Weapons in the Movies

[plain old dave]

Couple things.

Cartridge conversion Colts: Probably the most iconic Colt conversion was one carried by Geraldine Kearns (Chief Dan George's lady friend) in the classic Outlaw Josey Wales. Next time you watch the movie, note her "1860 Army" doesn't have a rammer under the barrel. Never mind that a cartridge conversion revolver in the Civil War era frontier is a significant anachronism.

Good point on Merwin and Hulbert; Pat Garrett had one at the start of Young Guns II.

Generally speaking, though, producers don't particularly concern themselves with historically accurate firearms; I'm sure there are a lot of posters that remember the Winchester 1892s with no foreends and Colt SAAs with a web fixed under the barrel portraying Henries and percussion revolvers respectively on Bonanza. Or the tendency of people all over the universe that had firearms to have common British military firearms on Doctor Who.

 

[BlueTrain]

There was an attempt to reintroduce the Merwin & Hulbert revolvers a few years ago but apparently nothing came of it. The originals only went out of production the same year my father was born. Actual production was by Hopkins & Allen, I believe.

Sometimes in old TV westerns or B-movies, you can spot a Colt Official Police that has been modified to make it look like a single action by the addition of an ejector rod on the barrel. Already in the early 1950s, there were reproductions of Colt single actions being made since Colt wasn't making them.

 

[Benzadmiral]

. . .
Colt could not produce an "in house" drilled through cylinder cartridge revolver until S&Ws patent ran out ... thus they would finish off pistols like the 1860 Army and then send it out to a gunsmith for a conversion. Or the customer could have the conversion done on their own. These converted pistols may not have been all that common, a lot of people liked the cap and ball offerings just as well and in those days there was such a hodge podge of calibers and ignition systems for cartridge guns that cap and ball was a good way to not get caught by a rapidly shifting market. Cap and ball guns didn't really begin to disappear from the scene until the 1910 era and lasted among poorer people well into the '20s or longer.

I've never heard of a cartridge conversion for anything as early as a Walker or Dragoon Colt, these pistols are HUGE and meant to be carried in pommel holsters rather than on the belt. They were really more of a stockless carbine. Though the best (strongest) Cap and Ball revolver may have been the Remington, Colt Armies are very elegant and tend to point a touch better, though the sights suck. With their open design the Colt shed busted caps more easily than the Remington and so may have been a bit more reliable. . . .

. . . For a guy with big hands the 1860 Army is by far the best with the biggest grips, the SAA had a more Navy size grip.

Then if in a story set in 1873, I say a Civil War vet uses an 1860 Army Colt (whether cap-and-ball, or converted to cartridges), I'd be okay? Good to know.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

In Godfather II, in the flashback sequence where the young Vito Corleone and his new friend Clemenza go into a townhouse to steal a carpet, at one point they are almost interrupted and Clemenza takes out and levels a long-barrelled Merwin & Hulbert, one with the "scoop" flutes on the cylinder. I think this is also the pistol Vito uses later to kill Don Fanucci, but I can never get a close enough look at it and he keeps a cloth draped over it, which realistically catches fire when he shoots.

 

[scottyrocks]

I don't know what this is, but it made a big impression on me. From The Expendables:

 

[scottyrocks]

Although a science fiction film that was based on a board game of all things, I found many of the scenes in Battleship to be pretty entertaining, especially the ones on the USS Missouri. That part of the film had an authentic nostalgic feel to it. The guns, combined with real ex-Navy operating them, as well as other systems on the boat, made for a nice feel-good sequeence, afaic.

 

[MikeKardec]

Then if in a story set in 1873, I say a Civil War vet uses an 1860 Army Colt (whether cap-and-ball, or converted to cartridges), I'd be okay? Good to know.

Regardless of the fact that the Colt Single Action Army (the cartridge revolver) was "out" at the time of your story, for a civilian to have one, especially in the West, would have been very rare. I suspect that the entire production (or nearly) went into their army contract for the next few years. Economics would play a role in what your character could afford, a firearm, heck damn near everything, was not nearly as easily purchased. Though others here know a lot of stuff and collectively put me to shame, don't hesitate to PM me directly if you have Western oriented story questions.

 

[MikeKardec]

Some pet peeve relating to guns in movies are things like the unboxing of stored weapons and then passing them out without ever cleaning the omnipresent Cosmoline or anti rust agent. Forgetting that new weapons would not be sighted in and that unless the ammunition was of a military spec made for that gun the sights wouldn't even be close is another. I realize that those are issues that can slow down a story and are often better left out but I would like to see them dealt with a bit more often.

Another one that bugs me is the sniper with the break down rifle who assembles the gun to show how "snipery" he is. Were I trying to take a long and critical shot I would test fire my rifle somewhere to verify it's zero (if possible at the exact distance I was going to be snipering at) and then I would not change anything until I took the shot at the critical moment. I've shot take-down rifles and recently mounted scopes and it seems to always take a shot or three before the gun settles in and becomes truly consistent. Heck, I don't consider scope adjustments permanent and reliable until a couple of shots have rattled them into place.

Silent silencers are another silliness. There are some pretty silent silenced pistols but they are very trick custom single shots ... those are probably the only ones that are anything like what you see/hear/don't hear in the movies.

Lastly there is the bullet proofness of nearly everything. How many times have we been subjected to people taking cover behind trashcans and the like. This is partly laziness on the director's part and partly just trying to keep the action contained so the camera work looks good. More work could be done, however, to 1) use actual cover or 2) to make the action quick and dirty like reality ... not so much running around. Fight choreography of all sorts is MUCH better than it was 30 years ago but I always found that it's the build up to a fight that is tense. As funky as his movies can be Quentin Tarentino gets this. The fight itself is often more dramatic catharsis than anything else.

 

[BlueTrain]

Getting behind a trash can is concealment, but not necessarily cover (but there are some stout trashcans out there). Occasionally in a movie there will be a scene with people cleaning weapons, generally (I assume) as an excuse for people to sit and talk to one another in an action movie. There's a scene in the pretty good movie, "Ice Station Zebra," of the marines putting their rifles back together when blindfolded. I suppose there's a good reason to be able to do that but I don't know what it is. There are scenes of training on the rifle range in the movie Full Metal Jacket (I think that's the one) but mostly stuff like that would only slow down a movie. On the other hand, there are movies with scenes that really slow down the action as a means to create suspense or mystery, only they weren't action movies. If I remember correctly, there is a scene or scenes in the movie Blow-Up with almost no sound as I remember it and you begin to wonder what's supposed to be going on. The movie came out in 1966, so it really isn't an old movie.

I do note there are a fair number of movies with rifles being handed out (usually to "tribesmen") with bandoliers of ammunition and no thought of them being cleaned or sighted in. But I rather doubt that tribesmen or Indians ever sighted in their rifles, especially if they were just handed to them. Anyway, such weapons would have been sent along with a supply of appropriate ammunition anyway. That would unlikely have been a problem in real life and they would not necessarily have been shipped covered in preservative. Preservatives like cosmoline are not used much anymore. When the division I was in, in the army, was coming home, the small arms were placed individually in heat-sealed plastic bags.

The boxes full of rifles were always stenciled "FARM IMPLEMENTS" on the outside.

One of my favorite movie lines is from "Bandito," which ended in a terrific gun battle between the Federales and the revolutionaries in Mexico over possession of a barge full of weapons and ammunition. When it was all over and the rebels had won, the rebel leader remarked that he had enough ammunition here to finish this war and start another one.

 

[Bushman]

Some pet peeve relating to guns in movies are things like the unboxing of stored weapons and then passing them out without ever cleaning the omnipresent Cosmoline or anti rust agent. Forgetting that new weapons would not be sighted in and that unless the ammunition was of a military spec made for that gun the sights wouldn't even be close is another. I realize that those are issues that can slow down a story and are often better left out but I would like to see them dealt with a bit more often.

Another one that bugs me is the sniper with the break down rifle who assembles the gun to show how "snipery" he is. Were I trying to take a long and critical shot I would test fire my rifle somewhere to verify it's zero (if possible at the exact distance I was going to be snipering at) and then I would not change anything until I took the shot at the critical moment. I've shot take-down rifles and recently mounted scopes and it seems to always take a shot or three before the gun settles in and becomes truly consistent. Heck, I don't consider scope adjustments permanent and reliable until a couple of shots have rattled them into place.

Silent silencers are another silliness. There are some pretty silent silenced pistols but they are very trick custom single shots ... those are probably the only ones that are anything like what you see/hear/don't hear in the movies.

Lastly there is the bullet proofness of nearly everything. How many times have we been subjected to people taking cover behind trashcans and the like. This is partly laziness on the director's part and partly just trying to keep the action contained so the camera work looks good. More work could be done, however, to 1) use actual cover or 2) to make the action quick and dirty like reality ... not so much running around. Fight choreography of all sorts is MUCH better than it was 30 years ago but I always found that it's the build up to a fight that is tense. As funky as his movies can be Quentin Tarentino gets this. The fight itself is often more dramatic catharsis than anything else.

My favorite is when somebody cocks a shotgun several times, and never fires it once.

 

[MikeKardec]

My favorite is when somebody cocks a shotgun several times, and never fires it once.

Or snaps on the safety to a Glock or Sig ... at least they don't try to do safety clicks with revolvers.

Slightly off the subject but one of my favorite "silly liberal Hollywood' bits of idiocy was on Lost. There's a guy (the US Marshal) in horrible pain with a piece of shrapnel protruding from his chest and they consider putting him out of his misery but don't know how to do it without a gun ... you know, "only guns kill." I think I screamed at the screen: "Just sit on the giant hunk of metal sticking out of him!" I mean, come on!

One of the oddest examples of highly specific ignorance was in Wilbur Smith's (truly fantastic) novel Eye of the Tiger where he describes the powerful kick of a .45 ACP as if it was like a .44 magnum or something. Smith grew up hunting in southern Africa, he's no doubt shot some of the most painfully hard recoiling rifles in the world, but he obviously wasn't aware of the relatively mild recoil of a 1911!

Eye of the Tiger is actually kind of an amazing update of stories like To Have and Have Not, a great adventure tale well told, regardless of the above detail.

 

[Edward]

Or snaps on the safety to a Glock or Sig ... at least they don't try to do safety clicks with revolvers.

Slightly off the subject but one of my favorite "silly liberal Hollywood' bits of idiocy was on Lost. There's a guy (the US Marshal) in horrible pain with a piece of shrapnel protruding from his chest and they consider putting him out of his misery but don't know how to do it without a gun ... you know, "only guns kill." I think I screamed at the screen: "Just sit on the giant hunk of metal sticking out of him!" I mean, come on!

That actually rang true to me. These folks were civilians, not military. It's one thing to point and pull as trigger - quick, easy. Not everyone has the stomach to do it the hard way.

 

[BlueTrain]

That is what guns are for, after all. In old movies, however, someone would hand the wounded man a pistol and go off and leave him. Churchill remarked on how easy it was to kill a man.

 

[MikeKardec]

That actually rang true to me. These folks were civilians, not military. It's one thing to point and pull as trigger - quick, easy. Not everyone has the stomach to do it the hard way.

You're probably right, and there should always be room to have characters say otherwise stupid things ... they are "human."

 

[BlueTrain]

Ninety percent of soldiers probably don't either.

 

[Edward]

Ninety percent of soldiers probably don't either.

I once knew a guy whose elderly father had been conscriptedc into WW2 (like so many in Britain at the time). The old boy reckoned he'd killed maybe thirty men.... but decades later, the one that still had him wake up screaming in the nigtht was the guy he had to bayonet rather than shoot from a distance.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

In the trailer for the upcoming Sony film "The Gunslinger,"based on the Stephen King novel(s), the gunslinger of the title is shown using what looks like a Remington c&b army (the rammer is visible under the barrel), clearly converted to cartridge. One brief scene shows that it has a swing-out cylinder and is loaded by 6-round full-moon clips. Some prop maker had a field day building this ba***rd weapon. I wonder if it really fires.

 

[Kirk H.]

I don't know what this is, but it made a big impression on me. From The Expendables:

It's an AA12 with a 32 round drum magazine.

 

[Benzadmiral]

That is what guns are for, after all. In old movies, however, someone would hand the wounded man a pistol and go off and leave him. Churchill remarked on how easy it was to kill a man.

At the very end of one of John Dickson Carr's early mystery novels *, Dr. Gideon Fell, the detective, leaves the guilty person with a revolver for that purpose. When he and the local constable check back after the murderer has had time to write his confession and shoot himself, they find the character has lost his nerve, and is just sitting there with the gun at his temple, shivering. A wonderful character touch which gives us a glimpse into the murderer's personality, and fits what we've already seen and what he's written in his confession, too.

* I won't say which one. You can have the fun of discovering it for yourself!

 

[Stearmen]

That is what guns are for, after all. In old movies, however, someone would hand the wounded man a pistol and go off and leave him. Churchill remarked on how easy it was to kill a man.

Not just old movies, Quigley Down Under has the famous scene in it.