Not to get all morbid on you, but movie sets aren’t always made of pillowy mounds of cotton candy and chocolatey rivers. And even when they are, things can still go wrong.

The most famous death on a movie set is arguably that of Brandon Lee, while working on The Crow. In 1993, at the North Carolina Film Studios, with just 8 days left of filming, the scene where Lee walks in on his fiancée being raped by thugs was being shot. Michael Massee, playing the villain, fired his prop gun as directed. Unfortunately, a real bullet unseated from a dummy round was lodged in the barrel of the handgun unbeknownst to anyone. A blank was loaded without anyone noticing the real bullet, and when the gun was fired, the real bullet hit Lee in the abdomen. He underwent 6 hours of surgery but succumbed to his wounds.

Things were more difficult in the early days of film, when capturing scenes we wouldn’t think twice about today amounted to a lot more peril. In 1914, while shooting a horseback river crossing for the movie Across the Border, cast member Grace McHugh and camera operator Owen Carter both drowned in the Arkansas River. A decade later, an actress named Martha Mansfield would die when a match, tossed by a fellow cast member, ignited her Civil War costume of hoopskirts and ruffles while filming The Warrens of Virginia. Leading man Wilfred Lytell saved her face by throwing his heavy overcoat on her, and her chauffeur badly burned his hands trying to beat out the flames and remove her clothing. Her burns were too substantial and she died of her wounds. The next year, a stuntman died in Rome filming Ben-Hur when the wheel of a chariot broke during the race scene. And three people died in 1928, among a slew of other injuries and dismemberment, when several hundred extras were caught in the Noah’s Ark great flood scene. This led to a lot of safety regulations in the industry. But since this list continues, clearly not enough.

During aerial filming for the film Such Men Are Dangerous off the coast of Southern California, two camera-planes collided over the ocean. All ten men on board the two planes were killed, including director Kenneth Hawks, assistant-directors Max Gold and Ben Frankel, cinematographer Conrad Wells, and cameraman George Eastman.

Producer and co-director Varick wanted more footage of the Labrador ice floes for his film The Viking. He and a small film crew joined a seal-hunting voyage which became trapped in ice near Horse Isles and dynamite stored on board (intended for breaking up ice floes) accidentally detonated, destroying the vessel and killing 27 men, including Frissell and cameraman Alexander Penrod.

While filming the charge sequence of The Charge of the Light Brigade, a stuntman was killed when he fell off his horse and landed on a broken sword that was lying on the field, unfortunately wedged with its blade was sticking straight up. Also, due to the use of trip wires, three dozen horses had their legs broken and had to be shot during filming, resulting in laws to protect animals used in motion pictures.

During the filming of Shark!, a 1969 action flick starring Burt Reynolds, a stuntman was mauled and killed by a shark who was supposed to have been sedated. The production company used his death to hype the film. Not learning the valuable lesson that wild animals are dangerous, sound technician James Chapman was mauled to death by a lion during production on the South African film The Last Lion. And in 1979’s Comes A Horseman, during the scene where Jason Robards’ character is dragged to (presumably) his death, stunt man Jim Sheppard was killed when the horse that was dragging him veered off-course and caused him to hit his head on a fence post. The scene made it into the movie, cut right before the horse passes through the gate which killed Sheppard. So it’s respectful, guys!

A.J. Bakunas performed a fall flawless while doubling for George Kennedy in the movie Steel – a tumble from the ninth floor of a construction site. But when he learned that Dar Robinson had just broken his record high fall, hubris got to him. He once again performed his fall from the top of a 300-ft construction site expertly, but this time the air bag split open and he was killed.

On the set of For Your Eyes Only, while filming a memorable high-speed chase in the bobsleigh run, the four-man bobsled came out of the run at the wrong turn and hit a tree. A young stuntman named Paolo Rigon, was killed.

Another unlucky stuntman, a profession that clearly doesn’t get paid enough, met his death while filming a scene for The Right Stuff. In it, he recreates Chuck Yeager’s escape from a stalling NF-104. In real life, Yeager’s helmet caught fire from the ejection seat’s heated exhaust in mid-air. The stunt guy carried a smoke canister during his free fall to simulate such fire. However, this seems to have intoxicated the stuntman, causing him to lose consciousness. He failed to open his parachute and fell to his death.

In a segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) directed by John Landis, a helicopter was flying too low on set and failed to avoid the explosions and pyrotechnics being used. A blast severed the tail rotor, sending the helicopter into a tailspin toward the actors. Vic Morrow and Myca Dinh Le (age 7) were decapitated by the blades while Renee Shin-Yi (age 6) was crushed to death when it landed on her. Legal action raged for a decade, and Hollywood shied away from helicopter stunts until the CGI revolution of the 90s. The incident also severed the friendship between Landis and Steven Spielberg, who’d already been angered by Landis’ many code violations.

Art Scholl was a renowned aerobatic pilot and no stranger to airplane stunts, so when the script for Top Gun called for a flat spin he was the go-to guy for such camerawork. Unfortunately, Scholl entered the spin as usual but was unable to recover from it and crashed his Pitts S-2 into the Pacific Ocean off the Southern California coast. No one knows what caused the crash.

Veteran stuntman Victor Magnotta drowned while performing a car stunt for The Squeeze  in which he drove the vehicle off a Hoboken pier and plunged into the Hudson river. The stunt left him pinned in the car and he could not escape before drowning.

A worker died when he was crushed between two lighting equipment cranes during filming for The Bodyguard. One of the extras was lost at sea during the filming of the jet ski scene in Waterworld . Lost. At. Sea! Over Waterworld.

A stuntman for Vin Diesel in xXx was killed in 2002 while filming a stunt that had already been completed without incident. During the second take, however, Harry L. O’Connor was supposed to rappel down a parasailing line and land on a submarine but when O’Connor failed to rappel down the line fast enough, he a pillar of the Palacky Bridge (in Prague) at high-speed and was killed instantly. His death was caught on camera, and apparently director Rob Cohen decided to include the footage of the scene – with the final moments edited out – out of respect for the stuntman’s final act. Obviously.

Cameraman Conway Wickliffe was killed in 2007 on the set of The Dark Knight, as he rode in a pickup truck driving parallel to a stunt car; the pickup missed a 90-degree turn and crashed into a tree, killing him.

Not all jobs on a set are created equal. Some are inherently more exciting, others more dangerous, and some decidedly less glamorous. A set dresser is the person working under a set decorator and production designer, who physically places furniture, hangs pictures, and puts out the knickknacks. Jumper, a 2008 sci-fi thriller starring Samuel L. Jackson, used a mixture of frozen sand, earth, and ice for special effects in exterior set pieces. Set dresser David Ritchie was pronounced dead on the scene after a large piece of frozen sand and gravel fell on top of him while dismantling the set in frigid winter temperatures.

You might have gotten the picture from this non-exhaustive list that half of all injuries on set are to a stunt person, and for roughly every 2000 injuries there are 5 deaths, helicopters still leading the way in cause of death – between 1980 and 1990 there were 37 deaths relating to accidents during stunts; 24 of these deaths involved the use of helicopters. So think about that the next time you see a beautiful aerial shot. Someone risked their life for it.

We rarely mention props in our movie reviews, but just try and picture Lars and The Real girl without the blow-up doll, or Fargo without the wood chipper, or American Pie without the pie. You can’t! Because props are actually a really important part of creating the mythology of a movie. Here are some of my favourite, but be sure to share yours in the comments!

I bet this guy is instantly recognizable to you, and I bet you even know his name. Wilson the volleyball was Tom Hanks’ costar in Castaway. Hanks is all alone on a desert island until he unwraps this friend and gives him a smiling face. Pretty soon they’re sharing good times and conversation, and when Wilson is lost during a storm, it’s one of the most heart breaking scenes of the movie.

How about this one? Ring any bells? It’s a Raquel Welch poster, and it’s seen in The Shawshank Redemption. Andy (Tim Robbins) uses this and other posters over a 17 year period to conceal the tunnel he’s been methodically digging with a rock hammer. When the warden finds his cell empty one morning, he angrily throws a rock that tears a hole through poster, revealing its hidden secret. Andy has escaped.

This, of course, is Bill Murray’s alarm clock in Groundhog Day. A frustrated TV reporter providing lacklustre groundhog day coverage, he realizes that he’s stuck in a time loop and he’s the only one who knows it. Every day when this clock flips over to 6am and starts playing I Got You, Babe, Bill Murray is doomed to repeat the same day. He goes from reckless hedonism to eventually a little personal growth, but the clock just keeps telling time.

This is Lloyd Dobler, and that is Lloyd Dobler’s boombox. When John Cusack lifts this hulking music machine above his shoulders to win back the girl of his dreams, we know he’s serious. And so does she. It’s a 1980s serenade that inspired untold tributes and bolstered Peter Gabriel’s In Your Eyes to the top of the charts.

The Maltese falcon from The Maltese Falcon: hard to get more iconic than this. Humphrey Bogart plays P.I. Sam Spade, who wrangles a trio of clients all trying to get their hands on the jewel-encrusted bird statuette. Carved by American sculptor Fred Sexton, the falcon is perhaps THE prime example of a MacGuffin, a plot device that motivates the characters of the story, but has otherwise very little relevance. Still, different versions of the falcon always sell when they come up at auction and fetch very high prices – a metal version sold in 2013 for over $4 000 000.

I am somewhat loathe to include this one because I am no Star Wars fan (never having seen the films) – but really, how could I not? Nearly 40 years after the movie’s release, kids are still playing with these, and grown-ups are too. And look at the thing: it really is so damn cool. I irresistible to the 12-year-old boy, and chub-inducing to any 30-year-old still living in his parents’ basement. The light saber is probably the most iconic weapon in film history. Korean animator Nelson Shin brought it to life by drawing the light with a rotoscope. Its sound effects were designed by Ben Burtt, who layered the hum of an idling interlock motor in an old movie projector with the interference caused by a TV set to get their distinctive noise. John Stears built the hilt from old press camera flash batter packs; set decorator Roger Christian added some surface details, and George Lucas suggested adding a clip so Luke could hang it from his belt. A star is born.

The leg lamp from A Christmas Story. Classic. The super big time award that could only come out of a box stamped frah-gee-leh: the soft glow of electric sex gleaming in the window. This lamp is not only instantly recognizable, it’s also zealously reproduced. Thousands of homes have a replica of this lamp and we can only guess at how many battles have been won or lost as a result.

Confession time: I once dated a man who owned a DeLorean. DeLorean owners are a breed all of their own. They’ve formed a club, and the club meetings consist of getting their cars together, usually in the parking lot of a hand-carwash, and gently stroking their cars under the gaze of their fellow DeLoreaners. Aside from that bout of creepiness, this car was an instant standout in the Back to the Future films, so awesome for its completely 80s vibe, its distinctive gull-wing doors, it could be the only car to be turned into a time machine by the kooky Doc. Six were made for the film and only 3 of those remain – we saw one this summer at Universal Studios. 9000 were produced around 1981 in real life, and 6500 of those are still kicking around today, creeping out girls in car clubs all across this great country of ours.

The Heart of the Ocean: Bill Paxton spends the entirety of the movie Titanic looking for this necklace, which he believes went down with the ship. Rose’s (Kate Winslet) billionaire boyfriend gives it to her, and she wears it while posing otherwise nude for Jack. It’s a fictional blue diamond, humongous of course, and it inspired the jewel-lust of multitudes of weepy women. London jewelers Asprey & Garrard set cubic zirconias in white gold to make the prop in the film but afterward they were commissioned to create an “authentic” Heart of the Ocean using platinum, a 171-carat sapphire and 103 diamonds. It was donated to Sotheby’s to benefit the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund and was sold for $1.4 million – with the understanding that Celine Dion could wear it 2 nights later at the Academy Awards. The J. Peterman Company would go on to sell cheap knock-offs for wives who just weren’t important enough for the real thing.

To me, Zoltar never existed outside of the movie Big. The two are inseparable, and although I may occasionally come across one on a boardwalk somewhere, it always feels like a movie prop to me. Young Josh puts a coin into an antique arcade fortune-teller machine called Zoltar Speaks, and wishes to be big. It spits out a card saying “Your wish is granted” and despite the fact that the machine was unplugged the whole time, he does indeed wake up in Tom Hanks body the next day, which, let’s face it, would freak anyone out.

Excuse me, I believe you have my stapler. Poor Milton. He really gets the shaft in his office, and the one thing, the only thing he truly prizes is his beloved red Swingline stapler. “And I said, I don’t care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I’m, I’m quitting, I’m going to quit. And, and I told Don too, because they’ve moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were merry, but then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn’t bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it’s not okay because if they take my stapler then I’ll set the building on fire…”

I wondered for a long time whether to include Mary Poppins’ bag, or her umbrella. She’s famous for both. But as a kid, it was her magic carpet bag that stole my imagination. The thing is bottomless! She pulls out a coat rack, a mirror, a rubber tree plant, and a lamp! What else has she got in there? It occurs to me that now that I carry a purse of my own, any time I search for my car keys, my bag feels pretty bottomless too. Maybe not such a magic trick after all, but you still can’t have this nanny without her baggage.

The spinning top from inception – maybe the most talked-about prop from the past decade. Each member of the team carries their own totem –  a small something that they’ve crafted themselves, an anchor to the real world so they’ll always know if they’re dreaming. Leonardo’s is the top: in the real world, it always stops spinning but in the dream world, it can go on forever. In the famous last scene of the movie, the camera cuts out after a very long sequence of spinning, and we never know if it was about to fall, or if it would keep on spinning forever.

Again I’m a fraud because I’ve never seen The Lord of the Rings movies (and I never will) – but even a non-fan knows of this unforgettable prop. I don’t really know what the ring is about, other than it seems to have magic powers – invisibility, I believe, but also some darker forces than that. At any rate, it needed to be destroyed and of course, it was impervious to damage. Stupid ring. So it took three whole movies just to chuck it in a volcano. I’m guessing. I mean, I’m just assuming they were eventually successful. Otherwise, that was a pretty epic failure. Jens Hanson designed the ring for the movie – rings, I should say, because 40 variations were made for the filming – tiny little gold rings for tiny little hobbit fingers, and a special spinning one for the prologue of the first film. None were inscribed; the inscription was computer generated in post-production. Sadly, Hansen died of cancer before he could see his creation on the big screen.

A golden prop that I can get behind, is the golden ticket from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Willy Wonka operates a mysterious candy factory, and Charlie is one of the lucky winners of a golden ticket that will allow him to see behind the scenes. Charlie is unused to opportunity, and this ticket affords him (and us) a real adventure of the senses (plus a lifetime supply of chocolate, and a sneak peek of his latest creation, the everlasting gobstopper).

I don’t know if I’ve saved the best for last, but it is the most humble: a plastic cup of water. But with this cup, Steven Spielberg creates dread and suspense enough to fill oceans. For a whole generation, every time we see rings in a glass of water, our first thought will always be: T-rex!

Posts devoted to iconic cars and costumes will follow, but as for props, what did I miss?