15 props roaming Hollywood
If, when watching another American movie, you notice a vaguely familiar object in the frame that evokes associations with a completely different tape, then, most likely, feelings do not deceive you — directors rent props from the same storerooms, so that things can easily wander from movie to movie. We remembered a dozen and a half of the most notable cases of this type.
In the opening scene of the tape "Jason goes to hell" (the 9th part of the movie series "Friday, the 13th"), the FBI tears the main villain into small pieces with a bazooka shot. Jason's huge heart, which has fallen to the side, is still beating for some time.
Robert Rodriguez liked this trick so much that he got the organ he liked and used it again on the set of his cult horror "From Dusk to Dawn". There, the pulsating heart, spectacularly torn from the vampire's chest, calmed down forever, pierced by a sharpened pencil. What is not an aspen stake?
In the segment of the movie comedy "Stephen King's Kaleidoscope of Horrors" called "The Box", a certain deadly creature unknown to science is found under the stairs of an American university. The creature was packed in a box labeled "Julia Carpenter's Arctic Expedition from Horlick University. June 19, 1834" - according to the plot, it has been sitting in this container for the last one and a half hundred years. After shedding a lot of blood, as a result, the creature, along with the box, was sent to the bottom of the lake.
However, her adventures did not end there: a few years later, the box was seen in the basement of the Voorhees family in the horror "Jason Goes to Hell" (by the way, a bone knife and the book "Necronomicon" from "The Sinister Dead — 2" miraculously lit up there). And the name "Carpenter" on the box, of course, does not appear by chance — this is a direct reference to the director John Carpenter, who shot his horror about the Arctic "Something" at the same time as "Kaleidoscope of Horrors".
Attentive people might have noticed that most Hollywood characters who are busy reading the newspaper, as a rule, hold the same issue in their hands. The title page may vary depending on the plot needs, but on the rest of the pages the content is always identical: exactly the same black-and-white headlines, photographs and cartoons wander from film to film ... Providing Hollywood with copies of this "standard American newspaper" for the last half century has been a California company called Earl Hays Press, which makes all kinds of printed products for cinematic needs.
It's easier for studios to buy a stack of unnamed newspapers for 15 bucks apiece and always keep it on hand than to buy the rights to show pages from the New York Times or some other famous print body in the frame every time. The fake newspaper was featured in a huge number of movies (for example, in the remake of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and television series ("Married ... with Children", "Desperate Housewives"). In "There is no place for Old People here," the props masters, however, slightly overdid it, using two identical copies at once in the restaurant scene: Tommy Lee Jones reads one newspaper, and the second — supposedly different, but judging by the headlines, exactly the same - lies on the table in front of him. Another argument in favor of the expression "more does not mean better"…
To build a futuristic world from scratch for the film "Back to the Future - 2" was a very difficult and expensive task, so it is not surprising that the authors scraped together some of the props for it on studio shelves, hoping that the viewer would not notice the "second-hand". The meticulous viewer, however, combed through the cult film almost frame-by-frame and saw everything - both the spinner from "Blade Runner" and the delorean-like starcar from "The Last Star Fighter".
Despite the fact that director Robert Zemeckis set himself the goal of distancing himself as much as possible from the gloomy version of the future that is shown in Blade Runner, some elements of this film still could not do without (which is not surprising, considering that Gene Weinfield, one of the developers of that film, helped Zemeckis to gain a futuristic look the most original spinner). Well, will you spoil a good fiction with a small "cameo" of a repainted spinner? So the fans decided that no. By the way, the notorious "car of the future", invented by Winefield together with designer Sid Mead, appeared later also in the action movie "Soldier" (1998), but only a few people remember this film today.
Have you noticed the ancient gold coins, as if traveling from movie to movie? "Stooges", "Captain Hook", "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" are not a complete list of paintings where they can be seen. That's right: the same pile of fake jewelry has been exploited by Hollywood for decades.
And, in general, there is nothing to be surprised about, because in real life, money also constantly changes hands. Hollywood fake coins are the very case when the words "save money" are used in the most literal sense.
Sam Raimi has a very peculiar sense of humor: having chosen the 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale1973 car as his own mascot, the director finds ways to insert it into almost every new film (starting with the debut "Sinister Dead", where the car appeared for the first time).
"Oldsmobile" lit up in the "Spider-Man" trilogy, and in the horror "Drag me to Hell", and even in the western "Fast and Dead" — in the latter case, it was an obvious anachronism, since it happened in the Wild West, so the car had to be "stripped" to the ground and built on, disguised as a van of that time. In the most recent tape — the remake of "The Sinister Dead" — Raimi's favorite car, of course, is also present. She probably won't disappear from the screen until Sam retires. In other words, there is still enough for our century.
Almost everyone knows that all phone numbers that get into the frame in Hollywood movies traditionally start with the numbers 555 (as well as the fact that real numbers of this type do not exist in the USA). Much fewer people are aware that a similar measure has been taken with respect to California license plates. The GAT series numbers are no longer issued, which gives the props the opportunity to use the same number (2GAT123) literally everywhere where it is required to show a large car ass.
Examples? "Beverly Hills Cop 2", "Training Day", "Mulholland Drive", "Traffic", "Kiss Through" and hundreds of other movies and TV series. The props masters believe that few people pay attention to the plates they made, because they stamp the same number over and over again, without making any changes to it. By and large, they are right, since the operability of the "universal number" has been confirmed by decades of its use, and, minus the most rabid geeks, no one really asks questions until now.
One of the decorations of the film adaptation of the "War of the Worlds" by Steven Spielberg was a crashed plane. Especially for the film, Universal Studio bought a decommissioned Boeing 747 for 2 million and broke it into pieces. The authors of the film "Very Scary Movie - 4" did not have such money for props, so they went the simplest way: in a scene parodying the "War of the Worlds", they used the same Boeing.
Today, the remains of the plane are still lying in the backyard of the studio, and anyone who comes on a tour of Universal Studios can see them. Filmmakers are famous for their thrift (this is especially true today, when it becomes more and more difficult to beat off budgets), so it cannot be ruled out that this unusual item of props will still flash in some new film.
Fans of the movie "Predator", of course, remember the weapon from which the characters of Jesse Ventura and Bill Duke conducted a hurricane fire through the jungle. The six-barreled M134 Minigun machine gun (a smaller copy of those machines that are installed on helicopters) became a real legend after the release of the tape. Made by special order, a lightweight mini-gun nicknamed Old Pain weighed more than 20 kilograms, it was accompanied by giant batteries and a box of cartridges that had to be carried on the back. Ventura's on-screen partner Arnold Schwarzenegger really liked the weapon, so a few years later, when he was called to Terminator 2, Arnie persuaded James Cameron to use it again.
Not otherwise, the Austrian Oak took a machine gun with him when he was leaving home from the filming of Predator, and was just waiting for a convenient opportunity to uncover it and smash a dozen or two police cars into trash. There is no doubt - in the hands of the Terminator, the Old Pain looked simply gorgeous. By the way, the system was driven by an electric drive (a thick cable was hidden in the actor's pant leg) and fired only blanks. Arnie pulled the trigger just for show: he was required to hold the M134 in his hands, while other people controlled the weapon. "When this thing started shooting, everyone's jaws dropped, including the cameraman," the filming participants later said.
Fans of "Ghostbusters" probably remember well the amusing gadget with which the four guestbusters measured the level of psychokinetic energy in the field (that is, they tried to detect the presence of ghosts). The "Counter" looked so great that other filmmakers wanted to use it— although its purpose changed from film to film.
For example, John Carpenter, during the filming of the Sci-fi "They Live", did not have the money to develop the intercom devices that the aliens used in the plot. And since the "PCE level counter" looked quite mysterious and besides it could be rented, the director did not hesitate for a long time. Further, the gadget served in the films "Commando from the suburbs" (where he played a search device), "Knight of the Roads", "Otherworld" and other less noticeable film fiction. The continuation, presumably, should be…
Paul Verhoeven's "Starship Troopers" became one of the last Hollywood projects for which a lot of futuristic costumes were sewn. The uniform of the Federation soldiers who fought with intelligent bugs filled the storerooms after filming, but did not stay there for long — in the same year it was borrowed for the filming of the fantastic film "Turborangers". Next, Joss Whedon dressed Alliance soldiers in it in the TV series "Firefly" (in places, you can even still see traces of bug blood on the armor plates!).
And Tim Burton in the final remake of "Planet of the Apes" presented the same outfit to the monkey rapid reaction squad. Then there was the Sci-Fi "Alien" — as you might guess, far from the last in this series ... The form, as they say, went hand in hand. Even after repainting, the helmets and breastplates of the paratroopers from Verhoeven's film remain recognizable — their characteristic shape is difficult to confuse with something. But since the demand for the "uniform of the future" remains high, and almost every producer with limited financial resources wants to save on costumes, we must assume that it will pop up somewhere else, and perhaps even more than once.
Do you remember the figure of the grinning golden god hunted by the main character of the movie "Indiana Jones: In Search of the Lost Ark"? The idol, of course, was too good to keep it on the shelf, so a couple of decades later it surfaced in the melodrama "Majestic" (in the insert plot of the tape there is a film parody of "Indiana Jones" called "Sand Pirates of the Sahara", where the same god was awarded a "cameo", although it is no longer in In South America, and in an Egyptian tomb). Later, the filmography of the god was replenished with the TV series "Star Trek. Deep Space Nine" and the action game "Children of Spies - 2".
Apparently, the idol featured in the Steven Spielberg film is copied from the Aztec goddess Tlasolteotl (there is a similar statuette of the goddess with a child crawling out between her legs, although experts believe that this is a fake dating back to the XIX century). Everyone can buy such a gilded god today, since the manufacturers of merchandising have stamped a huge number of them. So if familiar figures continue to pop up in someone's films, we personally will not be surprised at all.
In Tim Burton's Batman movie, a plastic surgeon who "corrects" the Joker's smile operates with a presentable set of tools, among which a kind of loop-like thing with spikes stands out, as if specially created for torture. Stop! Isn't this the same dental instrument that belonged to Steve Martin in the "Little Shop of Horrors" and was applied by him to Bill Murray?
You're right — the one. But the wide range of its use is not limited to this — for example, in David Cronenberg's thriller "Bound to Death", the same torture kit was already seen in ... the gynecologist's office. Oculists and proctologists have not been interested in them yet, but something tells us that it is only a matter of time.
Without a doubt, Robbie is the most "long-lived" and in-demand item of props in the history of American cinema, he even has his own page on IMDb. The seven-foot robot was created in the MGM studio workshop back in the 50s and first appeared on the screen in the fantastic film "Forbidden Planet" as an invention of Dr. Morbius. The film was a great success, and Robbie became a star. Since its creation cost the studio 125 thousand dollars, the producers decided to give the robot the opportunity to work off this money - next year he got a new role, appearing in the film "Invisible Boy". This was followed by participation in the TV series "The Twilight Zone", "Lieutenant Columbo", "The Addams Family", "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.", etc. Robbie flashed in such films as "Gremlins", "Earth Girls are easily accessible", "Cherry 2000", "Looney Tunes: Back in Business" and others — his complete filmography has about three dozen titles (and this is not counting commercials).
Despite his age, he is still in demand: relatively recently, Robby the Robot became a guest star in the TV series "The Big Bang Theory" and went to the famous convention of fans of comics and science fiction ComicCon. They say that the real Robbie "retired" back in the 70s and is now kept in a private museum, and an identical full-size copy is working on the screen for him today. But for the audience, it's still the same old acquaintance from the "Forbidden Planet", whose popularity over the years has not been able to completely overshadow even Lukas's R2D2 with C3PO. Who doesn't know Robbie? Everyone knows Robbie!
Not by a single Hollywood: Soviet cinema was also happy to use the same things in different films. The first place among the favorite items of Mosfilm is held by the statue of Perseus and Pegasus" works by French sculptor Emile-Louis Picot, the most memorable to the viewer for two comedy hits - "Office Romance" (Novoseltsev drove this gift horse in the elevator, calling it "mammoth") and "Diamond Hand" (Semyon Semyonych Gorbunkov, as we remember, tried to buy in a thrift store "the same, but without wings"). For the first time on the screen, however, the sculpture supposedly appeared back in 1950 in Mikhail Romm's film "Secret Mission". Then there was Vladimir Nazarov's "Package", and after the "Diamond Hand" and "Office Romance" Perseus and Pegasus were seen in the editor's office in the tape "My affectionate and gentle Beast".
Already in the post-Soviet era, the statue decorated the wedding in the comedy "Shirley-Myrli". And in the new millennium Perseus and Pegasus got a job in Hollywood, having appeared in the American comedy "The Deal" in one of the restaurant scenes - although, of course, it was no longer a "Mosfilm" copy. Less well-known is another mascot of Mosfilm - a statue of a bare-chested woman who starred in The Formula of Love, Old New Year, Evening Maze and, by the way, the same "Office Romance". This item of props has already retired and today decorates a kindergarten near Pokrovsky Gate. And the winged "horse"... Who knows, maybe we'll see her somewhere else?