Yet another Movie gun flub!

[entropy]

Anybody look at the cover of "The Great Raid"?

The soldier to the left kneeling firing a pistol is firing an M9 Beretta!

The others seem to be wearing Ridgeway caps, which didn't appear until the Korean War. And don't the look scary with the scabbards on their mounted M5 bayonets?

 

[Manedwolf]

Anybody look at the cover of "The Great Raid"?

The soldier to the left kneeling firing a pistol is firing an M9 Beretta!

The others seem to be wearing Ridgeway caps, which didn't appear until the Korean War. And don't the look scary with the scabbards on their mounted M5 bayonets?

Even easier thing to spot, just look for how many new movie promo posters with someone holding a gun (and not aiming it) have the actor with their finger in the trigger guard.

 

[kentucky_smith]

looks like a hump on the end there, but hard to make out.

 

[Devonai]

Obviously the movie is alluding to the fact that the US government went back in time to supply 9mm pistols to our GIs.

Just like the SIG P-series pistol being held by the guy on the poster for Munich.

I've long suspected that in film production companies there is a great distance between the technical advisors and the ones who cobble together the poster. I would be surprised if there was actually an M9 in the movie.

A quick stroll down the aisles at Blockbuster reveals many covers where a pistol has rather obviously been Photoshopped into the picture, or take for example the standee for Underworld: Evolution I saw in the theatre which shows the world's first P99 with a left-handed ejection port.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

My favorite gripe are the left-to-right reverses like the poster and
VHS/DVD cover for Enemy at the Gates, with the Mosin with the left
hand bolt hah hah. Not funny. Or the Billy the Kid movie
The Left Handed Gun based on a tintype photo of William Bonney:
tintypes were mirror-images (if you see the tintype, notice the
loading gate on the Winchester).

Of course, 9mm pistols seem to be easier to adapt to blanks than
1911 .45s, which is why reel Sgt York used a Luger and real Sgt York
used a GI Colt.

Movie prop departments need historical advisers.

 

[Manedwolf]

One that could have been a decent bit of writing turned out to be a flub, instead.

When the bad guy in Titanic pulls out a 1911 and starts shooting with it, yeah, it is possible that someone with that much wealth and power could have ordered the newest, most advanced pistol that just came out last year. I believe they'd just been available to civilians for a few months in mid-1912, when the movie, obviously, was set.

Except it was a nickel-plated version that didn't yet exist, and if you look at it in his hand and when he throws it, you can quite clearly see by the curved, not straight grip that it's a 1911A1...which wouldn't exist for more than a decade yet.

Oh well.

 

[Manedwolf]

Of course, 9mm pistols seem to be easier to adapt to blanks than
1911 .45s, which is why reel Sgt York used a Luger and real Sgt York
used a GI Colt.
Movie prop departments need historical advisers.

You can get a decent Italian-made replica 1911 that fires 8mm blanks for less than $100. This place has a bunch: http://www.replicaweaponry.com/blanfirgunre.html

I'd helped someone get some for a play. The replicas are semi-auto, and they throw brass with the same action as the real thing. Things like the Beretta 92 replicas are even single/double action! There's no excuse for not having reasonably historically accurate blank-firing prop weapons, not when they're this cheap.

 

[Detritus]

Of course, 9mm pistols seem to be easier to adapt to blanks than
1911 .45s, which is why reel Sgt York used a Luger and real Sgt York
used a GI Colt.

remind me didn't they actually Listen to YORK (yes Alvin york was a tech advisor for teh movie, in fact he demanded gary cooper play him or no dice on permission) and have cooper shooting a M1903, instead of going with what has become a gunny urban legend of York doing it all with a 1917??

for those who don't know Alvin York himself on repeated occasions stated that the guns he used in the capture of all those germans, were his issued 1903 springfield and a 1911 (can not recall where or how he came about having the pistol, it's been awhile).

 

[Oldtimer]

It's HOLLYWOOD! They try to "disguise" Sherman tanks to look like "Panzer" tanks, due to the lack of having actual German-made tanks. In numerous war movies, the "Nazi" planes are actually P-51 Mustangs with Swastika emblems on the wings.

Back when "Sergeant York" was filmed, the 1911 pistol wasn't easily converted to shoot blanks, so they "fibbed" by having York (Cooper) disarming a German officer and using his Luger. By the way, York was ISSUED a 1911, since he was an NCO, but he also carried an issued '03 rifle.

I don't recall the name of the WW-II movie that I recently saw, but it had an American soldier aiming a 1911 at an enemy soldier. The sights on that 1911 had the "three-dot" configuration, which was NOT on any issued WW-II pistols!

 

[BigG]

Alvin C. York was a corporal when he did the action that won the MOH. He was later promoted to sergeant.

 

[entropy]

It's HOLLYWOOD!

Yeah, but Dale Dye was the military/technical adviser for "The Great Raid", and I always thought he was better than that.

looks like a hump on the end there, but hard to make out.

We have a display stand at work and the pistol is about 2/3 actual size on it, and it is plainly an M9/ 92FS. (I had 45 of them in my Arms room, I can say this with certainty.)

 

[Detritus]

Alvin C. York was a corporal when he did the action that won the MOH. He was later promoted to sergeant.

you beat me to it, i wonder at which point the WW1 army issued an NCO a sidearm.

i have one of York's bios around here somewhere, picked it up to read about the man, and never got beyound chapter 1! got to looking it over once i was home and discovered that it should have been placed in the "christian books" section instead of the WW1 area. :banghead:
once i realized i'd not gotten study of his life, but a study of his "good works" with his life as a background, (granted it does seem to give detail in most of the "important" areas of his life that you'd expect, i just didn't like the semi-veiled agenda). i quit reading it and have not yet found a book locally that contains what i was looking for.

 

[BigG]

Detritus

I found a good bio and details on the Argonne Offensive where York won his MOH, but can't come up with it right off.

York was a backward fellow from a backward area and he was trying to do what he thought was right in not taking anything from the companies that gave him offers. Still, he ended up taking some stuff later on and his life to me looked like a colossal waste when I read about the finagling that went on among family, relatives, etc.

Just a lesson (to me) in what harm fanaticism can do. Not meant to set anybody off, but his story is a textbook example of real exploitation by unworthy peckerwoods.

 

[mbs357]

I noticed just the opposite in Hot Shots Part Deux the other day.
Nearly every person in the movie was very good for keeping their finger out of the trigger guard (except one scene with Saddam, but he did a good job too).
Pretty crazy.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

There is always the fig leaf that the cover art
for the Great Raid DVD was done by an Ad Agency
with no connection to the production company that
made the movie.

Hollywood needs to realize that historical accounts
are going to be scrutinized for detailed accuracy,
down to the posters, VHS boxes and DVD sleeves.

 

[Manedwolf]

Yeah, but Dale Dye was the military/technical adviser for "The Great Raid", and I always thought he was better than that.

It might not appear that way in the film, itself. The poster art for many things has NOTHING to do with actual filming or even photographs of actual products.

Graphics artists will often use stock imagery that's of the right angle and make composite images that best fit the needed composition. It's not at all unusual for a still ad of, say, a running person in front of a building to have a head and an arm from another stock image, since it fit the needed pose better. At the kind of resolutions you're talking about, you can go in at the pixel level and put things in people's hands, change their head, and nobody will know differently.

You can sometimes spot goofs, like two left shoes on a figure, a finger out of place, or, if the graphic designer is a non-gun knowledgeable sort who wouldn't know a Beretta from a super soaker and won't ask someone who does know, you get the wrong gun in a poster.

 

[outofbattery]

I don't recall the name of the WW-II movie that I recently saw, but it had an American soldier aiming a 1911 at an enemy soldier. The sights on that 1911 had the "three-dot" configuration, which was NOT on any issued WW-II pistols!

In Band of Brothers, the GI threatening the baker when getting bread to take to the concentration camp used a .45 with dot sights. Far worse errors have been commited but I thought it was funny and to be honest,I'm surprised I even caught it.

One gun/editing flub I noticed this past year was watching The Mummy on TV and noticed that the hero's shotgun jammed while he was shooting but they quickly edited it without snipping the flub.

 

[Manedwolf]

One that I'd heard actually did a decent job was the more recent "The Mummy"...that the main character's shoulder holster guns were actually a couple of French 1873 11mm service revolvers.

If so, I'm impressed.

 

[SixForSure]

The Comancheros

Throughout the movie, John Wayne, et al, are clearly seen carrying and shooting 1873s. The rifles that the gun runner was trying to sell appeared to be "Yellow Boys" This didn't seem out of place until JW introduced the prisoner he had been chasing to the woman who had been his neighbor. She was a widow and said her husband had been killed 4 years earlier at the Battle of San Jacinto. The battle was fought 21 April, 1836!

 

[Carl N. Brown]

San Jacinto widow in Comancheros

She had been a widow for (1872 - 1836) at least 36 years.
If that's the movie I remember, she looked good for a woman in
her fifties.

 

[afasano]

In the movie "The Big Red One" in the free the death camp scene a GI shoots his M-1 Rifle 18 rounds into an oven before the clip ejects.

 

[BigG]

Big Red 1

Afasano: I thought Mark Hammill kept jamming new clips into his Garand until he ran out, then Lee Marvin handed him another one and said something like, "go ahead, kid."

 

[kentucky_smith]

John Wayne liked carrying 1892 Winchesters in many of his movies, especially ones set around Civil War.

 

[afasano]

Afasano: I thought Mark Hammill kept jamming new clips into his Garand until he ran out, then Lee Marvin handed him another one and said something like, "go ahead, kid."

Then he must have found one that held 18 rounds because he just kept on shooting in front the camera, then the old "M-1 ping" and he shoved another in but that was off camera.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

The proverbial cutting room floor is probably full of cut scenes
of cowboys sloowly reloading SAAs, gangsters swapping out
mags and WWII soldiers jamming enbloc clips in Garands.

I remember a really bad James Bond clone movie that did impress
us kids because the secret agent did reload in gun fight. We
talked about that in lunch line the next day at school.

Hollywood just doesn't realize that people do appreciate
attention to detail.