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

[Pratt]

Naw you mean danielday lewis did not shoot a brown bess with ONE hand?

 

[2 shots]

I wondered how Fess Parker got two shots from a long rifle in less than 10 seconds at the Alamo shooting at to men operating a field piece

thats where the trap door comes into play

 

[Pratt]

strange I remember a photo of parker holding a modified trap door 45/70 spring field pistol doctored up to look like a flint lock.
Hollywood thinks we are dumb.

 

[Kenn]

In Open Range gunfight, Costner is shown in several scenes shaking his revolver to remove spent cartridges. Pretty awkward for an experienced gunfighter. Use the ejector rod, dummy!

 

[Cori]

Too many to count; like the number of grains of sand in the world's beaches....

And that's just in The Patriot alone!

 

[Cori]

I was watching the rifleman once and you could clearly see a pack of cigarettes in Lucas's shirt pocket and he wore the same shirt every episode it being off white you could see the outline of the pack easily..

I think John Smith was guilty of the same thing on Laramie.

 

[Cori]

Okay, stupid question here which may show I don't know too much about guns, but in Daniel Boone, they load a gun by ramming a round shot down the gun barrel, and then they walk around most of the time with the gun barrel pointed down. Why does the round shot not just roll out like a marble down a tube? Thanks for clearing this up.

 

[Pratt]

Fess Parker shot a cannon team attacking the Alamo. He leveed old Betsy and shot two times in five seconds. Well Ole Betsy did not go to the alamo, and that shot required one terrific speed loader. Oh yes and Parker's flint never moved.

 

[trackpin]

September Dawn, a movie about the Mountain Meadows massacre, In 1857. You can see 1858 brass frame Remington revolvers being used. Never made a brass frame nor were they available in 1857.

 

[2 shots]

guy got shot in left shoulder, went to hospital blood and hole was on the right

 

[tenngun]

In the Revanant the background is sweeping mountain vista's but the actual event took place in the Dakotas.

And summer

 

[Rendezvous Valley Trading]

Cold Mountain. Excellent movie and book. One scene when Innan is clearing the field with a plow it cuts to another scene. When it cuts back to him in the field with the team someone is standing in front of the team holding them still. Don’t care. One of my favorite movies!

 

[Cori]

Cold Mountain. Excellent movie and book. One scene when Innan is clearing the field with a plow it cuts to another scene. When it cuts back to him in the field with the team someone is standing in front of the team holding them still. Don’t care. One of my favorite movies!

Yeah, in Daniel Boone I notice when there's a team of horses often you can't see the front of the team, as if someone is standing in front of them guiding them, but sometimes the team is shown moving.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Title says it all. What mistakes have you noticed in movies/tv shows that happen in the BP era like Daniel Boone, Patriot etc? Eventhough they try not to slip anachronisms, sometimes you can spot things that just don't fit with the era or even something in the background or an actor who forgot to take off his watch or whatever. Next weekend being Canada Day, I'm gonna have a 3 days weekend and have a second look at one or two movies and try to spot mistakes, out of place or out of period things for fun.

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

 

[ETipp]

At the expense of not reading all the replies in this thread, I will give my input. In terms of muzzleloaders, I cringe when I see them pour a bunch of powder from a powder horn into the muzzle without any means of measuring.

I apologize if this had already been mentioned.

 

[LME]

I am not a movie watcher per se but I did like Clint Eastwood films and watched a few. The biggest blunder I saw was when Clint was going to blow up a bridge during a Civil War battle. He had a bundle of dynamite in his hand. The problem was that Nobel hadn't invented dynamite yet ?

 

[stephenprops1]

Okay, stupid question here which may show I don't know too much about guns, but in Daniel Boone, they load a gun by ramming a round shot down the gun barrel, and then they walk around most of the time with the gun barrel pointed down. Why does the round shot not just roll out like a marble down a tube? Thanks for clearing this up.

You usually use a patch (a piece of cloth) around the round ball to seal the projectile in the barrel.

 

[stephenprops1]

It's like in the movie "Tombstone" where Doc Holliday fired a double shot sxs shotgun 3 times in 2 seconds. Hollywood Magic!

 

[stephenprops1]

Hmm... let's see...
I was five years old when I watched Daniel Boone...
And I can't say I noticed any mistakes.

At 5 years old we didn't know much about anything. LOL

 

[stephenprops1]

In a Jesse James movie, I saw Frank James chance a railroader off his mother's farm. He started off with an 1858 Remington pistol in his hand. When he got to the end of her lane, he was holding an 1860 Colt.