The deadliest movie in history

Can you imagine shooting a movie and every moment you spend shooting it you die, reality surpasses fiction, there is a movie with the record of having the largest number of victims in the history of Hollywood cinema, this without counting the horses that surely passed it poorly filming combat scenes, horses in the movies were basically disposable at the time.

Released in 1956, it was the penultimate film produced by the tycoon Howard Hughes, who was a millionaire enthusiast of science and technology who designed his own planes, something like Elon Musk of the 20th century, but unlike Musk, he was his own test pilot. He set several distance and speed records in his customized H1 plane and was also a film producer during the golden age of Hollywood, making, among other films, the first version of Scarface in 1954.

The Conqueror would be his penultimate film, an epic romance based on the thirteenth-century Mongol warlord Genghis Khan who would be played by John Wayne, who was always famous for his Old West movies, who thanks to his fame was able to move influences to get the role of an Asian conqueror during the Middle Ages, Genghis Khan with gringo accents.

Howard Hughes envió al equipo de producción a Saint George una pequeña ciudad cercana en el estado de Yuta, desde ahí el equipo de producción se trasladaba a las locaciones en Snow Canyon, una espectacular Barranca erosionada por el viento a 10 kilómetros al norte de Saint George que servía para representar en las escenas de exteriores a la estepa de Asia, ahí se realizaría la mayor parte de la producción incluyendo las escenas de batallas épicas de ejércitos a caballo.

Filming began in 1954 just months after a round of 11 nuclear tests conducted in the Mercury Nevada desert, 20 kilometers from the Groom Lake military airport, also known as Area 51, between the nuclear test range and the locations where filmed the movie there are 200 kilometers of mountains, that's nothing and you can imagine what happened.

Howard Hughes was aware of the proximity of his sets to nuclear tests, for this reason he requested information from the atomic energy commission where they told him that it was perfectly safe and the production was carried out as if nothing had happened, and to top it off, producer Howard Hughes sent to transport 60 tons of sand and dust to his studio in Culver City in the middle of the city of Los Angeles California to be used in the scenes that had to be reaffirmed so that the tones of the terrain would coincide with those filmed.

The people who had to film the conqueror swallowing and breathing the dust raised by each of the rides or battles in the desert were no exception, the first victims would be the director and co-producer of the film Dick Powell who in January 1963 would succumb to lymphatic cancer, Pedro Armendáriz who had been diagnosed with kidney cancer died in June of that same year, Susan Hayward would die a decade later in 1974 after battling breast, skin, uterus and brain cancer the same year Anne smorged would also die of uterine cancer, libank cliff would be a victim of throat cancer in December 1939 and John Wayne would fight for years with lung cancer exacerbated by the fact that he was a compulsive smoker but would finally die in 1979 of stomach cancer;

Of the film's production and cast team of 220 people, 91 contracted some type of cancer until 1990 and 46 did not survive, but the figure could be much higher since within these 220 people the Native American people of the town are not considered nearby of which there was no record and being present in the scenes with more action they had more possibilities of breathing larger amounts of radioactive dust.

An epic movie turned into a horror movie.

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