Dark, Shocking, And Wild Facts About The "Indiana Jones" Movies
For Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the production team gathered roughly 30,000 beetles and 50,000 cockroaches...and then dumped them from buckets on people's heads. 🙃
So, with the arrival of a new Indy film, it got me thinking about all the past ones and wondering what kind of ~wild~ behind-the-scenes stories there were. And, as it turns out, some pretty shocking, and even dark, stuff happened! Check it out...
1.Indiana Jones may avoid snakes like the plague, but in real life, the Raiders of the Lost Ark filmmakers couldn't get enough snakes on set. In fact, 7,000 real live snakes were used for the iconic Well of Souls scene alone.
According to director Steven Spielberg, "We [initially] had 2,000 or 3,000 snakes, and they hardly covered [the set]. I couldn’t get a wide shot. I couldn’t go back because I would see there were no snakes on the sides. So, that’s when I said to Robert Watts or to Frank Marshall (producers on the film), 'We have to get more snakes. You know what we really need? We need about 7,000 snakes, in addition to the 2,000 that we have here, to make it work.'"
2.And, in case you're wondering where one gets thousands of snakes at a time, Spielberg went on to explain in an interview with Dick Cavett that they actually had to source the snakes from "all over" — Scandinavia, France, Germany, and India (where they specifically got the deadly cobra snakes).
3.Although Indy never gets bit by a snake in the film, in real life, a lot of people actually got bit while filming, including the snake handlers (they had four) and some actors. "They were always being bitten by everything, except for cobras, of course, that's deadly. But the pythons were going after everybody," Spielberg said.
He continued, "In the movie when something bites and snaps and grabs hold of a character, that's a python. And those are real teeth and that's a real actor going, 'Why am I here? And why did I make this movie?!'"
Spielberg even said that first assistant director David Tomlin was bitten by a python. However, he further explained that all it took was a snake handler to "flick the reptile on its tail for it to let go of his [Tomlin's] wrist."
4.BTW, the cobra Indy comes face to face with in the Well of Souls scene actually spit venom at Harrison Ford. However, luckily for Ford, the shot was filmed with a sheet of glass between Ford and the deadly cobra for safety, which you can actually see in older versions of the film (the reflection was digitally removed in a 2003 re-release of the film).
5.Moving on from snakes, let's talk about all those bugs in Temple of Doom. For the skin-crawling scene where Indy and Willie crawl through a room covered with live bugs, the production team gathered roughly 30,000 beetles and 50,000 cockroaches. 🙃
According to Spielberg, the insects were “very small, and it takes about a thousand bugs to cover an area three feet square.” And it was not easy to wrangle all those tiny insects on set. Apparently, the heat of the lights made things worse because the bugs would run off to find dark areas to hide in, away from the light.
Spielberg explained that the only way to get proper shots of all the bugs was by basically dumping them. He said, "Often, the only footage in the movie results from a dump truck of bugs on the spot, the camera would catch it and that would be it.”
6.Unfortunately, for actor Kate Capshaw (who played Willie Scott), that meant crew had to literally pour buckets of insects from the ceiling onto her, too.
7.Kate Capshaw was so nervous about shooting the scene where she's covered in bugs that she actually took a "relaxant" to get through it.
Capshaw said, "I was really asking people: Is there a pill? There must be something I can take to keep myself from freaking out. I don't want everyone to look at the movie and say, 'She's on drugs!' But I did take something that was like a relaxant."
BTW, LOLing at the fact that this is clearly NOT Harrison Ford in this shot. (Assuming he's a stand-in or maybe even one of the bug wranglers, LOL.)
8.In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, allllll the rats Indy and Elsa cross paths with as they search the water-filled catacombs of Venice were real. In fact, the filmmakers actually had 2,000 rats specially bred to make the creepy scene come to life.
According to Sideshow, "The producers reportedly ordered the disease-free rodents from the same company that previously supplied snakes and critters on set, and then substituted them out for mechanical rats during the torching scene."
9.In Last Crusade, many of the Nazi costumes that were worn for the film were actually authentic Nazi uniforms. While doing research, costume designer Anthony Powell closely studied historical photographs of Nazi uniforms. He then shared pictures, sketches, and drawings with co-costume designer Joanna Johnston. Johnson, with her team, went on to "comb the continent" to find as many real suits as possible.
10.Harrison Ford, who is known for performing many of his own stunts, has actually been injured MANY times while filming the Indiana Jones films...
11....in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Ford bruised his ribs while being dragged behind a truck. But that wasn't even the worst of his injuries on the first film's set. He actually TORE his ACL after being run over by landing gear during another stunt.
Ford explained during a Reddit AMA, "I tore an ACL in one of my knees, can't remember which knee, the scene in which I was fighting the big German mechanic on an airplane called a flying wing. I was run over by the landing gear and injured my knee."
12.While making Temple of Doom, Ford suffered a herniated disc from apparently riding elephants for a long period of time.
In the book Mythmaker: The Life and Work of George Lucas, Lucas explained, "He [Ford] could barely stand up, yet he was there every day so shooting would not stop. He was in incomprehensible pain, but he was still trying to make it happen." Production was ultimately halted to give Ford time to recover.
13.And then, most recently, Ford injured his shoulder while making Dial of Destiny in 2021, which required him to take a hiatus from filming. Ford was later seen around London wearing a sling after his injury.
Disney's official statement read, "In the course of rehearsing for a fight scene, Harrison Ford sustained an injury involving his shoulder. Production will continue while the appropriate course of treatment is evaluated, and the filming schedule will be reconfigured as needed in the coming weeks."
14.It's become very popular lore at this point that the reason Indy shoots the Cairo swordsman in Raiders of the Lost Ark is because Harrison Ford was sick that day and therefore not up to the task of performing an originally planned complicated fight scene.
What you might not know, though, is that Ford was SO sick with dysentery, that it gave him TERRIBLE diarrhea, and he "found it really difficult to be out of his trailer for more than 10 minutes at a time."
15.Speaking of dysentery on the set of Raiders, almost the entire crew got sick with it while shooting in Tunisia...including the stuntmen. And this led to some last-minute casting changes.
Because the stuntmen were too sick to work when they went to shoot the scene of Indy stealing an airplane after escaping the Well of Souls, producer Frank Marshall actually had to step in as the pilot who gets knocked out by Marion.
Spielberg later joked, “Maybe the stuntmen were sick on purpose” because the temperature inside the cockpit was “about 140 degrees.”
16.Finally, despite all the creepy critters, injuries, and illnesses, one of the darkest (and saddest) behind-the-scenes facts about an Indiana Jones film was the death of crew member Nic Cupac while making Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
According to Deadline, Cupac, who was working as a grip on Indiana Jones 5, died suddenly in Morocco. The article reported, "Cupac’s family has not released additional information about the cause of death, but it was not related to the production of the film. Media reports say he was found in his hotel room in Fes."
And there you have it, some of the wildest and darkest behind-the-scenes facts...
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny premieres exclusively in theaters June 30, and you can watch the official trailer here:
