Hollywood's Flintlock Fakery

For decades, moviemakers used centerfire, metallic-cased cartridge guns with wdummy flintlocks to emulate the real thing.

- Phil Spangenberger

Movie making is all imagery, or as Hollywood calls it, “movie magic,” or the “suspension of belief.” After all, you don’t really think the actor you see on the screen is actually flying through the air, hurtling through space, or making bad guys bite the dust, do you? Of course not! While watching the fi lm, you suspend your thoughts regarding real life, and in order to enjoy the movie, you put reality aside to happily enter a world of make believe, accepting such feats as part of the story. Enjoying a fantasy world is what movies are all about.

Take flintlock firearms for example. For decades Hollywood films had a favorite trick to make us believe that the actors were using real flintlocks in a period movie. Before the 1960s, the typical movie attendee was far less fi rearms-savvy than today’s audience, and commercially produced, quality reproductions of flintlock arms were not available. Thus, filmmakers were limited to what original arms that were still serviceable and safe could be obtained. Companies like Navy Arms Co. and Dixie Gun Works changed all that when they started offering modern black powder replicas back in the late 1950s.