‘Twilight Zone’ Director Gambled With Lives, Prosecutor Says

The prosecutor in the “Twilight Zone” involuntary manslaughter trial concluded her three-day final argument Thursday by calling film director John Landis a “tyrannical dictator” and “a master puppeteer” who was willing to go to any length to achieve his goal of screen realism.

“He took a gamble with other peoples’ lives and he lost,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Lea Purwin D’Agostino loudly asserted to jurors. “You are now in the position he was that night. You are now the directors. You’re living in the real world. You’re not living in the ‘Twilight Zone.’ ”

Landis, the prominent director of such box office smashes as “Animal House” and “Trading Places,” is accused along with four associates of criminal negligence in the 1982 film set deaths of actor Vic Morrow, 53, and child actors Renee Chen, 6, and Myca Dinh Lee, 7. The trio died when they were hit by a helicopter that crashed after being hit by the fireball of a special-effects explosive during the filming of a mock Vietnam battle scene.

Attorneys for Landis and his co-defendants are expected to present their own arguments for much of next week. Then, after D’Agostino presents a rebuttal, jurors will begin deliberating in a trial that began last September.

During her final remarks, D’Agostino focused directly on Landis rather than the other defendants, associate producer George Folsey Jr., unit production manager Dan Allingham, special effects coordinator Paul Stewart and helicopter pilot Dorcey Wingo.

“Here is a man who is possessed and obsessed with his quest for realism, who was willing to go to just about any extent necessary in order to achieve this big spectacle,” the prosecutor said.

In the fatal scene, she contended, Landis, 36, made a last-minute decision to lower the helicopter to a height of only 24 feet above the ground in order to squeeze it into the same camera frame as the actors and the massive special effects mortars.

“There was a total lack of coordination (on the film set),” D’Agostino charged, saying that Landis maintained control by being “demanding, loud, a yeller and a screamer.”

D’Agostino told the jurors that Landis contradicted the testimony of at least 24 other witnesses during his four days on the witness stand. Her list included camera operators, production assistants, casting directors, fire safety officers, the first assistant director, a member of the special effects crew and the parents of the dead children.