Trivia: Vic Morrow, one of the leading actors in the movie, and two children, Renee Chen and My-ca Le, were killed during filming when one of the helicopter stunts went wrong.
Trivia: During the opening credits where the eye comes toward the viewer, if you look at the pupil, you will see a picture of Rod Serling.
Trivia: In the opening, the two guys are discussing TV shows including Twilight Zone. They specifically mention the episode with Burgess Meredith when his glasses broke. Meredith was also the narrator during the movie.
Trivia: In the story of Helen Foley, there are a few tidbits. One, she is told she missed the turn at Cliffordville, and says she's going to Willoughby. These were both towns in the original Twilight Zone series episodes "Of Late, I Think of Cliffordville", and "Last Stop, Willoughby." Also, the man Helen talks to was played by Dick Miller, who was Murray Futterman in The Gremlins.
Answer: It's unlikely we'll ever fully understand. However, there were already a number of violations involving the children, prior to the stunt. It seems to boil down to the audiences at the time demanding more and more dangerous stunts and actions in their films that the film makers, and Landis, tried to accommodate. Landis also seemed less concerned about the dangers and either didn't think it would be that risky or was more concerned about finishing production on time. For whatever reason, Landis ignored warnings of the dangers. But given that he violated night time production laws involving the children, including hiding the children from welfare workers and telling them to keep everything a secret, shows he was more concerned with getting the shots and must have felt the stunt was that important.
Bishop73