The Movie Stunt Didn’t Misfire

What a fine night for an explosion.

There’s little wind and therefore little brush fire danger, County Fire Inspector Gary Rogers says. There are no major incidents occupying firefighters near the movie set in an abandoned munitions factory in a Santa Clarita canyon. A legally required ambulance and water truck are standing by.

Rogers looks warily amused under his uniform cap as he surveys the canyon, painted in the dreamlike glow of floodlights. It’s time to watch Hollywood play with fire.

The crew of the low-budget horror film “Dolly Dearest”--by the producer who brought the world “Grave of the Vampire,” “Tarantula,” and “Sweet Jesus Preacher Man”-- have turned an abandoned warehouse into a Mexican doll factory. There, in the story, killer dolls have been possessed by the malevolent spirits of an Indian tribe that fed its children blood. The script calls for an epic battle with dynamite, pitting the dolls against Rip Torn and Sam Bottoms. Tonight the crew will finish off the warehouse and the movie with a climactic ka-BOOM.

Tension grows. Crew members bark orders into walkie-talkies. But none of them are in charge; the night belongs to a man with a cowboy hat, waxed white mustache and scorpion medallion around his neck. A man who makes his living in the narrow spaces between illusion and disaster.

Pyrotechnics supervisor Mike Thompson stalks through the shadows of the doomed building carrying black powder bombs and gasoline cans. He growls: “There are no experts in this business. They’re all dead. When somebody says he’s an expert, I worry.”

Thompson, 46, whistles as he lays out wires for a remote-control charging device and the conical tubes, called mortars, that will direct the force of the explosions. The roof tiles have been removed because they would fly off like shrapnel.

Inspector Rogers trails Thompson serenely; if he feels any professional impulses to wrestle this career fire-starter to the ground, he restrains them.

Thompson’s bread-and-butter are cop-show car explosions that are produced and consumed like popcorn. “We can rig a car in three hours. We’ll ask you what you need: a door blown off, the hood blown off. We work fast.”

Thompson’s repertoire also features car stunts, bullet impacts and fog. He has worked on “Taras Bulba” “The Car,” “Knightrider,” “Emergency.”

But Thompson, who grew up at a family-owned rifle range in the Santa Clarita Valley and served as an Army explosives engineer, says that off-duty he prefers “That’s Entertainment” or “Little House on the Prairie.”

“I like something with a story to it, some redeeming social value,” he says.

Tedium reigns on the set of “Dolly Dearest.” The final explosion, known as the “gag,” must wait until all other filming is complete.

Two young paramedics slouch in lawn chairs by their ambulance eating potato chips. They are entertained by Ed Gale, 26, the diminutive actor who plays a fiendish doll in the film and previously played a fiendish doll in “Child’s Play.” Gale, who is about three feet tall, appropriates a chair and launches into a side-of-the-mouth stream of dirty jokes that has the paramedics roaring.

Around 2 a.m. Thompson walks stuntmen Cole McKay and Don Pike through the scenes in which the heroes blow open the factory door with a stick of dynamite and sprint out just ahead of the dolly apocalypse.

“I’m gonna put a sandwich bag of gasoline right here by the door, Don,” Thompson says. “There’ll be bombs on either side. There’s wet sand in the mortar, that’s my bullet that blows out the windows. It’ll be boom, then you guys go, then boom-boom.”

Pike and McKay lounge against a car and appraise the walk of a stunning blond production assistant camouflaged in a baggy work shirt and cap. They have learned to survive the waiting as well as the action.

“We always go last,” Pike says mildly, touching his fake goatee. He is burly, tanned, a 32-year-veteran with great respect for effects men.

“We listen to them,” he says. “They save our skins.”

The preliminary blast goes well. Pike and McKay sprint within several feet of the gasoline bombs, which produce vivid fireballs--a run that is safer than it looks because the well-engineered explosives rain down little flame or debris.

“That was quite an explosion,” McKay says, as they get ready to do it again.

“Why, yes,” Pike says.

The main event comes at 4 a.m. Thompson announces: “I’m pouring gasoline.”

Four camera crews take up positions around the canyon. A production assistant stands on a rise behind the building, wetting down brush with a fire hose, water cascading in a brilliant arc. A water truck rumbles on a ridge above, ready for brush fire duty.

Thompson’s white hat and Rogers’ yellow slicker are intermittently visible in the windows before they retreat to fire hoses held ready behind the building.

Walkie-talkies crackle. Cameras roll. About 100 feet in front, technician Don Power kneels at a wooden control board and reaches for the first of five electric ignition switches.

A concussive crescendo of sound and flame erupts through the building, backlighting the running figures of the stunt men, capped by a 50-foot crimson fireball.

The smoke clears. The building is damaged, but still standing. Vague expectations of obliteration fade. A strictly run-of-the-mill explosion, as Thompson said earlier; film editors will make the destruction appear total.

From the darkness, a woman’s voice calls: “Is that it?”