‘Twilight Zone’ Witness Tells of Landis ‘Joke’

Cynthia Nigh, a production secretary on the “Twilight Zone” film, testified Wednesday that director John Landis replied, “You haven’t seen nothing yet,” after crew members warned him of the intensity of special-effects explosions ignited near a helicopter during a filming sequence.

Helicopter Crash

Less than three hours later, actor Vic Morrow and two child actors were struck and killed when the low-flying helicopter crashed after it was hit by special-effects explosives during the filming of the subsequent shot.

Nigh, who during cross-examination said she took Landis’ remark to be a joke, testified as the involuntary-manslaughter trial of Landis and four associates concluded its 14th week of testimony.

Nigh told the jury that crew members in the helicopter expressed concerns to Landis shortly after the filming of a Vietnam battle sequence that included Morrow but not the two children.

“One of the stunt guys yelled over to John Landis, ‘Hey, that was pretty close,’ ” Nigh recalled.

“Getting (Landis’) attention was tough,” Nigh added, but as the director was walking away, “he said, ‘Oh, you haven’t seen nothing yet.’ ”

Defense attorneys said outside the courtroom that the statement was not damaging to Landis since it was said in jest.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Lea Purwin D’Agostino said she does not believe Landis was joking. “It shows,” she maintained to reporters, “that the grand finale was to have even more and larger explosions than the earlier shot.”

Prosecution Witness

Nigh, the 54th prosecution witness in the long-running trial, corroborated testimony by D’Agostino’s initial witness in the trial, production secretary Donna Schuman, that co-defendant George Folsey Jr. had joked about being thrown in jail for having illegally hired the child actors.