My wife is watching this Sylvester Stallone movie Assasins, well I happened to look at the screen at the right moment.

The scene has a guy up in a building going to shoot Stallone with a scoped rifle. There is an ammo carrier on the side of the rifle. This ammo carrier is loaded with shotgun shells.

You would think with all the money they spend on movies they would get the props right.

Of course I did see a movie about the Gold Rush some time back. Placed in the 1849 era they were carrying 1873 Winchesters. That crap ruins movies for me.

When I started watching movies/Tv on my computer, I started saving a few things when I thought of it and had the time.

The Horse Soldiers... SAA's (probably Great Westerns) with fake loading rods welded to them to make them look sort of like cap and ball guns.




Last week watching Narcos... he's got a bent suppressor and only one scope ring! (other angles show it's an airsoft rifle)



A shot from LOST. That front sight will make it hard to hit with.



The X-Files... okay, forgetting for a second the question of what he's doing to her to make her make that face.... he disarms Scully and we see she only carries one round in her magazine.



The other thing I've noticed, maybe it's intentional, a lot of prop guns don't have sights on them.

Stuff like that happens all the time. Movies and TV shows aren't shot in chronological order. The close up of the gun could have been shot weeks or months from when the wide angle shot was done. Different prop guy working that day. Not anything new, in fact they are doing a better job than years ago.

On a lot of the TV series the actors always wore the same clothes for a reason. Bonanza is a good example. This way they could always recycle scenes filmed for one show and use them again in a later show.

In one of the Bourne movies he is pointing a Sig at someone when the scene cuts away for a few seconds, it is a Glock when they come back.

That Ive seen few times, the worst being the awful "Pure luck" where an auto (Beretta 92 maybe? ,heck it was 1991 when I saw it) changes to a S&W revolver and back, depending on the camera shot.

I love it when a chick strokes the fore end of an AR-15 and you hear the sound of a shotgun racking a round.

I have a hard time watching John Wayne in The Comancheros. They are all carrying Winchesters and Colt SAA's yet the movie is supposed to be set in 1843.....

I remember a Barnaby Jones episode where the plot revolved around hand loader ammo for the perp's rifle. When the camera zoomed in on the perp's loading room, there was a MEC shotshell loader. Boom, case closed we have the evidence.

Those fall into the "Anything John Wayne used was OK" category.

Worst firearm idea ever was the Mare's Leg Winchester 92 Steve McQueen used in Wanted Dead or Alive.

Someone must have never had to depend on a firearm to survive a situation to have thought that one up....

Of course it's well known The Rifleman's, Chuck Connors, big loop Winchester wasn't yet invented. But he shot a hell of a lot of folks with it anyway didn't he?

Follow up: Val Kilmer and crew on Toombstone apparently had twenty round magazines in their single actions at the OK Corral. Look for it...

In the Vietnam War movie "Rain" one soldier is armed with a Hi-Point 9MM carbine.

And the ammo in the belt loops couldn't fit the rifle. Looked like he was carrying .45-70 ammo for the little .44-40.

Especially since he carried ammo for a different caliber weapon on his belt.

I always hate the empty holes on revolvers. Some movies I just like to look at ALL the old stuff, not just guns, some I can remember, some I just know about, and some I wonder about. I still like to look at the gun rack on Mayberry to see what is in it.

This is where the public gets their education; sparking bullets, auto pistols that sound like belt fed and carry that many.

I have seen a few movies where they actually had the proper guns, proper loading sequence for a muzzleloader, but even "History" channel has a guy priming a flintlock before loading a new ball.

Not an irritating prop, but here's one that I'm sure escapes a lot of people.

In the famous Dirty Harry opening shootout, Harry does his "how many shots did I fire" routine. When the robber "gots to know" if Harry had a round left, Harry points the gun at him and thumbcocks the hammer, and when he pulls the trigger on the cocked gun the cylinder rotates.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I530sPVQSc8

I've seen more than one Indian riding a shod horse.

Along those same lines, count [b][color:#3333FF]how many shots[/color][/b] Costner gets off in the next 25 seconds..





This cobbled together 2x4 monstrosity always makes me laugh, what is that like 6" between the bore and the line of sight?



I always found this shot in the final scene from th Good,Bad, and the Ugly interesting..





Ha, I never noticed that before...

You gentlemen just do not realize. All our western hero were armed with custom Colts made expressly for the movie industry. They're made to shoot 222 time before they have to be reloaded. This was insisted upon by the prop gun reloaders union.
Paul B.

"I have seen a few movies where they actually had the proper guns, proper loading sequence for a muzzleloader, but even "History" channel has a guy priming a flintlock before loading a new ball."

kenny, that may not be an error. Muskets like the Brown Bess used a "cartridge" in which the ball and powder were wrapped in a combustible paper tube. The loading procedure was to tear off the rear of the paper with your teeth*, then dump a small amount of the powder into the pan before shoving the rest of the powder, paper, and ball into the barrel. They didn't carry separate priming powder.

* This bit of trivia is why a full set of teeth was an enlistment requirement for British soldiers.

Very little of what is seen in western movies is correct. Model 92 Winchesters seem to dominate, regardless of the era the picture is to portray. Many times you will see Model 92's that have had the forearm removed and the receiver colored gold to look similar to a Henry.

Colt SAA's are the only revolver to have been used from 1840-1920. Sometimes you will see double action revolvers show up before they were made too.

Many saddles are modern "roping" saddles with low cantles and fat saddle horns.

Running cowboys with their rifles in scabbards with the stock to the rear and slapping the snot out of the horse, not to mention the ease of losing that rifle under those circumstances especially when running uphill.

Not only Westerns, but movies as a whole have skewed America to believe life is or was how it was portrayed in movies.

That Liam Neeson movie, The Grey.

All of it.

The movie Open Range.....first of all I really like that movie

But in the main fight scene Costner fans his revolver to shoot more than 6 shots

I think the fanning is worse than the round count

In the Marky Mark movie Shooter

He goes into a small farm center a buys a Remongton 700 in a high end stock topped off with a Leupold and M1 turrets....but that entire movie is a mess

Ordinary looking hand grenades that expolde with a monsterous ball of fire and blow up everything within a 1/4 of a city block.

stolen...

More than once I've mocked, "Where does he get those cool grenades!" Particularly when coming out of an M203 or the like.

I read a quote from Costner about screwing up with the editing on the opening of the gun fight scene where he shots 12 times. The problem comes about because they don't show him switching guns....that part of the edited movie wound up on the floor.

The rest of Open Range is phenomenal.

And in at least one scene in "Dances with Wolves" one of the braves is wearing white tennis shoes.

And we cannot forget Arnie, Commando and the 85+ people he killed in it; many with a seemingly endless belt for his M60.

Yes that 3 second belt from a M60 tends to last a lot longer on film

The good guys never miss and the bad guys cant hit anything

In the new release of ben hur. The king is wearing coyote fur. No coyotes in Rome then or ever

Or the opposite effect - The aerial bomb or artillery shell that has the appearance and destructive force of a hand grenade when it explodes near the good guys.

Chuck Conners was left handed. In some of the episodes he is using the rifle left handed. He is one of few men to play pro baseball and basketball.

There was a place in San Antonio,TX that housed prop guns for some of John Wayne's movies. I believe they liquidated everything several years ago. Maybe Birdwatcher has more info on this?

In the movie "Dead Presidents" the main character is using a Mossberg 590 shotgun in Vietnam. Im not sure the USMC was using 590s in that time period or not.

John Wayne Movie, "The Green Berets" the scene where one of the characters is attacked by two "viet cong" and he hangs one on a tree limb snag, but the other kills him. Duke picks up his M16 and breaks it around a tree to keep it from falling into the enemy's hands. Problem is, it is easy to see that the rifle is obviously a toy.

Hogan's Heroes, German army using Krag-Jorgensons.

In "The Fighting Seabees", John Wayne and his gang of workers go after some Japanese troops with Krags, too.



In "Hellcats of the Navy", they switched 1911s and S&W revolvers quite often, too, in addition to switching aircraft types, quite the big deal considering the name of the movie (Wildcats, Hellcats, and Corsairs).

Been watching some old Gunsmoke shows. Same actors play lots of different parts. miles

On the cover of the DVD for the Spielberg movie "Munich", the character is holding a Beretta Model 92 which was not released until several years after the timeframe in which the movie was set.

One of my favorites was in Rambo 2, when he fired the LAW rocket through the broken windshield. 1st, because the back blast would have fried everyone in the rear, and 2nd, because there's no way that LAW would have/could have taken out that Hind. They don't call them "flying tanks" for nothing.

Beat me to it!

Lots of movies with the Germans using later-model American tanks.

The movie version of "M.A.S.H" with the football game with equipment that is very post-Korea era.

Well if you won't take care of your horse you don't deserve to have it.

Well, at least the Indians weren't so gauche as to wear cowboy hats that they didn't deserve to wear.

We wore Chucks Converse All Stars back in the 60s and 70s.

I can see that. They showed him before the fight with 2 guns. Still my count is 14 shots.

Connors, Conners, Taylor - it's all the same.

My favorite is any time the move a firearm, it makes a bunch of "racking noise." Pretty funny, albeit annoying.

On the Breaking Bad episode where Walt buys the Ruger LCR, he spins the cylinder and it clicks like a single action revolver.

Costner showed his love of authenticity with his archery in Robin Hood. Every good bowhunter knows you wet down or tear off your fletching for the best accuracy.

I can't stand the poor gun handling! Finger always on the trigger, the cop loading a round in the chamber before making entry into a house, gun pointed up next to the actor's face so both are in the frame, and shooting without even the appearance of aiming.

Don't even get me started on ballistics.

Eric Bana in "Blackhawk Down" carried the gun cocked and loaded and he made a point of telling every it was.

Just as Ignorance is NO excuse to Break the Law, stupid is as stupid does.

A couple more that always have me shaking my head is when they throw a perfectly good gun away or angrily throw it at their opponent when it's out of bullets.

The other is picking up guns from dead guys without ever checking to see if it has any bullets left and how many or searching the dead guy for extra loaded magazines.

I'm always annoyed when the actor has racked a pump or lever action, then when he encounters the bad guy he does it again to emphasize how serious he is, but no cartridge is ejected.

Yeah, that's always a good one. Surprised someone hasn't mentioned the old cowboy movies where the cowboy whips the gun forward when he shoots. Bullet goes faster don't ya know. Actually it was probably a carryover from silent pics where you couldn't hear the boom.

Jim Arness did that constantly in Gunsmoke.

They needed a good technical advisor on there.

That was actually a thing, in the period being depicted. It was called "throwing down" - a style of snap shooting which involved dropping the pistol to bear in a sort of throwing motion, and firing as it came into line with the target. By holding the hammer with the thumb as the pistol was "thrown down" the swinging motion also cocked it.

Ed McGivern mentions it in his Fast and Fancy Revolver Shooting, among others.

And back in the Cap and Ball times it let the fired caps fall clear, not jam the pistol

I grin when they load a wagon with about 60,000 lbs of "gold" and then get 2 scrawny horses to pull it..

Gold is BERRY BERRY heavy!

Actually Gunsmoke had a good technical advisor, but sometimes, actors and directors don't bother to adhere to directions. Here is a copy of the very first page of every Gunsmoke script. It is from the Executive Producer of Gunsmoke, John Mantley.

_______________________________________________________________



FWIW.

L.W.