The Crow — The Film That Killed Brandon Lee
Dimension FilmsBrandon Lee died while shooting his character’s death scene.
Brandon Lee, son of the legendary star Bruce Lee and his wife Linda, starred as the titular character in 1994’s The Crow. In the film, Lee plays a murdered rockstar who returns from the dead to exact revenge on the gang that killed him and his girlfriend.
Unfortunately, the film would become marred by real-life tragedy when Lee was accidentally shot and killed while filming his death scene.
It was a fairly simple scene. Lee was to walk through a doorway carrying a grocery bag, while costar Michael Massee fired blanks at him from 15 feet away, at which point Lee would flip a switch to set off “squibs,” which simulated the impact of bullets striking him.
They had rehearsed the scene several times before, but when it came time to film the take that would eventually be in the film, everything went horribly wrong.
Somehow, a dummy bullet from a previous scene had gotten lodged in the prop gun that Massee was to fire. When he aimed the prop gun at Lee, the dummy bullet shot out and struck Lee in the abdomen. Despite not being a real bullet, the force with which it was fired was enough to sever two of Lee’s arteries.
The gunshot also caused the small explosive squibs to go off, obscuring the initial injuries when police first looked into the incident. Ultimately, though, doctors found that Lee’s wounds were in line with typical bullet wounds.
The young actor was buried next to his father, Bruce Lee. Both father and son had died tragically young, leading some to speculate that the Lees were afflicted with a family curse.
