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“The panicked camera team rammed the boat into the logs to stop us getting crushed or drowned. “I heard Chris shout, ‘We’re getting stuck.’ Then Bobby went under too as the logs rolled out of control. "Suddenly the rest of the logs were coming toward us and about to cover me entirely and drown me. I got pushed down in shallow water, trapping my legs in the wet sand. Savage says: “We hung off the logs as the water pushed them around. The three leading men found themselves in deep water again shooting the famous logs scene in a fast-moving river. One of the guys on the boat calmly removed it and then cut its head off. I was still in disbelief at what happened, so kind of froze. Savage says: “A snake was wrapped around my leg. Just then, De Niro noticed a snake, a Thai Banded Krait, on his friend’s leg. “Had that not happened, the ’copter could have crashed down on us too.” Then we looked up to see that the helicopter was wavering as it was stuck to the cable on the bridge, but luckily somebody crawled out and pushed it off. God knows how, but we missed the rocks and the water took us to the side of the production boat below. “I started laughing and just said, ‘I’m going,’ and we looked at one another and both dropped. “I was calling Bobby by his character name, yelling ‘Michael, Michael, I’m not sure we should drop in the water there.’ Bobby yells at me: ‘Jesus Christ, John. “Bob was right next to me and it’s like, ‘Sh**’, and he’s screaming in my face and I’m looking down, ‘What do we do? Should we drop – there’s rocks and sh** down there.’ Amazingly, Chris, who is an athlete and a dancer, pulled himself up and into the helicopter, which flew up leaving Bobby and I hanging from the sliced cable in an absolute panic knowing this could be the end of our lives.
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Savage says: “We knew we were in trouble when the cables got cut. Many of them saw us as a way of making a quick buck.”ĭirector Cimino hired heavily armed guards but Savage, De Niro and Walken found themselves in more immediate danger, dangling from a bridge above the River Kwai for a flashback scene.Īs the three held on to the bridge’s struts, an army helicopter accidentally sliced through their metal safety cables, leaving them clinging on for their lives above the rocks in the raging river 60ft below. Savage says: “Back then that country was far from stable, and armed refugees and military groups were running wild. Shooting the war scenes in Thailand, the cast and crew were dogged by the threat of kidnap. He says: “Bob, Chris and I are lucky to be alive. But, as Savage reveals, this momentous achievement could have cost the actors their lives.