As with many movies, The Crow was being filmed in reverse chronological order. With end of production only two weeks away, there were only a few scenes from the beginning of the movie to finish off.
It's important to have a little background information on how prop guns work in movies. (Keep in mind, I'm not ammunitions expert, and this is just off the top of my head.) For close up scenes, "shells" are used, which are just the casing of a bullet with a tiny amount of gun power in it, just enough to send the case out of the gun. This is realistic in close-up scenes, where it's important to actually "see" the gun firing. In more complicated, distance scenes, "blanks" are used, which are simply a pack of gun powder that when the gun is fired, simply makes a large bang. Real bullets are a combination of the two: a shell packed with gun powder. The powder explodes, and sends the shell out at a very high rate of speed.
In between scenes, one of the prop crew was testing one of the guns for a future scene. He fired the gun, and heard a thud of some sort, but nothing happened. He thought nothing of it. For some reason, none of the guns were cleaned between scenes, as they are usually supposed to be.
Filming began on the "flashback", where you see the red/yellow colored scene of Eric coming home to his apartment to find T-Bird's gang attacking Shelley. Blanks were loaded into the gun. The scene called for Eric to walk into the apartment, and startle the bad guys. Funboy would then turn around and fire at him. A squib (a small device placed on an actor that explodes to give the impression of a gun shot or wound) was placed inside a bag of groceries that Eric was supposed to be bringing home. When shot at, Eric was to fall backwards, and the rest of the scene to be filmed.
Tragically, the uncleaned gun had a lodged shell stuck in the barrel. When shot with a blank, the effect was that of a real bullet: the shell was shot out of the barrel at a high rate of speed. The shot accidentally hit Brandon in the stomach, and he doubled over on his knees and collapsed. Although the scene called for him to fall backwards, everyone just thought that he was over-acting. They continued shooting the scene, until they realized something was wrong. He was bleeding badly from the abdomen.
Brandon Lee's real life fiancee, Eliza Hutton, make it in time to the hospital before he died, but Brandon's mother did not.
Below are pictures of Brandon and his dad Bruce Lee's graves. |
