I was always rather impressed by this startling scene from Lucio Fulci’s ZOMBI 2. But perhaps I shouldn’t have been.
Had a look at World’s Greatest Stuntman, the modestly-titled autobiography from Vic Armstrong, who has doubled as both James Bond and Indiana Jones, and thus probably deserves the title. More than I do, anyway.
An interesting side-note is Armstrong’s explanation of how sharks are used in movies (outside the legal department) — there is a particular technique deployed to make the sharks safe to work with, a technique Armstrong finds rather cruel — and he’s a man who once road a horse off a gigantic tower ~
The horse was unharmed, but seems to have found the experience disagreeable. It certainly hasn’t pursued the high dive as an Olympic specialty.
With sharks, however, film crews have exploited that old adage about how a shark has to keep swimming or else it will die. It won’t die immediately, in fact — but without oxygen moving through its gills it will become drowsy and effectively drunk. And apparently drunken sharks are safer than sober ones: just the opposite of human beings. So you cage the shark, get it all dopey, then release it and your zombie can swim right up to it and bite it on the fin and it’ll be too woozy to object. At most, it’ll mutter something like, “Hey — quit it, buddy. Lemme alone.” And you can edit that bit out afterwards.
I don’t suggest that you try this at home, mind you. Not for a moment.
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