On the night of August 8, 1996, while James Cameron was filming a scene from Titanic , the entire crew suddenly felt unwell.
There are 60 people on set that night, including actors Bill Paxton and Suzy Amis, who are on camera. And everyone feels weird.
Bill Paxton and Suzy Amis.
Some people want to vomit, others start laughing for no reason, others cry their eyes out…
Actor Bill Paxton recounted this moment in a 1996 interview with Entertainment Weekly :
“I felt perfectly fine, and then, suddenly, in an instant, I had a terrible surge of anxiety. I felt like breathing into a paper bag!”
James Cameron, for his part, says that he suddenly felt dizzy and preferred to leave the set to go vomit in the toilet.
“When I came back,” reveals the director , “there was no one there. Everyone had left the set.”
The members of the team actually dispersed in the studio, prey to a crushing unease. We see them moaning, lying on the ground, sobbing in despair or laughing out loud…
Suddenly, a technician from the team rushes towards James Cameron and sticks a pen in his cheek.
“I remember sitting on a bench seat with blood pouring from my face, and I couldn’t stop laughing!” says the director.
Emergency services were quickly called and the entire team was rushed to the nearest hospital.
There, doctors think the problem comes from the team’s last meal. This is the only hypothesis to explain why everyone felt bad at the same time.
There was fish soup on the menu, perhaps it contained a toxic shellfish.
The matter is taken very seriously and the police are responsible for investigating.
The patients’ blood and stomach contents will be analyzed to understand what has affected them to this extent.
When the toxicological analysis is revealed, it actually reveals that it is poisoning. But not due to a fish or a shellfish.
What made the team sick was PCP, phencyclidine, a hallucinogenic psychotropic drug. There was some in what the film crew ate.
PCP causes hallucinations, distorted perception of sounds, and even violent behavior…
But despite a long investigation, the police were unable to find the person responsible for this poisoning. In 1999, the case was closed.
But James Cameron has his own idea on the matter:
” I think it was a former employee who did this to get revenge. A member of the production had been fired the day before. He had a problem with the caterer who took care of the food on the set, it was becoming problematic , so we parted ways with him. I think he poisoned the food to get back at the caterer, with whom he had had problems. He probably wanted people to think that the caterer was doing his job badly and , therefore, that we would like to stop working with him. In the end, if that was his intention, it worked, because we immediately stopped working with this caterer.”