Christopher Duddy was shooting a film in Hawaii when disaster struck. For 28 hours he choked on fumes near a lava lake, fighting to get to safety
The 1993 erotic thriller Sliver should have ended differently: Zeke, played by William Baldwin, was scripted to fly a helicopter towards an active volcano, after Sharon Stone’s character, Carly, reveals she’s the killer. The pilot, Craig Hosking, had been tasked with flying low over Hawaii’s Kīlauea volcano, accompanied by the director of photography, Mike Benson, and his assistant Christopher Duddy, to film the bubbling lava and white plumes of smoke escaping from the Puʻu ʻŌʻō vent. It was a clear day on the Big Island when Duddy watched a corkscrew trail form in the smoke behind the helicopter, and he remembers thinking: “I can’t believe I’m getting paid to do this.”
It was November 1992, and a big storm was due to hit the area, so they were shooting as much footage as they could along the coast, capturing the rainforest and brilliant blue ocean shimmering against the black lava of the volcano, before the weather disrupted production. But as they dipped over Puʻu ʻŌʻō for a second time, the helicopter’s engine failed. Their visibility faded as thick smoke engulfed them. Duddy jolted his eyes away from the camera monitors towards the open doors and saw that they were heading straight for a cliff. There was a loud crash as the rotor sheared off on impact and the helicopter went into freefall.