Unlike Captain Jack McClure, stuntman Jim “Bullet” Bailey is 100% dead. But that’s jumping ahead. Bailey gained some level of fame in the 1970s and (very) early 1980s by becoming a human torpedo. Using a special suit/harness setup that had titanium blocks placed on it, Bailey would hang on to stuff like Jr. Thompson’s Alky flopper in this video, getting dragged along the ground at high speeds.
He used to do a tunnel of death stunt that would see him hanging onto the side of a passenger car as it sped along toward a burning tunnel of straw, which was several hundred feet long. He’d release from the car and fly headlong into the tunnel, emerging on the other side, unscathed.
This video features Bailey, as we mentioned above, hanging onto the back of an alky flopper as it (slowly) launches and heads down the historic strip at the long dead Orange County International Raceway. While we don’t want to minimize the man’s body of work, these stunts are kind of lost on us. We get guys who jump stuff with motorcycles, cross tight ropes, and shoot themselves out of cannons. Being dragged at high speed? It is certainly crazy, but it just hits us as weird.
Oh, and about his death. Bailey famously met his end while attempting an epically brave (or tragically dumb) stunt with an airplane. He attached himself to the underside of an aircraft and was planning on becoming a part of the landing gear himself as the plane touched down. The flaw in this plan was the fact that the hook securing him under the plane broke and he was left hanging from the axle of the fixed landing gear. The weight of his suit and the lack of grip provided by his gloves did not allow him to hold on and he fell to his death. There is video of his fall. It is not graphic in the gore sense, but it is creepy enough to stay with you for a long while. Clicking here will bring you to that video…like we said it is VERY creepy.
Here’s Jim in happier days at OCIR!
