Jurassic Park backstage horrors – child hit by T-Rex, hurricane and near fatal accident

It’s been three decades since the first Jurassic Park movie burst onto our screens in 1993 which has cemented itself into the Hollywood Hall of Fame.

The iconic franchise began with John Hammond – played by the late Richard Attenborough – creating an enormous theme park on an island just off the coast of Costa Rica filled with dinosaurs.

It’s fair to say the movie franchise – directed by movie buff Steven Spielberg – was a huge hit with fans, which has since spawned six sequels, with Jurassic World Domination wowing viewers last year.

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As the beloved action film celebrates its 30th anniversary, Daily Star has taken a deep dive inside the most dangerous behind-the-scene moments while filming.

Horrific hurricane

The blockbuster movie was filmed back in 1992 and it’s fair to say everything didn’t go quite as planned with the entire cast and crew coming close to death.

Just weeks into filming the sci-fi film, the island was rocked by a horrific hurricane which devastated the heart of Hawaii.

In his recently released memoir, titled Did I Ever Tell You This?, actor Sa Neill reflected on the terrifying experience while shooting.

Speaking to People Magazine, Sam Neil recalled: “We almost died in the first few weeks where we were filming on Kauai in the Hawaiian archipelago.

“One morning we were told to stay back at the hotel and expect a hurricane later in the day. I was down on the beach with Laura Dern, who asked me, ‘Sam, do you think we might die today?’

“As these massive black clouds approached over the Pacific I found I had to tell her than in all honesty the answer was, ‘Yes, I thought we might’.

He added in his memoir: “It turned out we came very close… They herded us into a ballroom, all the cast and crew, a few hours before Hurricane Iniki hit us.

“Iniki was a Category 4 hurricane and it absolutely wrecked the island, including all our sets. Six people died, and it caused more than $3bn (£2.4bn) worth of damage.”

The actor explained how the cast and crew found themselves “surrounded by wreckage of our huge resort hotel” within three hours of the storm hitting.

Actress Laura Dern later explained that the event itself bonded the cast and crew like never before as they recovered from the natural disaster.

She said: “We walked through a natural disaster together, and so we were so, so bonded. For the next several months when we were filming, we were like, ‘We went through everything’.

“Given that there was a hurricane in the movie and everything was so radical on this island, it just changed the whole experience.”

Deadly animatronics

After recovering from the terrifying ordeal, the remainder of filming went fairly well without so much as a hitch with Spielberg designating the last three weeks solely to shooting the T-Rex scenes.

Producers decided to use practical effects and computer animation to bring the creatures to life, but that’s not without its own perils as one crew member found out the hard way.

Prior to filming, the T-Rex rig has been transported to the Warner Bros. studios without its outer skin attached so that the crew could test the hydraulics on stage before enclosing the dinosaur in rubber foam.

FX designer Alan Scott was then tasked with the difficult job of securing the skin to the machine, which meant he had to get inside the belly of the beast and secure it from the inside.

He explained: “We had to actually put the skin on, glue it down from the inside, and sew it all up once we were there,” said Alan Scott.

“The skins were so long, you could only reach in a couple of feet from either end; and so there was this whole section in the middle that you could only glue down by crawling into the armature.

“It had to be in the sculpted position, too. The T-rex had to be powered up and held in that pose.”

But things quickly took a turn for the worse when the crew were pushed to their limits to finish the dinosaur the night before the first shoot.

He went on: “If the power was shut off for some reason, the head would move from its powered-up position to its powered-down position – and all of the hydraulic cylinders and sheets of metal inside would move.

“So, as I was crawling inside this thing, I said to the guy on the controls, ‘Don’t shut it down and make sure nobody trips on this cord.

“‘I’m going to be inside and if this thing moves, with all those hydraulics inside, I’m dead’.

The artist later shared his near-death experience with the terrifying beast after one crew member accidentally tripped over a wire which shut the power off to the dinosaur.

Alan recalled: “Suddenly, I could hear the hydraulics stop and the power start going down and I could head a muffled shout from outside, ‘There’s someone inside the T-rex!’

“All I could think of were these big hydraulic cylinders and giant metal sheets shearing across each other, with me in the middle of it all.

“I pulled my hands and legs in as tightly to my chest as I could, and just stayed like that, hoping no part of my body would get caught in all that moving metal.

“It wasn’t until it came to a complete rest that I realised that I wasn’t going to get hurt,” he revealed.

“The head dropped down until the nose was a couple of feet from the ground and three or four guys pried open the jaw and pulled me out.”

Birthday blunder

But Alan wasn’t the only crew member to feel the wrath of the terrifying beast, after star Joseph Mazzello – who played Tim in the film – revealed he also got injured by a dinosaur while filming.

Loyal fans of the franchise will remember the iconic kitchen scene where one of the raptors chases Tim into the freezer and he and Lex manage to lock it inside.

Things went horribly wrong when the actor – who was just 11-years-old at the time – accidentally turned the wrong way and was struck by the animatronic dinosaur.

He recalled: “It was a raptor on wheels that was to follow me, and I’m supposed to go left and it’s supposed to go right.

“We did a bunch of takes and one time I went left and I sort of turned around to look up and see the raptor turning the same way as me.

“And its claw – which was metal – hit me in the head because I was that height and I fell down. I was a little dazed.”

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In an attempt to lighten the mood, Steven decided to mark the young star’s milestone birthday as he pulled himself together after his injury by singing Happy Birthday to him.

Tim went on: “I fall on the ground, I’m dizzy. Everybody comes over running and Steven comes over shouting, ‘Joe, Joe, you OK? You OK?’ and I’m a little shaken like ‘Yeah, yeah. I think so.’

“And he goes, ‘Well, I think this is as good of a time as any. Ready everyone? Happy Birthday to you…’

“And the entire crew is singing Happy Birthday to me while I’m on the floor, dizzy from getting hit by the claw of the raptor.”

Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk