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The Top 25 Coolest Movie Guns: (#15 – 11)
Image Credit: AVCO Embassy Pictures
The Top 25 Coolest Movie Guns: #15-#11
Here we are in the middle of the five week marathon look at the Top 25 Coolest Movie Guns and, well, I’ve realized that I could have easily done a Top 100 Coolest Movie Guns list as there are plenty of cool guns from the world of movies. But a Top 25, with a handful of “honorable mentions,” is much easier to write about. I mean, if I did five a week, this list could go on for twenty weeks. Twenty! That’s almost half a year. That’s insane.
Before we get into the next batch of guns, here are the first two weeks, just in case you missed them/want to check them out again:
And now, without any further what have you, let’s dig into week two. What are The Top 25 Coolest Movie Guns, numbers 15 through 11?
The Top 25 Coolest Movie Guns- #15-#11
15- Snake Plissken’s MAC-10- Escape from New York: When I first saw Escape from New York and actually paid attention to what I was watching I thought that the gun Kurt Russell’s Snake Plissken was issued was ridiculous. At that point in time, I had never seen a MAC-10 submachine gun with a scope on it. A big ass silencer? Yes, I had seen that. But a scope? Who the hell is using a scope to aim at stuff with a gun that’s usually full auto in the movies? But then the movie does depict “the future,” so maybe scopes are a thing in the future (and, to a degree, that is the case in movies. Loads of futuristic guns are “futuristic” because they have scopes and laser sights and whatnot on them). Anyway, the more I watched EFNY the more I liked the gun. It just “fit” the character. I then became pissed that the bad guy, the Duke of New York (Isaac Hayes), gets to use the gun more than the hero, and that’s just wrong. Snake should have gotten the chance to waste more Crazies with it before the Duke got it.
Snake Plissken’s MAC-10 at IMFDB
14- Martin Riggs’ 9mm Beretta- Lethal Weapon : According to the Internet Movie Firearms Database, the 9mm Beretta, properly known as the 92 F, was first used in the John Woo movie A Better Tomorrow, which came out in 1986. The first time I remember seeing it in a movie was the first Lethal Weapon, which came out in 1987 and, to a degree, it was a revelation. I had been used to seeing characters use .45 magnums if they weren’t using revolvers, and the Beretta used by Riggs was clearly not a .45. So what the hell was it? What was the deal with the pistol’s tip? Where did the movie makers get this thing from? While the movie doesn’t make Riggs’ Beretta anything more than a gun that Riggs is good at using (remember the shooting range “smiley face” sequence?), it became a kind of status symbol because how could you be a top notch scumbum undercover plainclothes cop in a cop movie now if you didn’t have a Beretta like Riggs? After Lethal Weapon I started seeing the gun in more and more movies (Who’s That Girl?, Real Men, Die Hard, Ricochet, the list goes on and on) and it became the handgun until the Glock popped up. Then everyone started using one of those.
And who else quotes this line from the movie?: Nine millimeter Beretta, takes fifteen in the mag, one up the pipe. Wide ejection port. No feed jams.”
13-Cobra’s snake head .45 magnum- Cobra : Lt. Marion Cobretti, as played by Sylvester Stallone in Cobra, is a guy that just oozes arrogant coolness. From the Awsom 50 car to the outfit to the sunglasses to the pearl handled .45 magnum with the snake’s head on the grip, the man is clearly above and beyond everyone around him and he goddamn knows it. And much like Riggs’ Beretta, Cobra’s .45 isn’t the world’s most powerful handgun or anything but it fits the character more than any other kind of handgun likely would. It does have a nice sound to it, though. It may not look like much but, in Cobra’s hands, it will stop the bad guy (and we see that happen in the supermarket opening sequence). And for some reason there was something awesome about Cobra, at home, taking the gun apart to clean it, using the gun cleaning kit he has in the egg carton in his refrigerator. And you really can’t go wrong with that cobra head on the handle. Very cool stuff.
Honorable Mention- Cobra’s machine gun with the laser sight- Cobra: Cobra first uses this particular machine gun, known as a Jatimatic SMG, in the big hooha car chase sequence, but the gun doesn’t have the laser sight on it. That doesn’t happen until right before the end of the movie, when Cobra is preparing the gun for use with the laser sight on it the night before the New World cult lays siege to the hotel he’s staying in along with Ingrid (Brigitte Nielson). And by putting the laser sight on the gun the Jatimatic automatically becomes supremely cool. It was still just a machine gun, but, man, nothing really quite looked like it in any other movie I had seen up until that point.
12-The Alien Gun- I Come in Peace (aka Dark Angel): This is the gun used by both the Bad Guy Alien, Talec (Mathias Hues), and the Good Guy Alien Azeck (Jay Bilas), in I Come in Peace. And, since it’s a weapon from an advanced alien race, it’s incredibly powerful and is absolutely devastating when used. And that’s just on its “one” setting. On its highest setting, it can literally cause things to explode (we see that at the very end of the movie). In the real world, the Alien Gun is a submachine gun known as a Calico M950 and, in its “real world” configuration, it doesn’t even look real. The gun was used in Tango & Cash, Maniac Cop 2 (watch Matt Cordell waste multiple cops with it in that one), and in Total Recall, but it never quite had the same impact as I Come in Peace (although Maniac Cop 2 comes close).
You ever wonder what sort of ammunition this space gun used? How does it run out? Is the ammo sort of all encompassing, used for each setting, or does each setting have its own ammo inside the magazine? This could be a big part of a I Come in Peace sequel, if and when it ever happens (31 years later I’d say it’s about time someone made it happen).
Honorable Mention: The Equalizer- Equalizer 2000: This is the gun used by Richard Norton’s Slade character and the gun everyone wants to own because it’s, well, the post-apocalyptic future and if you own a gun like the Equalizer you are probably in charge. The gun itself is ludicrous, as it appears to be multiple guns sort of attached together, but in action it’s cool as hell. Because it has to be. The movie wouldn’t work if it didn’t.
11- M60 with a grenade launcher- The Punisher: An M60, the big ass machine gun popularized by Sylvester Stallone in the Rambo movies, with a grenade launcher attached to it? Ridiculous and, by its very description, cool as fuck. But would anyone try to put it in a movie? Yes, someone did. Director Mark Goldblatt had Dolph Lundgren’s Frank Castle/The Punisher use that very ridiculous gun in The Punisher, in the scene where the Punisher decides to go after the Yakuza gang that has kidnapped the children of the Italian Mafia by first completely destroying the Yakuza’s underground casino. And when I say “completely destroying” I mean he fucking completely destroys it. With an endless amount of M60 ammo and grenades, the Punisher lays waste to the casino in one of the greatest “shoot everything in sight” sequences in action movie history. It’s a damn shame that the Punisher only uses the M60 once in the movie (that seems to be his MO, use a gun only once or, really, in one scene) and, on top of that, I don’t remember seeing it in any other movie since then. How has that happened? Why hasn’t anyone else in the action movie world wanted to use an M60 with a grenade launcher attached to it? It just boggles my mind.
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Next week: #’s 10-6!
Let’s Party! The Mind is the Best Weapon! Bon Appetit! Right? Wrong? I Know What You’re Thinking!
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