SURVIVORS Bale, Brand, Zahn (left to right)

Known for injuries, near-death incidents, and sheer madness on his sets, director Werner Herzog hasn't slowed down with age. Maybe it's because his actors—namely Christian Bale and Steve Zahn, in his latest, Rescue Dawn—who take most of the heat-stroked, maggot-eating, weight-losing, snake-biting abuse.

Not that they weren't into it.

"Werner's guerrilla shooting style was tough on the cast," Los Angeles Clipper Elton Brand, one of the producers of the film, said at the special screening Monday in the Dolby Screening Room in Midtown Manhattan. "But when Christian had to eat maggots, he wanted to eat maggots. When he slid down the hill, he wanted to slide down the hill," Brand says.

Bale added that there were rapids and waterfalls, and helicopters that were chopping the tops of trees. "There are not many films that allow you to experience that, and I loved it."

Then there were the snakes. "There's a water scene [where] they're submerged in water for a little bit. There are snakes in the water. Christian tried to bite [the snake] at Werner's insistence. He missed it. It got away. Dieter, the guy Christian portrays, was wild like that. He had a good time in the field."

Bale, who shed 63 pounds for The Machinist also dropped weight for this role, but it was his co-star Steve Zahn who shed 40 pounds in 4 1/2 months. "The hard part was actually doing all the scenes in this hut when we were chained together," Zahn tells Radar. "It was hot. It was horrible, actually. The maggots and the river and floating down the river—that was kind of a fun day.

Maybe it was the heat, but Bale tells Radar there was lots of laughing on set. "We couldn't help it in the situations we were in. We were, sort of, this ragged, decrepit-looking bunch. We'd lost an awful lot of weight. We were this puny, inept-looking, incapable crowd in the midst of the tide jungle with poisonous snakes and venomous spiders around us. I think inadequacy is always a great source for humor, and we were incredibly inadequate."

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