Broken glass, a hairy arm: Scenes from a movie

It was time to ratchet up the mayhem.

Actors Nathaniel Peterson and Adam Pitman had been sitting in the front seat of a stalled station wagon with rampaging Sasquatches pounding on the windows, jumping on the hood and rocking the car.

The camera was in the back seat, filming the chaos.

Now, the Bigfoots would break the car windows. Their upper torsos and arms would wiggle inside, trying to grab the terrified humans.

That meant setting up new shots.

In one, the camera would peer through the driver's window, Peterson would be removed so he would not block the shot, and a Sasquatch would smash Pitman's passenger side window to grab at him. Then the same shot would be repeated for Peterson on the driver's side.

But "Paper Dolls" was a low-budget movie.

That meant no stunt people.

It meant the windows were made of real glass - not the fake breakaway "glass" that Hollywood stunt people crash through. Pitman and Peterson would have to deal with real flying glass shards. And once a window was broken, there was no way to replace the glass if that sequence had to be shot again.

Pitman's window was the first to be smashed.

Lighting director Hollywood Hearn also had directed numerous television crime re-creation shows, and he took charge of this stunt. He put on a furry Bigfoot arm and held a wicked spiked club in his hand.

He and Pitman soberly talked through the stunt over and over, working out each move. They rehearsed over and over - on their timing and to make sure the camera would catch everything exactly as director David Blair wanted.

The plan was that Hearn would gently swing the club to tap the window frame twice with Pitman looking at it and the camera rolling. On the second tap, Pitman would snap his face away from the window. On the third swing, Hearn would smash it.

The take worked perfectly. But Pitman sustained several small painful cuts on his arm from the flying shards, requiring first aid. All the shards were then removed from the window frame and swept from the car seats.

Then Josh Mintz in his full Sasquatch suit took Hearn's place. The next shot had Mintz whacking the glassless frame with the club, and then throwing his upper torso through the window to grasp at a screaming, kicking Pitman.

Adrenaline kicked into overdrive as Mintz flailed at Pitman while two other Bigfoots - with deceptive gentleness - banged on the remaining windows with nastier-looking clubs.

Director of photography Michael Off peered through his camera and yelled: "Reach in there! C'mon, reach in there! Be like 'Jaws!'"

Finally, Blair shouted: "Cut. Cut. Cut! Cuuuuut!!!!!!!!!"

But Mintz kept lunging at Pitman, who kept squirming and kicking. Mintz suffered a big bruise on his arm before they stopped.

Mintz later said: "It's like the end of a boxing match. The bell rings, and the fighters still go at it."