Tuesday, May 22, 2012

LOLWUT?


I had no idea that My Little Pony had grizzled mercenaries and Juarista revolutionaries. That might get me to watch. That and the Gatling guns.

Incidentally, the fast and loose attitude of old-time Hollywood prop departments toward realism in firearms is something that can render old movies nearly completely unwatchable for gun nerds. For instance, well into the '70s, M1873 Springfields, bought in bulk early in the century, served as generic long guns in pirate movies, Revolutionary War movies, Civil War movies... well, pretty much anything where they needed "old-timey looking guns with hammers on the side".

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EdAAZ2x5-E

fast richard said...

Next your going to tell me the Winchester 1894 wasn't the primary long arm in pre-civil war Kansas.

Drang said...

Like many, if not most, history geeks, I really love the Richard Lester Three and Four Musketeers. (Probably has something to do with screenplays by George MacDonald "Flashman" Fraser.)
Found the mish-mash of weapons technology disappointing, though. Matchlocks, flintlocks--a bit early for them, really--wheellocks, and even a caplock derringer! That last almost ruins the scene where Oliver Reed confronts Faye Dunaway while loading and winding his wheellock pistol.
But not quite--that scene kicked ass.

Anonymous said...

The guy who played Texas Jack in the movie Tombstone was also the armorer, and he put out an interesting book (lots of pictures) about all the firearms used in the movie, many of which were rented from his company. Good stuff. The book's called Tombstone, by Peter Sherayko.

Matt
St Paul

LCB said...

This has bugged me about war movies, too, but in a different way. When artillery fires, THE TUBE MOVES!!! Nothing worse than seeing a civil war era howitzer go "puff"...and the gun doesn't roll back. Or see 105's or 155's in a WW2, Korea or Vietnam era movie go..."puff"...and the barrel doesn't slide.

I'm slightly more forgiving on armor...but at least TRY to make the tanks look German. Patton is always ruined for me because they used American M-48's to stand in for Africa Korps tanks. Ugh...

Cincinnatus said...

LCB, not to mention a big dry plain in Spain as the Ardennes.

LCB said...

Robin, LOL, yeah!

Anonymous said...

It used to be to make trapdoor springfields appear as flintlocks they had rubber frizzens and sometimes hammers on them. For firing it was done by other means, to make a flash and puff of smoke. One reinactor I know found a lot of these rubber parts when working at a remake of the "Alamo". I always like the calvary carrying M-94 winchesters and in formations they carried trapdoor springfield carbines. Just different.

Anonymous said...

Actually, MLP FiM does include at least one cannon (shown and used several times) and a pseudo Gatling gun (last episode of season 2).

LCB said...

"I always like the calvary carrying M-94 winchesters and in formations they carried trapdoor springfield carbines. Just different."

There's some speculation that Custer thought he could win at Little Big Horn because he was used to his troopers having 7 shot Spencers doing the Civil War. Me...I think he was just arrogant.

Anonymous said...

Did anyone ever notice on Hogan's Heroes that Schultz's rifle was a Krag-Jorgensen?

Regards,
NMM1AFan

CGHill said...

@Anon at 2:34: Yep. You have to admire their pluck: half a dozen mares going after however many of The Enemy.

Angus McThag said...

LIke the trapdoor kentucky long rifle that dispatched Ol' Yeller?

They were often creative about restocking those and I imagine that loading a cartridge into that trapdoor is a bit easier than a period correct muzzle loader.

The HTML tag u is not allowed? How odd.

LCB said...

NMM1AFan...wow, I haven't seen an episode of Hogan's Heros in...30+ years. I'm shocked about the gun...everything was so...realistic on that show. :-)

What about shows that have gotten things right, or have at least tried? I haven't seen Combat! for years, but it seems like they did. And Band of Brothers...not sure about the German small arms, but they sure seemed to try to get everything else right.

Anonymous said...

Can't remember which movie it was (too long ago, and it was too crappy to remember the title), but I was half-watching some western that had Dean Martin in it, and after a shootout he swung the cylinder out of his single action revolver, reloaded one round at a time, and swung it back into place. That caught my eye so I started paying attention; several of the actors had similar guns, and the cylinders looked like 38, not 45. Can't tell you how it ended, I turned it off.

Must have been sooper secret prototypes from the basement labs at Sam Colt's place.....

toadold said...

There was a story that during the Viet Nam war that during the Tet offensive when the Army had to change from Jungle to Urban fighting there was a problem because they had never trained for that and they didn't have field manuals for it handy. However the TV show "Combat" had a lot of fighting in towns and cities so they picked up clues from that. Staying to the sides of street, leap frogging, left covers right, and etc.