The entire filming process had been miserable.

Plagued with bad luck from the very start,

the making of the 1956 film The Conqueror had not gone well.

It was consistently delayed and over budget, turning what should have been the studio's

darling into their worst nightmare. Not even its famous producer, Howard Hughes, could save it

from disaster. You see, the film was about Genghis Khan,

but John Wayne had been cast in the lead role.

Yes, the white, gun-slinging western actor

had been chosen to portray the Central Asian Conqueror.

On top of everything else,

the crew filmed in Utah's Escalante Desert,

where the days were blisteringly hot and the nights were

freezing cold. Making a movie in the desert isn't fun in the best of times, but in this instance,

it also wasn't safe. You see, the Conqueror was filming just 140 miles downwind from the

Nevada test site, where the U.S. government was testing hundreds of

nuclear bombs. The military had told the crew that it was safe to film there, but they had lied.

Or maybe they just didn't realize how bad the fallout from their tests really was,

because out of the 220 cast and crew for the Conqueror, 91 of them developed cancer, and 46 of that 91 died as a result.

Today, The Conqueror is still considered by many to be one of the worst movies ever made, and it's also thought to be the most cursed film in history.

No other Hollywood production has had as high a death toll,

and hopefully none ever will again. All the collective wealth and power of Howard Hughes and

John Wayne couldn't save the cast from nuclear fallout. As obvious as that may be, to our celebrity-obsessed

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