, roll sound!
Action!
Cut!
- It was the night of...
March 30th, 1993.
We were day 47
out of what had then grown to 52 days
and nearing the end of production.
In the scene, Eric Draven has just returned
and the villains are already in the home
and have been treating...
Sofia Shinas's character, Shelly, very violently.
- I was down in the trailer getting a rig
that I had rigged for Brandon to wear,
where a knife is thrown at him
when he comes through the door.
And I built a harness. They would throw the knife
and then the knife would be embedded in his chest.
So I was down there getting that ready
and they told me they need me on set.
And the director said, we're changing that scene.
He's gonna come through the door
and he's gonna get shot.
- Eric puts himself between these villains
and Shelly.
And Michael Massee, as Funboy, takes a gun
and fires at uh...
the character of Eric Draven.
- The camera was in the wrong position
when he came through the door and it didn't look like...
he was aiming the gun at Brandon.
So they either moved the actor
or they moved the camera or something
to get a better angle,
so it looked more realistic
that he's being shot.
When he came through the door
with the grocery bag,
they do the shot,
and then he drops down
and everybody waits for him to get up.
And he didn't get up.
He just... stayed there.
He just didn't move.
And somebody says,
I think he's really hurt.
And uh...
Call a medic, call a medic.
The medic came...
and uh...
he's been shot.
And I just... I felt all the blood rush...
rush out of my body
and I just dropped down
and everybody was - around me -
was doing the same thing. They were just shocked.
- Yes. Um...
I...
I don't wanna talk about going to the hospital.
Can we, can we...
Um...
- We went to the hospital
and we waited around for hours.
And then they came out and told us
that he'd passed on.
It was... one of the most horrible things
in my life
to see that happen, to be there.
- Michael Massee was...
I mean, to put it mildly, beside himself.
He was... broken by the experience
of, um, having pulled the trigger.
Ah, I don't think he could have...
taken on any greater responsibility
on his own shoulders.
Although it was not, by any means,
his fault, plain and simple,
and it wasn't his job to be responsible
for that particular weapon.
- "Chinese Mafia executed Bruce Lee"
and "then his son."
I mean, that's where things were going,
you know, with the tabloids.
"Blood on the Set."
Um, "What Really Happened?
How could a bullet end up in the gun?"
Well, it wasn't the bullet.
It was a dummy's head.
The dummy head was loc--
was still in the chamber
and it blew it out.
- What occurred was that
there was a dummy bullet
loaded two weeks before
that had lodged a real bullet
in the barrel of the gun.
- These are different calibre dummy rounds that we have
and the whole goal to making dummy rounds
is to make an imitation round
that would lead the viewer to believe
that it is a live round.
So this is the dummy round and this is the live round.
Even though this is a dummy round
and it's had the gun powder removed,
the primer hasn't been removed or struck.
When we do a dummy round,
it's always important to remove the primer cap from the centre.
What happened on "The Crow" was
when they put the dummy round in,
they forgot to remove the primer.
And what happens is, again,
that primer has enough force to dislodge the lead round
and actually push it into the barrel.
We're actually gonna pull the trigger
and it'll have just enough force
to lodge the round in there.
So you can see in there our dummy round.
We'll index it.
Three, two, one.
So just with that simple action, that little snap,
the cap's gone off, no gun powder,
but what we'll be able to prove is
the hung round inside the barrel.
Inside that barrel,
we have the obstruction.
But if you look down the barrel
you'll notice that there's no light coming through.
So that would tell me that there's an obstruction.
In this case, a lead round,
a hollow point.
That's the one thing they didn't do.
They didn't check the barrel for an obstruction.
The problem with that is, when you put a blank in there,
then after whatever's in there -
be it rock, dirt, or a hung round -
that round comes out flying at 3 to 5,000 psi.
So when we're ready, I'll put a round in here.
It's gonna be a blank,
a half-load blank. This is it.
There's no lead projectile. It's just crimped at the end,
but it's got powder.
The crimp's hot, but this produces enough powder
to push this lead round into that board
through two inches of plywood.
So when we're ready.
Three, two, one.
The round's gone off.
I can go check down range.
We can actually see the round
that punctured through it.
Right here.
That's your round.
That was the hung round that got pushed into the barrel
with, uh, with just the primer cap.
And what you can see is...
I don't know if you can see the striations,
but it actually fired the round.
So this would definitely be a lethal round.
This would be something you don't get up from.
- After this...
tremendous tragedy unfolded,
we, as filmmakers, um,
our initial response was that, um,
we, we couldn't film, uh, any further without Brandon,
even though we were at the end of...
um, our, our schedule.
And it was be--
because we...
just couldn't even fathom
moving forward at that time.
We heard from Brandon's fiancée,
Eliza Hutton, who he was to be married to
a short time after we completed photography,
and his mother, Linda Lee,
that Brandon was incredibly proud of the work
that he had performed
and they said, you know,
if-if you are up to it,
we want you all to finish this.
- I didn't wanna come back, but I kept thinking about...
this is Brandon's film.
This is a film that he wanted to be
a launching pad for him,
and if I didn't go back and do what I could do
to make sure this film gets seen,
whatever I can do, uh...
I'll do it,
because if this film wasn't seen, wasn't finished,
it'd be a shame.
They called me up and they said...
they wanna use a double.
And Brandon's stunt double
looked a lot like him,
and they wanted me to make a mask,
on the stunt double,
of Brandon's face
so they could use it in the film.
That was really tough, that was really tough.
To be honest, when the stunt double wore that thing,
it freaked everybody out.
And I mean literally freaked 'em out.
And the feeling that you get
when you're finishing a film
with an actor who's passed on,
it's not a good feeling.
It's a very morbid feeling
and it's-it's...
something you deal with personally, you know.
You don't feel good about it, but...
it-it just needed to be done.
That's all, it just needed to be done.
- There were changes that they had to make.
Instead of doing a lot of one on-one dialogue scenes
between Eric Draven, for example, and his girlfriend,
they had to do a lot in montage.
A lot was done in shadow.
They had to take out one character,
uh, the Skull Cowboy.
They had shot just one setup shot
of him with Brandon Lee
and that was in the beginning of production.
They were gonna fly him back at the end.
They never ended up doing that.
They, they had to write around
the convention of that character.
- When I got the word of what had happened,
I had so many mixed emotions.
The number one sense of loss was being cheated
because Brandon was engaged.
Number one, for him and Eliza.
Number two,
this wonderful young man that I'd been introduced to
just snatched away like that.
And then people are going,
"the curse of 'The Crow'," you know?
Carolco Studios, there was...
an electrician... somebody got electrocuted.
This happened. That happened.
Don't you think... Is it possible... Is it...
Really?
No.
The Crow was not cursed.
The Crow was created
out of love and loss.
In my opinion, Brandon died
because a studio cut corners.
They sent home the weapons expert that we had.
It's a right-to-work state
in a union-busting environment.
And after so many weeks,
it is my understanding that, contractually,
they could hire a local person to do all of the,
uh, armaments and weapons.
That is my personal opinion.
Someone was overworked
and you miss one little oops
and something happens.
Makes you appreciate every day,
and then you should appreciate every hour,
and pretty soon, every moment.
I'm at most calm when I can appreciate...
each breath,
and especially appreciative
when I hear that beautiful note of a heartbeat.
Life is very precious.
- It's hard with "The Crow"
to separate fiction and reality.
I think that people will continue
to find curses with "The Crow".
They're gonna continue to find some new element
to relate back to something
that maybe happened to Bruce Lee or...
some of the other actors on the film.
Like if something tragic happens to one of them.
And I think people wanna cling
to those sort of curse legends.
They wanna have a story
that kind of justifies
something so tragic.
- From that is born just a fascination
with trying to look at this
through a lens of possible conspiracy
that could've netted this tremendous loss
and this horrible accident.
Truly, I sympathize,
but the sideshow of looking for conspiracies
within that loss,
I think, take away from what he did.
I do believe that there's a great film there
and it stands on its own merits.
And I'm proud of the film.
One can look to a number of films
that followed in its wake
in terms of look and feel and design.
It really did launch a different approach
to futuristic films and comic book adaptations
because it really is a very unique piece
of art and filmmaking
with a central performance by Brandon Lee
that is really, truly incredible.
- It was bittersweet,
for me, personally.
The vengeful spirit of Eric Draven,
the vengeful spirit of the Skull Cowboy...
my dear friend Brandon...
You can't be prepared for these moments,
but you can carry on
in honour of those that have left us.