LAURO CHARTRAND (Stunts)

"I did numerous horse stunts on the show and fights scenes, etc. Mostly Wendol stunt scenes. I was on the show for 3 months. Brent Woolsey was the stunt coordinator and John Sullivan was the 2nd unit director. Bud Davis started out as one of the stunt coordinators, but left the show just as principal photography started, I believe because of differences of opinion with McT...

The night sequences with the horses were very dangerous. We had 100 horses galloping and jumping over logs, running through water, jumping ditches, not to mention tripping over one another, all in the dark, with thick smoke and fog. On many takes, riders and horses went down, causing both to get trampeled by the herd of horses coming behind them. Thankfully, no one was seriously hurt during these runs that happened over many nights. I saw Cory Glass go down once, and saw her horse roll over on her and then get stepped on by other horses. I thought she was dead for sure, but, by some major stroke of luck, she came out of it, with some pretty good bruises but that's about it! Eddie Wrayton and myself were in the lead, on one run, when my horse tripped on a log and went down and his horse tripped on my horse and they went down as well. We had a hundred horses stampeding down our necks, did we ever scramble. We both got stepped on and knocked down a few times, trying to get out of the way, but, again, only minor bruises.

The villagers were in a dangerous position, because we were throwing heavy wooden torches on fire as hard as we could over the walls at them. Many of us had 2-6 torches on each run. Multiply that by 100 and you have alot of torch flying through the air at your head! A few stunt people got hit in the face and head, and were injured or knocked out for a little while, but, once again, nothing serious happened.

Most of the rain stuff was with rain towers, oddly enough. I say that because it usually rains there so much anyway. McT wanted harder rain, so they had to erect rain towers so that he had the look he was after. Of course, this made it more miserable and cold for us, and more slippery for the horses!

[The shooting of the Tartars chasing the Arab caravan scene] was also a crazy time, with the horses and the camels. The hill was so steep that people were going over the tops of the horses heads and some guys were getting dragged. The camels were pretty clumsy, but I don't remember any of them falling. They certainly didn't want to go down the hill too badly. It was a pretty fun couple of days!

There are many types of "ratchet pulls". What Jim Finkbiener and myself did for this show were called "running ratchets", or "jerk offs". You wear a special vest under your wardrobe, called a jerk vest or jerk harness. The wardrobe people make a small hole in the wardrobe so we can attach a cable to a pick point on the vest, where we want the pull to originate from. On our running ratchets, we attached the cable to the lower mid section of our backs, so it would look like the big blond Viking [Note: Vladimir Kulich] that hit us off our horses in the final battle took us right off our horses. The cables were measured out to the mark where we had to come off and then tied off to a stump in the ground. We would run our horses as fast as we could towards the stunt double (Ken Kirzinger) and he would hit us both off our horses as we hit the end of our cables.

Other kinds of pulls are either by hand or with a ratchet, wich is a long cylinder charged with air or nitrogen. When the operater hits the button, the cylinder retractes and pulls the stunt guys the required distance. Any where from 6 to 60 ft.

[Wearing the Wendol outfit] was more difficult for some [stuntmen] than others. I was a "Ninja Turtle" before [Note: on the TV series "Ninja Turtles, The Next Mutation"], so, for me, it was easier than a "turtle" outfit. But, for other who hadn't done much costume work, it was tough. The good thing about outfits like that is, as a stuntman, you can fit and hide pads under it easily. In the daytime scenes, they were very hot, but, at night, they kept us warm! The toughest part was the heads. They were big and cumbersome, but, again, good head protection... So they were good and bad.

We spent a few weeks on a soundstage in Vancouver, shooting the cave scenes and then, they did re-shoots in L.A. Later, McT wanted us chanting around the fire, but couldn't make up his mind on what he wanted us to chant! Of course, then, we had to fight the Vikings when they showed up. It was a very impressive set, with a 70 foot waterfall inside the stage! They did all the waterfall scenes in that same stage,
it was all one piece. I must say, to this day, it is still one of the most impressive sets I've ever seen. It was getting a bit cold filming those scenes; as you can see [on these photos], we didn't have much in the way of clothes and it was late in the year.

I can't help you very much with [the deleted scenes]. I had heard rumors, at one point, of the mass suicide [of the Wendols] scene but, to my knowledge, it was never shot.

I wasn't involved in the Wendol Mother scene. But I do remember that they did change Wendol Mothers along the way! Everyone was talking about what a bad choice it was to go with an actress that was good looking and had a good body: it just didn't fit for the character. You expected a big hideous witch of a woman; instead, you got a skinny little sexy thing! It didn't work... Alot like the rest of the film. I know all the stunt people were disappointed: most of the action you couldn't see, because it was shot too tight, was too dark, or was cut out."

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