Double Dare

Amanda Micheli's documentary about the dangerous, exhilarating lives of professional stuntwomen is less a history of a specialty that scarcely existed before the '70s — men habitually donned wigs and dresses to double for women — than a portrait of two women, one beginning her career and the other in the twilight of hers. The grandmotherly Jeannie Epper comes from a long line of stunt performers and grew up in the business. Steven Spielberg calls the Epper family the "Flying Wallendas of film," and remembers that when shooting a large-scale brawl in his movie 1941 (1979), "there were Eppers flying all over the place. There were Eppers coming in from screen left, Eppe...