The helicopter zombie stunt is actually hilarious to watch if you know what to look for.
First of all, it had to be shot in the morning, when the winds were perfectly still. The fake top of the head had a wire in it to a guy hiding behind the boxes the zombie stunt man was walking up. If you look at his face, you can tell that he is terrified half to death of the rotor blades, and he is walking as stiff backed as he can for the exact height.
When the command is given to pull off the top of his head, he gets a totally peaceful expression of relief on his face while falling backwards onto the hidden mattress.
I hope they paid him a LOT of money for that stunt.
Otherwise, they mentioned that the cast just had a blast during production, and everybody was chipping in ideas that they thought were cool. A fun set to work on.
Oddly enough, once you see the behind the scenes stuff, you realize that parts of the movie are intentionally comic. So the next time you see it, while everyone else is getting grossed out, it’s hard to not start snickering.
ROTFLMAO!!
EXACTLY my first thought!
(As I understand, they had a heck of a time working to make that effect go correctly in the movie back then)