Welcome back to the Roboto podcast. There is a trigger warning for this episode for graphic

descriptions of death involving children. Listener and viewer discretion is advised.

Shortly after 2 a.m. on the morning of July 23, 1982, actor Vic Morrow paced nervously

in front of a mock Vietnamese village that had been erected in the Indian Dunes Park just north of Los Angeles.

For this shot, John Landis had dropped Moro's character into the Vietnam War to enact what was intended as a redemption scene,

the heroic rescue of two children from a village as it erupted into flames.

I'll keep you safe, kids, Mora was supposed to say. The children in his

arms, Mika Dinley, 7 and Renee Chen, six, had never acted before. They were not supposed to be on this

movie set at 2 in the morning on July 23, 1982. After three straight weeks of night shooting,

the entire company was feeling worn down.

Now, it was almost over.

The last scene to be shot that night was also the very last scene in John Landis' episode of Twilight Zone, The Movie.

It would show the destruction of the Vietnamese village in a series of enormous explosions.

Everyone knew the first take had to be perfect, because once the village was

demolished, the cost of rebuilding it would be prohibitive. Vic Morrow had participated in difficult and

dangerous scenes before, but tonight, he felt particularly keyed up. On the one hand, the Twilight Zone film,

produced by Landis and Steven Spielberg, represented his biggest career break

in more than a decade, and he wanted the climax to be thrilling. Yet, Morrill could not help,

but feel uneasy as he watched the Huey helicopter approach the village for a final rehearsal.

Years earlier, he had had a premonition that he was going to die in a helicopter crash. While he was

shooting the movie Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry in 1973, he had insisted on having a $1 million life

insurance policy taken out on him before he would shoot any scenes involving the helicopter he was

...