Movies featuring blackpowder firearms?

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iLikeOldgunsIlikeNewGuns said:
the capped percussion gun with cartridges in belt-loops always bugged me a little bit, but The Good, the Bad and the Ugly will always be tied with just a few others as my absolute favorite movie.
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+1. Easily one of my favorite movies, but the metallic cartridges are a little curious. There are a few other anachronistic points too.
 
I watched a wacky but entertaining film named "Jonah Hex". It's based on the DC comic book cowboy hero of the same name. He has a supernatural ability to speak to dead people when he touches their dead corpse. He's out for revenge but he's the good guy who does a lot of killing. Not too unlike Josey Wales but not as reality based.

Here's a movieclip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuZwdLfxTQ8


Here's the trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l0zSd_DQQ4


Wikipedia article:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonah_Hex_(film)


The U.S. military makes a scarred bounty hunter with warrants on his own head an offer he cannot refuse: in exchange for his freedom, he must stop a terrorist who is ready to unleash Hell on Earth.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1075747/
Click to expand...


The DC comic book might make some folks happy too!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonah_Hex
 
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The Northwest Passage [1940] starring Spencer Tracy was a good BP movie. In the movie they were using Brown Bess muskets mostly, which would have been correct, as Rogers Rangers were actually supplied by the British army.
 
I gave up on period correct firearms in movies, for the most part, long ago. I will say that many percussion pistols were modified to take cartridges, so the bandoliers are not entirely incorrect if the pistol is modified. Anyway, BP was around in reality until around 1900-06. (If I recall in Pale Rider, preacher changed cylinders, not cartridges. This was done in the CW, particularly by Forrest's troopers.)

All of the early rifles and pistols, Colt 45 Peacemaker, early Winchester lever actions, SW SChofield, etc were BP firearms. Even the early 1903 Springfield Rifles were BP firearms. There is an advisory against modern ammo on low serial number 03 Springfields. Remember the caution taught at firearms class to have old guns checked by competent gunsmith? This a good part of what they are wanting checked: to see if it can handle smokeless ammo.
 
The early Springfields had problems with brittle heat treated recievers, they were not, in fact, black powder arms. your point is still valid,though.
 
[from Wikipedia]
''World War I and interwar useBy the time of U.S. entry into World War I, 843,239 of these rifles had been produced at Springfield Armory and Rock Island Arsenal. Pre-war production utilized questionable metallurgy. Some receivers were improperly subjected to excessive temperatures during the forging process. The carbon could be "burnt" out of the steel producing a brittle receiver.[3] Despite documented evidence indicating some early rifles were improperly forged, actual cases of failure were very rare. Although several cases of serious injury from receiver failure were documented, the U.S. Army never reported any fatalities. Evidence also seems to suggest that improperly forged brass shell casings could have exacerbated receiver failure.[4]...''
 
See what happens when you trust what some one "tells you" as fact. :eek:MY BAD!:eek: Was told the first rounds for the 03 were round nosed BP rounds frequently referred to as 30-03 instead of the pointed spitzer 30-06 used in later Military arms.

I do know that BP rounds were MFG until the 20's and 30's to provide for all the old late 1800's guns designed for shooting BP.
 
Certainly, and Winchester even made the .32 Win Special in part for shooters who wanted the option of reloading with smokeless or black.

And while the .30'03 was smokeless, it may surprise some to learn that the Maxim--a weapon associated with smokeless--started out firing black powder cartridges.

Black powder slowly faded out of the market and was pretty much a distant memory by the end of WWII. But then some crazy guys like Turner Kirkland got the idea of reviving the smoke poles. I can guarantee you if you were to bring a gun crank forward in time from 1900, he'd be astonished that we even knew what black powder was. He'd also wonder why so many people were running around in parks with nobody chasing them.

This revival is reflected in film. If you look closely you will notice that in the vast majority of historical films from the 20's through the 50's, the black powder arms are anachronistic. You'll see surplus trapdoors posing as flintlocks, for example, and lots of late model leverguns appearing well before their time. It's only with films like "Jeremiah Johnson" that filmmakers started to bother bringing real smoke poles back on screen.
 
Yeah, I'd like to try one of those 3 foot long wheellock horse pistols. Had to be tough to fire from horseback.
 
.303 British was originally loaded with a compressed, black powder pellet.
 
absolutely correct!I had some of the stuff that followed the black powder rounds, loaded with Cordite.Jaymo, ever read John Masters ''Bugles and a Tiger''?
 
Valdez is Coming with Burt Lancaster. Lancaster plays a Mexican constable who is beaten when he solicits money from a tycoon. It is then revealed that he is an old 7th Cav veteran who fought with Gen. Crook, he then gets his Sharps rifle and wreaks havoc on them. Great dialogue.

BG: "you shot my men at 600-700 yards."
Valdez: "1,000."
BG: "you a buffalo hunter?"
Valdez: "Apache, before I knew better."

Before the was Quigley, there was Valdez.

I was with my cousin at WallyWorld when I picked it up for $5. It came in a disc with three flicks.
 
One I just saw recently that was very good was "Seraphim Falls", starring Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnan. Brosnan and Neeson are both excellent in this movie, and there are lots of open top revolvers to be seen, most of which have been converted to fire cartridges (the movie takes place in 1868 I believe).

It's kind of a cat and mouse type movie, Neeson is an ex Confederate officer pursuing Brosnan, an ex Union officer, to enact vengeance for a crime committed against Neeson's family at the end of the Civil War.

The scenery in the movie is spectacular, taking place in and around the Rockies.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0479537/
 
We have been watching some of the Disney 1950's Zorro for TV. The Spanish Army in Alte California seems to be armed with flintlock equiped Remington ROlling blocks and civilians seem to be armed with Flintlock cut down WInchester Model 37 shotguns with a fake flintlock on the side as pistolas. Actually fairly well done for that sort of thing and time period. The series is as I remember MAGNIFICANT! THey do not make TV like that anymore.

My only problem was as a kid I wanted to grow up to be Zorro, but seem to have gotten much closer to being Sargeant Garcia......

-kBob
 
Assassination Games, a newer movie with Claude Van Dam, He pulls out a pair of brass framed Griswold and Garison style dragoons from under his coat during an action scene.
 
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Missouri Breaks

Jack Nicholson is a horse thief and Marlon (sp) Brando is the dry gulching regulator hired to track down Nicholson and his gang. Brando has a Creedmoor Sharps rifle with a lot of inlay work.
 
Winchester '73

Strange thing about this movie.

Everybody wants the "one of 1,000" '73. We get the idea that the '73 is new on the market, form dialogue like "I got me a repeater, but it ain't no '73".

Everybody has Colt SAAs
 
Winchester 73. Long time since I saw the movie.Wasn`t it Dutch Henry who said -" That`s the trouble with those old Henrys- they take too long to kill!
I guess the .44 henry rimfire cartridge accounted for a lot of kills back in their day, but something more powerful was desirable. Was the .38-55 cartrige available in 1873? I know by about 1876 Winchesters were available in . 50- 70 caliber. George Armstrong Custer had one, liked it a lot. Said something like .."it could knock an antelope off his slats at 500 yards."
 
I just spotted some smoke poles in the trailers for the upcoming show "Revolution", set in a post-global EMP that knocks civilization down a peg or two
 
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