25. Jackass 3D (2010)
Poo Cocktail Supreme is the title of this sketch from Johnny Knoxville’s degenerate pals. It features Steve-O strapped into a portable toilet. This is then catapulted into the air and bounces up and down on bungee cords, emptying the loo’s contents all over him. Ah, cinema!
24. RRR (2022)
SS Rajamouli’s Telugu-language epic won this year’s Hollywood Critics Association’s prize for best stunts. Any number of the film’s bonkers set pieces might have qualified for the award, not least a jaw-dropping forest scene in which NT Rama Rao Jr heaves at the ropes keeping a ravenous tiger in a net.
23. The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
In Michael Curtiz’s Technicolor romp, Robin (Errol Flynn) escapes from the sheriff’s men in typically swashbuckling style. After riding to one of Nottingham’s city gates, he hacks through the rope holding up the portcullis. The portcullis descends, trapping his pursuers, and Robin is hoisted up the gatehouse wall.
22. The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber duel concludes with Luke (Mark Hamill) being sucked backwards through a broken window by a vacuum. Or does it? In fact, Colin Skeaping, Hamill’s stunt double, somersaulted through the window, but it’s so cleverly framed and edited that you would never know.
21. Batman Returns (1992)
Patricia Peters doubled for Michelle Pfeiffer in many of Catwoman’s rubber-suited acrobatic routines, but it was Pfeiffer herself who decapitated four mannequins with a swishing whip, and then used it as a skipping rope. In a behind-the-scenes clip, the crew bursts into cheers and applause.
20. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)
Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder) is limping towards the chocolate factory’s gates when he appears to collapse. But then Wilder turns the fall into a forward roll, and springs to his feet. “I knew from that time on, no one would know if I was lying or telling the truth,” said Wilder.
19. Deliverance (1972)
The shots of the actors canoeing along a wild river are hair-raising enough, but then Burt Reynolds chooses to fling himself down the rocky rapids, instead of letting a stuntman or a dummy take the fall – yikes! He cracked his coccyx in the process.
18. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
The fifth Indiana Jones film is almost upon us, and yet the franchise’s most memorable scene remains the one in the opening minutes of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indy chased down a tunnel by a giant rolling boulder, leaping to safety through a curtain of spider webs
17. The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
The so-called “scorpion kick” was invented for The Matrix Reloaded by Yuen Woo-ping and executed, after six months of training, by Carrie-Anne Moss. Basically, she leans forward and swings one leg over her own head. It’s probably the least practical way to kick someone, but definitely one of the most spectacular.
16. The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)
Blake Edwards’ Pink Panther comedies have a wealth of Bond-worthy stunts, the most delightful of which comes when Clouseau demonstrates why he was once known as “the Pavlova of the Parallels”, and a crafty cut allows Peter Sellers to be swapped for a stuntman.
15. Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
It can’t have been easy to compete with Gene Kelly in his – or anyone else’s – finest musical, but Donald O’Connor managed it in Make ‘Em Laugh. This joyous tour de force finishes with O’Connor running up and backflipping down from two near-vertical surfaces in a row before crashing straight through a third.
14. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Hurtling through the desert, a harpoon-wielding War Boy is tipped from one vehicle to another via a long pole attached to his foot. As Steven Soderbergh said: “I don’t understand how they’re not still shooting that film and I don’t understand how hundreds of people aren’t dead.”
13. Stormy Weather (1943)
Sometimes there is a fine line between a dance routine and a stunt routine – and the Nicholas brothers skip across that line during Jumping Jive, accompanied by Cab Calloway’s orchestra. Watch and wince as Fayard and Harold Nicholas leap over each other’s headsand down a staircase, doing the splits each time they land.
12. The Circus (1928)
Charlie Chaplin made The Circus after dreaming up its climactic sequence: the Little Tramp’s dancing, wobbling progress along a tightrope while being attacked and disrobed by escaped monkeys. In 1929, this delirious monkey business quite rightly earned him an Academy Award for “versatility and genius in writing, acting, directing and producing”.
11. Ong Bak (2003)
Ong Bak was marketed as having no CGI and no stunt doubles so that audiences could marvel at the superhuman abilities of Tony Jaa without wondering if he had any hidden help. In a hilarious chase scene, for instance, Jaa jumps through a hoop of barbed wire which two men are carrying across a Bangkok alley. What are the odds?
10. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015)
The Mission: Impossible series exists, first and foremost, to show the world’s biggest movie star risking life and limb, by, for instance, clinging to the side of a cargo plane as it roars into the sky. Why do your own stunts, Tom Cruise was asked at Cannes. “Would you ask Gene Kelly why he does all his own dancing?” he replied.
9. Police Story 3: Supercop (1992)
Scenes in which the performer drives a motor vehicle haven’t made the cut here, so no space for Michelle Yeoh’s astounding motorcycle jump on to a train in Supercop. But in the same film, she rolls off the top of a van and on to Jackie Chan’s car bonnet, at high speed, on a motorway, while being shot at. “Even stunt people would say, ‘You’re insane,’” she recalled.
8. Ben-Hur (1959)
During the epic chariot race, Judah Ben-Hur’s chariot bounces over some wreckage, and there is a shocking moment when Charlton Heston’s double, Joe Canutt (also the son of the second-unit director) is – in what was tactfully described as an “unplanned event” – flipped head over heels into the air and thundering horses below. Happily, he got away with a scraped chin.
7. Death Proof (2007)
Why did Quentin Tarantino make Death Proof? Quite possibly as an elaborate excuse to have Zoë Bell spend many minutes on top of a speeding 1970 Dodge Challenger, with just a bit of seatbelt in each hand for security. Then Kurt Russell starts ramming the car from behind.
6. Project A (1983)
Each of Jackie Chan’s Hong Kong action comedies could fill this list on its own. In Project A, he pays homage to both Harold Lloyd (hanging from a clock hand) and Buster Keaton (plummeting down a building, through two awnings). The drop was 60 feet; he performed the stunt twice – the first time walking away unscathed, the second, landing on his head and leaving him with permanent spinal problems.
5. Safety Last! (1923)
Harold Lloyd dangles from the minute hand of a Los Angeles office building’s clock. It’s the stunt that exemplifies the thrills of the silent-comedy era – and it’s just one example of how Lloyd, more than his contemporaries, gloried in the hazards of 20th century metropolitan life, with its trolley cars, bustling crowds and ever taller buildings.
4. Stagecoach (1939)
Yakima Canutt pioneered countless stunts which would be copied for decades afterwards, most famously in the Indiana Jones films. The greatest of these is from John Ford’s Stagecoach. Canutt is dragged along by a team of horses, and then lies in the sand as the hooves and the coach’s wheels thunder by on either side.
3. Steamboat Bill, Jr (1928)
Buster Keaton was one of the most gifted athletes in cinema history, so it’s ironic that his signature stunt didn’t require him to run, jump, climb or fall, but to stand totally still. In Steamboat Bill, Jr, a house’s facade topples right on to him, but he is positioned just where the hole for an attic window happens to be. Heart-stopping.
2. The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
The best ever Bond pre-credits sequence has legendary stuntman Rick Sylvester (in for Roger Moore) skiing right off the edge of Canada’s Asgard Peak and free falling down, down, down into a valley. After a nerve-shredding wait, he pulls the ripcord and a union jack parachute blooms above him. Carly Simon starts singing Nobody Does It Better and it’s hard to argue.
1. The Burglars (1971)
Inspired, perhaps, by Buster Keaton’s Seven Chances, Henri Verneuil’s French-Italian caper climaxes with Jean-Paul Belmondo’s jewel thief being tipped out of a dump truck and tumbling into a quarry. In two out of the three shots in the sequence, you can see that it’s Belmondo doing the tumbling, rather than a stunt double. Afterwards, he brushes back his hair and strolls off. Incroyable!
● This article was amended on 15 June 2023 to clarify that the stunts in Stagecoach were performed by Yakima Canutt rather than his son Joe.
