Movies & TV / Columns

The Top 25 Coolest Movie Guns (#25 – 21)

February 19, 2021 | Posted by Bryan Kristopowitz
Army of Darkness Bruce Campbell Image Credit: Universal Pictures

The Top 25 Coolest Movie Guns: #25-#21

PunisherDolphM60

When it comes to movie guns there are only two real categories: cool and lame. There are no other categories. So what are the top 25 coolest movie guns? That’s what this list is for.

Over the next five weeks, I will be listing the top 25 movie guns, with five guns named each week. There will be honorable mentions, but there won’t be a set number of honorable mentions. I’m going to try to fit them in where they make the most sense. I’ve also tried to stick to “real world” guns, or guns that appear in movies that take place on Earth. I’m going to break that rule a few times, but, for the most part, the guns that will be appearing on this list have some basis in reality. Guns that appear in science fiction movies were the hardest to decide on but a few of them do appear on the list, so be prepared for that. I didn’t want to come up with super stringent rules for this list. The whole point of this list is supposed to be, in the end, fun, for both you, the reader, and me, the writer/compiler.

For reference, I’ve used the very cool site the Internet Movie Firearms Database (check out the site here), which goes into great detail on what kinds of guns appear in movies and television. I will be providing a link to the specific page I used for background info on the gun I’m writing about so you can see an image of the gun in question when I used the site. The internets wouldn’t exist without websites like IMFDB. It just wouldn’t.

And so, without any further what have you, let’s get this list started. What are The Top 25 Coolest Movie Guns?

The Top 25 Coolest Movie Guns- #25-#21

Trancers4DVD

25- RBG-7- Trancers 4: Jack of Swords: “RBG” stands for “Really Big Gun,” and our hero, former trancer hunter turned official peacekeeping emissary of both time and space Jack Deth (Tim Thomerson), is issued it by Lyra (Stacie Randall), the Council’s science officer/weapons designer/whatever the hell she is. The RBG-7 shoots plasma rounds of some sort, which sounds impressive, but when Deth ends up in some weird beard medieval dimension when his time machine goes haywire, the gun isn’t all that devastating. It just shoots out plasma light round things. Still, the gun looks cool and fits more with the futuristic setting of the, well, future, as we see it in the Trancers movies (check out the trailer at the end of this article for a look at the RBG 7).

DollmanBRD

Honorable Mention: Groger Blaster- Dollman: I thought about putting this gun in the #25 spot, as it’s a cool gun and a cool idea, but I decided the RBG-7 was slightly cooler. Anyway, the Groger Blaster is the handgun that Tim Thomerson’s Brick Bardo uses and the one thing criminals fear the most about Bardo on his home planet Arturos. The Blaster can destroy a human body with one shot. When Bardo ends up on Earth as the Dollman the Blaster can no longer obliterate a person with one shot, but it can do serious damage. I often think about the pain Jackie Earle Haley’s Braxton must have been in at the end of the movie after suffering multiple hits from the Blaster. I mean, Dollman shoots Braxton’s goddamn arm off! That’s insane.

http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Dollman

ArmyofDarknessBRD

24- Ash’s Boomstick- Army of Darkness: Technically known as the Remington 12 gauge double barrel shotgun, Ash’s Boomstick is the gun that Bruce Campbell’s character uses throughout the Evil Dead franchise to help him dispatch deadites, the demon zombies that are constantly after him. In many ways, it’s just a shotgun, but it becomes a really big deal when Ash is sent back to medieval times and he’s the only one there with a gun (because, you know, it’s medieval times). The lever action shotgun he uses at the end of the theatrical cut of Army of Darkness is pretty cool, too (Ash manages to get off many more shots in succession with this rifle as opposed to the double barrel shotgun, which has to be reloaded after two shots), but the double barrel boomstick is king. It’s louder and can likely do more damage with each shot. But, like I said in the parenthesis, you have to be quick reloading this because you only get two shots with it and if you miss? Again, you better be good with reloading it. Or you can just shoot it like four or five times in a row without reloading. It is a movie gun, after all.

http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Army_of_Darkness

PoliceAcademy4DVD

23- Tackleberry’s .44 Magnum- Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol: Sgt. Eugene Tackleberry is the resident gun nut of the Police Academy franchise and in Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol, Tackleberry unleashed upon the world his .44 magnum. Now, Tackleberry had a different kind of .44 magnum in previous Police Academy movies (remember the scene in the first movie where Tackleberry destroys a target with the gun that he got from his Mom?), which was cool and all, but the .44 magnum that Tackleberry uses in this movie is much more lethal looking. It’s also used in the scene where “Tack” allows citizen cop hopeful Mrs. Feldman (Billie Bird) use it during target practice and flies back after firing it. “Now be careful because a .44 Magnum has quite a… kick.” Indeed.

Would this gun, which is identified on imfdb as the Dan Wesson 744V, be practical for a cop? It would seem that the gun’s barrel length would make it difficult to use. Anyone have any insight into that?

http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Police_Academy_4:_Citizens_on_Patrol

AlienNationDVD

22-454 Magnum- Alien Nation: Detective Mathew Sykes, as played by James “Jimmy” Caan, is out for revenge against the newcomer alien bad guys that killed his partner Tugg (Roger Aaron Brown) and he’s going to need a bigger gun because the newcomers are tough to kill (they’re typically bigger than your average human and newcomers have two hearts). So Sykes talks to, I guess, an LAPD armorer, and gets a 454 magnum, a revolver with shells so big that the cylinder only holds five rounds instead of your standard six. The 454 also has a nifty scope on it because it’s the future (?) and, let’s face it, a scope or laser sight just makes a handgun look cooler. Sykes takes the gun to the range and destroys a target that he’s put a bulletproof vest on. Holy shit! A handgun so powerful that it can obliterate a bulletproof vest? If Sykes ever gets to use this new gun against the newcomer bastards he wants to take out he will likely take them the fuck out.

How the hell did Sykes carry this gun around? Did he carry it out around? Did he have, like, a shoulder holster that we never see? Or did he leave it in the car because it’s just too big to carry around?

http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Alien_Nation_(1988)

ArmedandDangerousDVD

21- .50 Caliber- Armed and Dangerous: This is the handgun that John Candy’s unjustly disgraced former cop turned unjustly disgraced security guard Frank Dooley arms himself with towards the end of the movie, when he intends to stop the big hooha armored car robbery scheme cooked up by Robert Loggia’s big time union head/ mobster scumbag Michael Carlino. According to the imfdb, the gun isn’t a “.50 caliber,” but is actually a Freedom Arms Model 83 that shoots 454 Casull rounds (it’s essentially the same gun that Sykes uses in Alien Nation). But “.50 caliber” sounds better, especially when Dooley explains to the cowboy truck driver that helps him get to his destination “It’s a .50 caliber. It’s used to hunt buffalo with. Up close. It’s only legal in two states, and this isn’t one of them.” That awesome bit of dialogue just would have been as awesome if the gun was a “Freedom Arms Model 83 chambered in 454 Casull.” Dooley eventually uses the gun to shoot up a car that’s coming at him and causes the car to engage in a wild flip. Could the gun do that in “real life?” I have no idea. But that flying car flip sure looked exciting after Dooley shot the car.

http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Armed_and_Dangerous

**

Next week: #’s 20-16!

Bigger Guns! A mega shotgun! A machine gun and grenade launcher! A double barrel experiment! At the Continental!

**

Thanks for reading. Agree? Disagree? Sign up with disqus and comment. You know you want to, so just go do it.

Please “like” The Gratuitous B-Movie Column on Facebook!

Oh, and B-movies rule. Always remember that.