The mysterious death of Natalie Wood, found drowned off the California coast in the winter of 1981, cast an inescapable pall over Brainstorm, the sci-fi thriller she was filming at the time she died. Earlier that year, its director Douglas Trumbull had spoken of his hopes for the film, telling Starlog Magazine that Brainstorm would be a “rare blend” of high-tech science fiction and the emotive family drama of Ordinary People, that year’s Best Picture winner.

“I want this film to have a very broad ap­peal outside of the [sci-fi] community,” Trumbull said. “I would like this film to attract people who normally don’t go to movies.”

But upon its release in 1983, following nearly two years of behind-the-scenes chaos, Brainstorm flopped at the US box office, sealing a legacy exclusively tied to Wood’s demise. A plot-heavy, sluggishly-paced precursor to Black Mirror, Brainstorm is now greater remembered as a morbid curiosity – both for Wood’s final on-screen performance, as well as her on-screen romance with Christopher Walken, who was one of the last people to see Wood alive.

It was towards the end of filming that Wood had invited Walken to join her and her husband, the actor Robert Wagner, on their yacht, the Splendour. The party, accompanied by the ship’s captain Dennis Davern, sailed to Catalina Island for shopping, dinner and drinks, before departing to an isolated cove, where they ate at a local restaurant before returning to the yacht.