All time great stunts.

Vic Armstrong jumping from horse onto tank. Probably one of the best stunts ever IMHO

The Jones films are chock full of 'em. I could have gone with other ones (Indy under the truck) but somehow the way Jones just flings himself at the tank really sums up the character

Some Bond stunts that come to mind:

- The parachute jump at the beginning of 'The Spy Who Loved Me'.
- The bungee jump off of the dam at the beginning of 'Goldeneye'.
- The spiral car jump in 'The Man with the Golden Gun'.

From 'Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior'
- The guy flying end over end towards the camera. That was a legitimate accident (the guy was injured) but it was so cool that they left it in the film.

While not technically a "stunt", Patrick Swayze's "Adios, amigo!" single-shot plane jump in Point Break is pretty great.

Tony Jaa probably has 10 of the greatest stunts of all time to his name, but one that I found absolutely jaw dropping was his elephant free running from OB2

That was just deadly dangerous, and a tiny slip could have killed him

Jackie Chan in Police Story.
- Hanging off a moving bus using just an umbrella.
- Jumping down several floors through Christmas lights and onto a glass table

Deathproof
- Zoe Bell holding onto car bonnet

Ben Hur
- The chariot race

A thread about great movie stunts would be remiss in failing to mention Yakima Canutt and his stunt from Zorro's Fighting Legion (often falsely attributed to Stagecoach) which inspired the infamous Raiders stunt.

You can see both the Stagecoach and Zorro's Fighting Legion stunts here.

Terry Leonard nearly killed himself trying to replicate this stunt in The Legend of the Lone Ranger before he was finally able to pull off an homage in Raiders.

Amen to that, brother. There was a certain visceral recklessness to the stunts of Old Hollywood that you just don't see anymore because of all these pussified "safety standards".

I've never seen TERMINAL VELOCITY, but one day several years back I was flipping through channels and came right to the scene described in post one. I was pretty much glued to the screen for the whole thing, surprised by the intensity of the stunt work on display. I'd had no idea that Charlie Sheen had ever done anything that cool before

Never went back and saw the movie though, and hadn't even remembered that scene till this thread

I will have to check those clips out! Thanks for the info and the link

Some of that visceral danger is due to lax animal abuse standards for horse stunts. It's illegal to do many of those kind of falls ETC with horses now. I sometimes see Chinese films that do some deadly looking horse stuff, but in American films horses always fall in a certain way in movies these days

I am wondering how people feel about that. People were up in arms over MILO AND OTIS, but how many of those same people would say they can't watch certain older battle scenes because of the way horses were used?

Just curious

I was watching Casino Royale again recently and I absolutely love the whole Miami airport chase scene, in particular the part were Bond runs up the stair car and throws himself onto the roof of the truck. The way it is timed and shot is quite exhilarating.
The fistfight with the driver is pretty well done too, and quite reminisent to the Indy truck chase.

The spinning hallway fight in Inception is one that I think will go down as a classic stunt sequence in the future. One of the main reasons I'm looking forward to the Blu Ray is to see exactly how they did it and the training and preperation done by Gordon Levitt and the stunt team.

My personal favorite is in the first "Die Hard." McClane leaps off the roof of Nakatomi Tower at the exact moment it explodes. He falls several stories before the fire hose wrapped around his waist jerks him to a stop and slams him into the side of the building. He's unable to smash a window with his bare feet, so he pushes off from the side of the building, fires several shots into the glass and then crashes through it. Oh, but we're not finished yet. The spool the hose is attached to breaks loose, bounces across the roof and goes over the edge. It nearly yanks McClane back out the window before he can untangle himself with seconds to spare.

Whew.

The ending to Righting Wrongs with Yuen Biao performing quite possibly the most dangerous stunt ever filmed.

Also, Born to Fight has a really great, read dangerous stunt with a truck.

It's a shame that most of the general public won't even consider watching silent films any more. There were some mind boggling stunts back then. Buster Keaton, for one, was insane. It is hard to believe that there were no stunt doubles in his films.

Here is a video I found showing some of his more famous ones. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2K9ZeBe-HA&feature=fvw

I'd recommend that everyone should watch The General, Sherlock Jr. and Steamboat Bill Junior.

This is also my favourite stunt in a mainstream film, but back in the mid-90s PM Entertainment made a string of crazy DTV action movies (RAGE AND RECOIL both starring Gary Daniels spring to mind) which all featured crazy stunts that I'm surprised didn't kill anybody.

I'll also a few of the set pieces in THE STUNT MAN as being pretty great.

One of the most impressive in recent memory for me is the boat chase at the end of Face-Off. Especially the last few seconds when they're thrown forward off the front of the boat as it flips up above them. Amazing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NdWKdlue-Q

Some people here are mistaking stunt with action sequence. That Die Hard bit was done on a variety of soundstages, none more than ten feet off the ground. The explosion was added in in post.

Now, the stunt guy who doubled Hans' big plummet to squishville? That was a stunt, and a damn good one.

I remember seeing a behind the scenes thing where they discussed that stunt (some sort of reverse line, thing). Anyway, they specifically mentioned Alan Rickman's "stunt" when he fell from the window looking up into the camera. Apparently even for stuntmen that's a tricky one because you can't see where you're falling. Sure, he fell about 20 feet onto a green/blue mat, but they still gave him kudos for doing it which was cool.

Obvious though it is, Rumble in the Bronx (my first Jackie Chan film in a theater) still has some of my favorite stunts. The Parking garage leap made the theater cheer. And Armour of God has the infamous fall from the tree that almost killed him.

I love the acrobatic stuntwork for sure, but I'm very partial to the "Dude on Fire" stunt sub-category. Most action flicks from the 80's and 90's have them, but I was rewatching Action Jackson a year ago and nearly wept at the beauty of Ed O'Ross being blown out of a window by a grenade launcher. Most of this stunt is a flaming dummy, but as the figure falls through a plate glass ceiling of a dining hall, it becomes a real stuntman. That guy falls though the glass on fire for around 15-20 feet. That is everything I could ever want from a single stunt.

It can be seen here at the 4:10 mark.

The nonRickman fall is great, feels like it lasts forever. Inevitable obscuring of the stunt man's safe landing at the end, but still, much better for the movie that it's an actual guy and not some fake looking dummy.

Must mention the great Dar Robinson, the stunt legend who would sometimes do movie falls without airbags. Anyone see that old behind the scenes doc about his fall at the end of Stick? The movie is Burt Reynolds doing Elmore Leonard and it's so crappy that it makes Be Cool look good, but it is redeemed by an awesome stunt- basically Robinson wanted to get an effects free top down shot of himself making a 20 story fall with nothing on the ground to catch him, so he came up with a "deceleration" system that used a thin cable and hydraulics to stop him from going splat on the concrete. No airbag, and no second backup safety line because that would be visible to the audience (these days stunt guys are SO spoiled with CGI removal). The final sequence is amazing because you see nothing below except panicked onlookers scattering. It eventually pulls away and replaces him with a dummy for the last few feet, but it's still incredibly effective. Robinson also did a truly frightening fall from the 100 stories plus CN Tower in Toronto for another movie, where he used a small parachute that opened just a few seconds before pancake time, no wire and no airbag. Like Philippe Petit with his more arty high wire act, can't help but love performers who are willing to do lunatic shit like this for our entertainment.

PS. Hans was a pussy: Robinson's albino bad guy in Stick actually manages to squeeze off a few angry rounds towards Reynolds while plummeting to his death (factor in the mental concentration and the variables that a stunt like this would involve and marvel at that detail)


Yeah, Canutt was another legend. The last movie he worked on was the Charles Bronson flick Breakheart Pass, which features a nice snowy train top fight scene. Love that tangible, old school sense of danger to the scene.

Chan and the rest of the HK bunch were like demented Buster Keatons, just a little bit crazier and willing to go that extra mile for a stunt. They didn't nearly get hurt, they got hurt.

Our hilarious end credit bloopers: Dom DeLuise messes up a line, everyone laughs

Their hilarious end credit bloopers: Jackie Chan nearly splits his head open trying to do a retardedly dangerous jump, nineteen crew members rush in to see if he's still alive

I love the anecdote about Alan Rickman being told he will be dropped on "1, 2, 3!", but instead they dropped him on "1" to get an appropriate "OH SHIT!" expression. Which they got perfectly.

I caught a midnight showing of Temple of Doom at the weekend and i remembered seeing a documentary about the rope bridge sequence, hell of a thing.

it also reminded me why Kate Capshaw needs her head shutting in a door.

As much as I love that sequence (not really sure where it falls in the "great stunt" category), I always hated how sloppily it was edited. In one shot you can see the bridge is maybe fifty feet up, in another they make it look like three miles.

A Better Tomorrow 2 has a lovely shot of CHow Yun Fat almost getting the back of his head blown off after casually tossing a grenade over his shoulder. The look on his face is priceless. Kinda breaks with the whole Mark/Ken character as an icon of detached cool.

His reaction can be excused though, if like me you believe that Mark was the cooler twin. Ken found that he could shoot people real good, but he was also the one who got all bent out of shape over trivial shit like people not eating the fucking rice. [/CYF apologist]

And dude, look at his haircut. The man just didn't give a fuck about anything except for his modder and fadder rice. And Dean Shek.

There are some excellent stuntwork in display during the end chase sequence of THE GOOD THE BAD THE WEIRD.

That Dar Robinson fall in STICK got major play in all the TV commercials and clips, I recall. Still cool to this day. Fucking MILLION DOLLAR MYSTERY, man.

Jackie Chan in Legend of Drunken Master II, pretty much the entire final fight against his kickboxing bodyguard in the steel mill.

and Camp Granada

www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2Hx_X84LC0


Always loved that Jackie fought his own bodyguard there. He's just hardcore like that.

In Once Upon a Time in the West, during the scene where Frank is trying to avoid getting killed in that small town, one stuntman performs a fall which looks like the most painful landing in the history of painful landings, I swear I actually see the stuntman collapse into unconsciousness.

That one guy who falls through a roof and lands on his neck? Yeah, that's a rough one.

My favorite Jackie Chan stunt is in Operation Condor, when he jumps a motorcycle off a dock and catches hold of a cargo crane. There's also a terrific bit of small-scale work where a gun's on a rug on the floor, the bad guy dives for it, Jackie grabs the rug and flips the gun in the air, then somersaults over the bad guy's back and catches the gun.

There is one in the original Universal Soldier during the gas station scene where Dolph's stunt double goes through the windshield of a car. That stuntman lands right on his head/neck. It really didn't look like a dummy at all, and I'm surprised the guy survived. The Once Upon in the West stunt made me think of this one.

32 posts in and no one has mentioned the iconic motorcycle jump from The Great Escape. For shame, Chewers, for shame!

PROJECT A - the clock tower fall. Both takes that were used in the film, plus the one in the outtakes at the end that goes rather wrong.

There's some seriously hairy stuff going on in the climactic sequence of Used Cars.

The Blues Brothers: Squad car, meet tractor-trailer. "We're in a truck!"

I also love the Bluesmobile spinning out into a parking space. Apparently, the maneuver was that driver's specialty and he used it in real life once to trap a fleeing criminal.

In The Bourne Ultimatum, right before the Desh fight scene, Bourne jumps from a balcony and crashes through a window, it made my jaw drop when I first saw it, a hell of a stunt.

I hate to break it to you but I think that was CGI. If you watch the trailer for it and then the scene from the movie - they're different. Either they used a different take (which is possible) or they added the glass in post.

Scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USHz6TQyXwg

Trailer (near the end): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJoVljaZP0k

I only mention because I saw it in the theater and for some reason I remembered the trailer and that it was different.

The glass was added in post, but the jump was real and the guy holding the camera made the jump too so I say it counts.

You mean the one that lands on his head? I'm still shocked that didn't kill him.

Seriously?! Wow.

Getting into cameraman stunts, I always liked the Mallory Knox POV shot where the camera goes head first into the cell wall. DP Robert Richardson gives himself a black eye on that one.