Featured Image Credit: MGM
Topics: Film and TV, James Bond, Ghosts
Joe Harker
The production of Licence to Kill was apparently cursed as the team behind the James Bond film shot scenes on a supposedly haunted road.
It's a bit of an urban legend that the production of Licence to Kill was haunted by a ghost, though the legend really depends on how much you actually believe ghosts are real in the first place.
The climactic scenes, in which Timothy Dalton's Bond and baddie Franz Sanchez (Robert Davi) confront each other for the final time, were shot on a 'haunted' road which had been closed to the public, known as Rumarosa Pass in Mexicali.
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The road itself had been closed after a bus full of nuns went over a cliff edge and burst into flames, and after that it was decided that people should stay away.
The James Bond crew was allowed to use the road for their stunts, but many working on Licence to Kill ended up getting the heebie-jeebies while on the road.
Crew members involved in the production kept thinking they saw people who suddenly disappeared when challenged.
Someone else convinced that a ghost was messing with the crew was Licence to Kill director John Glen, who wrote that lots of people thought the road was haunted.
He wrote: "There was definitely a strange atmosphere on that stretch of road. The special effects boys where convinced there was something spooky about the place.
"If there was any doubt left in my mind, it was dispelled by a bizarre photograph."
That photograph in question shows a flaming ghostly hand grasping out of a fireball that was spotted while filming, and the picture convinced him something weird was going on.
Beyond the road, Bond fans are sure the rest of the production was pretty cursed – as well as there being plenty of stories about the crew falling into all sorts of mishaps and disasters.
If Licence to Kill was cursed it'd explain such incidents as the prop malfunction during a scene where the Sanchez fires a stinger missile.
Things went wrong when the prop missile went the wrong way and hit someone working on a telephone pole two miles away – imagine explaining that one.
There was also the truck that mysteriously caught fire one night, and one which drove itself for a bit with nobody behind the wheel.
One thing that luckily did go right on that road is the incredible stunt where Bond dodges an incoming missile by tilting his tanker on a ramp and driving it at a 45 degree angle.
According to the official 007 site, the crew had built an entire rig to support the tanker and stop it from tipping over completely.
However, stunt driver Rémy Julienne showed up and actually managed to drive a giant tanker at such an angle without any extra help.
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