The inside story of the wildest shoot in film history

The harsh conditions were totally alien to most people there. “The crew complained a lot about the heat, humidity, hotel rooms, bugs, mosquitoes,” he says. “The mud – sometimes knee-deep – was a real challenge.” Damien Leake, who played a machine gunner in the film, was on set for three weeks and similarly remembers the physical as being unlike anything he had encountered. “The first thing I remember is getting off the plane and the humidity hits you like a wet mop,” he tells the BBC. “Having been from New York, I know humidity, but this was unbelievable.” The water was not safe to drink, geckos climbed the walls of the hut he stayed in, and the weather was biblical. “Every day it would rain,” he says. “It would rain like it was mad at you. It would rain sheets like I had never seen before.”