The Inglourious Basterds Scene That Nearly Killed The Cast

Quentin Tarantino's 2009 masterpiece "Inglourious Basterds" features a whole host of action-packed sequences as its titular "Basterds" hunt down Nazi officials during World War II — but only one actually endangered the actors, according to Eli Roth.

In a HuffPost Live interview from 2015, Roth — who plays Basterds member Sergeant Donny Donowitz, known as the "Bear Jew" — told host Josh Zepps that one of the movie's scenes was incredibly dangerous. Specifically, Roth was talking about the ending, where a movie theater burns down with a ton of high-ranking Nazi officials inside. "Yeah, we were almost killed doing that sequence," Roth told Zepps, explaining that though it was shot on a stage that could accomodate the flames, the burning flags and other items made it perilously hot on-set.

"[The flames] were spreading so exponentially," Roth went on. "They said if we were in there another 15 seconds, the stage we were on would have collapsed and we all would have been killed." Luckily, Roth and his co-star in this particular scene, Omar Doom — who plays fellow Basterd Omar Ulmer — escaped the fiery set unscathed, but it definitely sounds like a pretty harrowing experience. So why did Roth, Ulmer, and a whole bunch of extras have to face this terrifying inferno in the first place?

The reason for the massive fire that kills a room full of high-ranking Nazis — including chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler himself, played by Sylvester Groth and Martin Wuttke — is all due to one woman that we meet at the very beginning of the film. After tension builds in the stunning, horrifying opening sequence of "Inglourious Basterds," Shosanna Dreyfus, played by Mélanie Laurent, narrowly escapes death just as Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) discovers her and her Jewish family under the floorboards of a French farmer's home. Years later, Shosanna is living in Paris and works as the proprietor and owner of a movie theater when she meets Nazi soldier Frederick Zoller (Daniel Brühl), on whose battlefield exploits a Nazi propaganda film is based ... and who takes a liking to Shosanna immediately.

Realizing that she can bring about the destruction of the Third Reich, Shosanna masterfully exploits Zoller by pretending she returns his feelings and convincing him, Goebbels, and Landa to hold the premiere of Zoller's movie "Stolz der Nation," or "Nation's Pride," at her theater. From there, Shosanna and her lover — the theater's projectionist Marcel, played by Jacky Ido — assemble highly flammable film reels behind the screen and interrupt the movie to show footage of Shosanna, taunting the room of Nazis and telling them they'll be killed by a Jewish woman before setting the film ablaze. Both Shosanna and Marcel die in the theater — Marcel in the fire, and Shosanna at the hands of an angry Zoller before she sees her plan come to fruition — and both Omar and Donny are killed too after they shoot Hitler over and over again.

The funny thing is that, in the final scene of "Inglourious Basterds," Quentin Tarantino majorly rewrites history; Adolf Hitler and his highest-ranking officials certainly didn't die in a movie theater owned by a Jewish refugee in Paris, for one thing. Apparently, Tarantino loved the idea of changing the real historical record and adding a little fire ... because he did it again a decade later in his 2019 movie "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood."

Early in the film, we meet Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) — an actress who, in real life, was famously murdered by Charles Manson and his violent, loyal followers — and follow her throughout Los Angeles as she goes to watch her own film "The Wrecking Crew" (which marked the real Tate's final film appearance). In real life, the Manson family stormed the Tate house and killed Sharon, but in Tarantino's revised history, they encounter fading Western actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) instead and decide to kill him. Unbeknownst to the Manson family, Rick happens to have a functional flamethrower — a prop from one of his jobs — which he uses to incinerate "Sadie" (Mikey Madison), one of the girls there to kill him. Tarantino really loves fire and changing history, apparently ... so much that he used the same device twice (albeit in two very different films and situations).