• Friends, our 2nd Amendment rights are always under attack and the NRA has been a constant for decades in helping fight that fight.

    We have partnered with the NRA to offer you a discount on membership and Muzzleloading Forum gets a small percentage too of each membership, so you are supporting both the NRA and us.

    Use this link to sign up please; https://membership.nra.org/recruiters/join/XR045103

What mistakes have you noticed in movies/tv shows that happen in the BP era like Daniel Boone, Patriot etc?

Muzzleloading Forum

Help Support Muzzleloading Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Gee where to begin.

Let me start with the series TURN which i could watch over and over, however….

The sound the chains rattling every time a flintlock is cocked makes me ask who the hell designed that special effect.
Turn is SO GOOD. I know we're supposed to despise Simco but he ended up being my favorite character.

Fun little factoid, that character was supposed to be gruff and rude, but the actor thought "What if we made him a terrible person, but exceedingly polite and soft spoken?". Really excellent portrayal.
 
Beginning of Josey Wales. House burns down, He finds a Colt Walker in the ashes, with no damage to the wood grip. Then proceeds to spend hours practicing shooting. Where all those unmelted round balls and powder, caps come from?
 
The old shows I cut some slack, because they had nowhere near the resources that we have today. Daniel Boone broke stereotypes, and was pretty good for it's time period.

Northwest Passage, they use the wrong guns and the wrong hats, but hey it's Spencer Tracey and it was the 1930's.... Captain Blood with Errol Flynn, the cannon stuff was hilarious, Allegheny Uprising... very early John Wayne BUT... in one scene a musket is loaded by holding the ball in the palm of the hand, and coving the ball with a mound of powder, which IS a type of authentic loading technique....



What I don't like are shows done recently which have NO EXCUSE not to be more correct.

Jamestown... no hats, lack of women's caps..., wrong women's clothing, women arguing their case in court, slaves spectating in court, etc....
Black Sails...., platinum blonde bimbo with huge openings in her blouse NO SUNBURN, mullet haircuts, crewcuts, lack of hats...
Sons of Liberty..., costumer should be shot it was soooo bad...
Colonial House... British BBC production aired in USA on PBS...., totally bogus as they put a bunch of folks together without any of the skills needed, in fact selected AGAINST living history people, but then didn't respond to the knuckleheads.
Frontier House..., same idea but set in the 19th century..., had prejudice against guns, so didn't show any hunting, and although it was done in summer, they could easily have simulated hunting.... but it's known this was refused because the director thinks guns are bad....

For the folks that say that "accuracy" would create a "documentary" and that it would be boring, see Downton Abbey...still not convinced? See Band of Brothers...., and Master and Commander... and Kenneth Brannagh's Henry V.

LS
I love BOB. Shooting scenes were often good, the late episodes were way off. They were far far from the first to discover the concentration camps, and never got close to the Eagles Nest, those where other divisions. Sorry, but too lazy to research the sources I read last week.
PS. Spiers was every bit crazy / total badass as portrayed.
The guy that the Friend guy David something was not quite the dingbat portrayed.
 
Last edited:
I haven't had time to read all of the posts here, although this is an interesting one and I've been working on it,
and I don't mean any offense to anyone if they've already said it, but, what mistakes haven't I noticed ?
 
Its always amusing to to see '92 Winchesters and '73 Colts in John Wayne's CW era movies.

And it has always bothered me to see Jeremiah Johnson splashing around in the icy creek in leather boots. Even a city boy would know better. But then, he also bought a .36 caliber "real Hawken".
While a 36 caliber Hawken was made by the Hawken brothers, the glaring mistake is that in the books, Johnson's rifle is described as a 32 bore rifle or 32 balls to the pound and was a 56 caliber rifle.
 
While a 36 caliber Hawken was made by the Hawken brothers, the glaring mistake is that in the books, Johnson's rifle is described as a 32 bore rifle or 32 balls to the pound and was a 56 caliber rifle.
Yes I've heard that, however following that logic, what would that make the .50 he got from Hatchet Jack?
 
Its always amusing to to see '92 Winchesters and '73 Colts in John Wayne's CW era movies.

And it has always bothered me to see Jeremiah Johnson splashing around in the icy creek in leather boots. Even a city boy would know better. But then, he also bought a .36 caliber "real Hawken".
30 caliber genuine hawken.
 
I think that was added to give Redford two rifles or simply pure directorial fantasy to get a rifle of 54 caliber in the script.
They certainly needed one of us as technical advisor. Its been a few years since I last saw the movie but as I recall the dialog the narrator said, "He wanted a 50 but settled on a 30, but it was sure 'nuff Hawken".
 
I always grin when it seems ALL tomahawks and knives find their mark as a stick with perfect throws, no matter the distance. Yes, some miss but they stick in the wood. In my demonstration of knife and hawk throwing, I help educate people how movie magic plays a big roll in this. One would think, in the heat of a fight, if a hawk or knife is thrown, it would not always hit with the edge or point. That is not the Hollywood way.
 
By far the church burning scene in the patriot is unforgivable and is a travesty.

The British/ Loyalists in the South committed plenty of atrocities but.....

The NAZI SS burning of an occupied church is not one of them.
For this reason, the Patriot is unwatchable for me.

If you want to see real history, watch....

Come and See....
 
Someone posted that the church burning scene in the Patriot made it unwatchable . . . However, if one reads the book, The Swamp Fox, by John Olier, you will find that churches were burned by the dragoons, possibly not always with the full approval of British generals, and colonists were tortured, especially loyalists who flipped toward the colonists.

In true Mel Gibson form, the movie has a lot of over-the-top moments, but the rifles were great and if one can overlook a few things, it's a great movie.
 
Someone posted that the church burning scene in the Patriot made it unwatchable . . . However, if one reads the book, The Swamp Fox, by John Olier, you will find that churches were burned by the dragoons, possibly not always with the full approval of British generals, and colonists were tortured, especially loyalists who flipped toward the colonists.

In true Mel Gibson form, the movie has a lot of over-the-top moments, but the rifles were great and if one can overlook a few things, it's a great movie.

Full or people ???!!!!
Absolutely not!!!!

The nazis did just that in Lidice 1942 and in at least 2 occasions in France 1944.
This is not counting the Einzengroupen (sic spelling) on the Eastern Front.
 
Back
Top