In The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Tuco staggers in from out of the desert after having been abandoned by Blondie. After getting a nice drink out of a horse trough, he goes into the general store, manned by a Wilford Brimley lookalike, and demands, “Revolvers!” After a little confusion, Wilford brings out his best revolvers. Tuco spends several minutes looking at and listening to the various revolvers. He takes the frame from this one, mates it with the cylinder from that one, has Wilford listen to it. Then he gets a barrel assembly from yet another and eyes down it. Satisfied, he gets some bullets and goes off to engage in remarkable feats of marksmanship.
My question: Is there any basis in reality for this at all? So far as I could tell, Tuco took various pieces from different makes and models of revolvers and made them into a single Franken-revolver. This strikes me as incredibly unrealistic, even if it’s a pretty awesome scene. But I don’t know much about early revolvers, so I turn to the Dope. Does this make any sense at all, or is it just Hollywood?
The shopkeeper brought out an assortment of brands, but Tucco only chose parts from 1851 Navy Colts, anachronistically converted for cartridges. Thanks to Eli Whitney, the idea of interchangeable parts caught on early in the US.
After reading this post, I spent an embarrassingly long time trying to figure out how the actor who played Tuco in 1966 affected American industry over 100 years earlier.
dropzone, that sounds about right. It was the only way I could make sense of the scene, honestly. But it does give rise to another question:
Would it have been reasonable that Tuco could’ve taken a frame from one revolver, the cylinder from another, and a barrel from the last and come up with a weapon better than anything else Wilford had in the case?
shrug They are mechanisms, and used ones. He chose the frame with the best pawl and the cylinder with the best gear to give the most reliable and positive advance of the cylinder. He demonstrated the quality of the finished action to the shopkeeper. And remember what I said about how dirty black powder is? The schmutz left behind after you shoot is not only hygroscopic, but the water absorbed from the atmosphere combines with leftover sulfur to form sulfuric acid, which will attack the barrel. And the rifling will wear even in a well-cared-for barrel. Think of the parts of a gun as being consumables, just like the parts of a car. He took the best parts from three junker guns and built a hot rod.
patting your hand sympathetically I understand. I held jobs where they called me an engineer for 35 years, though I had only a couple classes in junior college. Now I’m not a salesman, and I’m working on not being a manager.
ETA: Hmmm, at least one superfluous comma. And to think I was not an English major for a year.
We just watched that one again last weekend - god, what a great movie. What you don’t realize immediately is that Tuco is in a way the main character of the film - Blondie and Angel Eyes are cyphers - gods, almost - and Tuco is the shitty little mortal who wanders into it. He’s the only one who talks more than the absolute minimum, even.
The last time I watched it in full was on a bus from Sucre to La Paz, Bolivia. One of the better movies that I’ve seen on a bus. The bus with The Blue Lagoon followed by Return to the Blue Lagoon, sadly, is still remembered.
Thanks, dropzone–that’s some excellent insight. And Zsofia, I’ve never thought about it that way before, but you’re right. Reminds me of the peasants in The Hidden Fortress or C3PO and R2D2 in Star Wars.
Interesting take. Danny Peary made a similar argument in his Cult Movies book in discussing Once Upon a Time in the West. He posited characters like Henry Fonda’s Frank, Charles Bronson’s unnamed protagonist, Blondie/Man with No Name and Angel Eyes are the last of a disappearing of race of semi-mortal gods, or avatars or some such. While the likes of the still dangerous, but somehow lesser Tuco or Jason Robards’ Cheyenne are in some sense their hybrid offspring. Still formidable, but no longer EPIC in focus, more human.
Kinda out there hypothesis, but it does sort of fit. You could probably run with a fine series of adapted “urban fantasy” books based on that theme ;).
That’s funny, I just saw Once Upon a Time in the West last weekend for the first time. I didn’t like it nearly as much as the more “mythic” Man With No Name films. But I can definitely see the argument there. (And how freaking cute is Cheyenne in that movie? Adorable.)
I think it’s interesting (and definitely BAD in my opinion) what’s been happening with TGTBATU releases - I first saw it on one of those DVDs that came in a really shitty case, the early kind where a plastic bit snapped out? Anyway, then it was the theatrical release with a few deleted scenes as special features. (The scene with the Confederates eating corn cobs that explains how Angel Eyes ended up at that prison camp, and oh god more Tuco taunting Blondie in the desert do we really need that in our lives?) Then I got a nice special edition DVD which edited those back into the movie. NOW the Blu-Ray has even more scenes that they jarringly got the surviving actors to dub. And they just all make the movie weaker! We don’t need to know how Angel Eyes followed Carson to the prison camp. Angel Eyes is the fucking devil! How did the devil end up at the crossroads? He’s the devil! That’s how! People like Tuco need directions. Angel Eyes just knows where to go.
As it was, the movie is the most pared down three hour movie in the world. Don’t go adding shit to it. It doesn’t need shit. And if you’re going to add things, make them optional. If you just saw the Blu-Ray you’d see a different movie than I did when I first saw the DVD and you wouldn’t even necessarily know it.
I remember seeing an interview with Eli Wallach where he said he didn’t know anything about guns and he just improvised that whole scene while faking like he knew what he was doing.
Huh. Note to self–do not get the blu-ray of TG,TB&TU. As I recall (it’s been a while since I’ve watched), my DVD has the deleted scenes as an optional bonus. I certainly wouldn’t want them edited back into the movie, and in no fucking way would I want more scenes dubbed by the surviving actors. That’s on a George Lucas level of bullshit.
