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The 8 Greatest Makeshift Movie Weapons

By Danny Gallagher July 20, 2007 534,767 views
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The stalwarts of most action heroes' go-to movie weapons-automatic rifles, flamethrowers, lightsabers-might look good onscreen, but they can be unreliable. Guns run out of bullets, flamethrowers can explode suddenly, and lightsabers go through more batteries than a college sorority house.

This means that, in the very likely event that, at one point or another, you're going to engage in a climactic fight to the death with your nemesis, chances are good that you'll have to get creative. Using common household objects as implements of death shows your adversary a level resourcefulness, cunning and sheer ingenuity they'll have to respect, even as they're trying to kill you. You've got to be the sort of person who looks at a weed whacker and has a light bulb pop up over your head, and is able to then grab that light bulb and use it to kill someone.

So to prepare for your inevitable date with an army of rivals who for some reason will stop at nothing to kill you, here are the 8 greatest homemade weapons in movie history.

#8.
The oxygen tank from Jaws

In the Peter Benchley novel, Quint stabs the shark with a harpoon and kills him, but his foot gets tangled in one of the barrels, drags him under and drowns him. Since Steven Spielberg was presumably wholly unaware that the original ending was a not-so-subtle nod to Moby Dick, or that a book called Moby Dick was ever written, he decided to end the film adaptation with a big explosion instead:

In the final moments of the movie it's down to just Chief Brody and the shark. He stuffs an oxygen tank in the Great White's massive mouth, crawls up the crow's nest as the Orca sinks, calls the shark a son of a bitch and BOOM! Lucky for Brody, Jaws the killer shark is no more. Unlucky for the audience, Jaws the unstoppable film franchise is followed by three more sequels that made audiences want to blow up their neighborhood Cineplex.

How It Is Useful Against Your Enemies

Thanks to a recent episode of Mythbusters and a behind-the-scenes feature included with the Jaws Special Edition DVD in which Spielberg makes Richard Dreyfuss hold an oxygen tank in his mouth while Spielberg shoots at it, we now know that puncturing an oxygen tank does nothing to turn your enemies into shark chum. The shark will have a pretty wicked little head rush while it eats you though, so there's that.

#7.
The frying pan from Kill Bill Vol. 1

After being shot and left for dead, The Bride (Uma Thurman) is more thirsty for revenge than a Kennedy is for beer, and she begins her search by venturing to a quaint Pasadena family home. When Vivica A. Fox (A.K.A. "Copperhead") opens the door, a brutal fight ensues that is equal parts QVC and UFC:

Copperhead lunges with a kitchen knife that you can almost hear Susan Sommers hawking, and the Bride fends it off with a frying pan in a move straight out of the Julia Child Guide to Kicking Ass.

How It Is Useful Against Your Enemies

A frying pan is big and heavy, it's got an ergonomic handle perfect for swinging, and makes a very satisfying "thud" when it connects with your enemy's skull. There's also something about a frying pan that just screams "Clobber someone with me, you know you want to!" It's probably buried deep in our brains from all those Looney Tunes shorts we watched as kids, though we're hoping that isn't true because it'll just give Jack Thompson another excuse to talk.

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131 Comments

Chainsaw hand with sawed-off shotgun for the win.

...and yes, YouTube's been blocking more things.

6/23/2009 10:47:22 PM
Bloomsday

Is it just me? or is youtube blocking more and more s**t every day?

6/18/2009 9:04:29 PM
coreyrutter1

first of all, it's one month after the last comment. yay! =D also, i think that a weed wacker would make a pretty good makeshift weapon if you think about it. i hit a tree with one of those motherfuckers and it almost cut the damn thing down

6/15/2009 7:16:46 PM
heartgrenade12

This reminds me of Drawn to Life. You get a snowball gun that shoots, well, white semi-frozen mush. So what did my totally mature friend do?

Drew it as a penis gun.

5/15/2009 9:59:03 PM
kitourahime

Asdfzx: Do you think it would be possible to modify an oxygen tank so that it wouldn't kill or mortally wound whoever the hell you shot? Because I think that it would be freaking awesome.

On another note, has anyone else beaten rats to death with a piece of wood?

5/12/2009 6:36:09 PM
Jhbnytwoo

An oxygen tank becomes a powerful projectile if shot, moving fast enough to tear a hole in or violently throw whatever your target is. Not so useless after all.

4/28/2009 7:52:44 PM
asdfzxc920

The "Robo-Forklift" that you refer to is caller a Power Loader... I thought you guys were nerds... Get with it.

4/22/2009 1:51:10 AM
ExquisitExamplE

Agreed, Chainsaw hand was awsome at that time...what was that french horror film where the chick was swinging around a jaws of life steel extracter rotary saw? that was awsome also..."The holster for the greatest weapon of all..is your skull"...

4/5/2009 4:01:07 PM
FRANKENSLUT

The chainsaw hand from Evil Dead II was probably one of the most epic things I've ever seen.

4/3/2009 8:17:00 PM
Tako

You forgot the compressed air gun from "No Country For Old Men." Come on Cracked, get with it.

4/3/2009 12:39:41 PM
pedoluv

In fact From Dusk till Dawn also has the penis gun and the cross/shotgun! u guys totally dropped the ball there.

4/2/2009 3:31:20 PM
thunderhorse35

OMFG you guys totally forgot about the jackahammer-stake George Clooney used to kill vampires in From Dusk till Dawn!!!

4/2/2009 3:29:38 PM
thunderhorse35

OMFG cracked..... you do realize only one of these videos worked right? youtube sucks salty bovine balls. theres plenty of good websites devoted to KEEPING tv, cartoon and movie clips, and even entire movies, that would work a zillion times bettr than picking anything off of s****y-ass youtube.

4/2/2009 11:18:00 AM
pacey

Where are the weapons from From Dusk Till Dawn? I love the super soaker full of holy water (natch)

4/2/2009 11:16:38 AM
davidnio_42

"But a regular, good old-fashioned forklift can work too. It's basically a mini-car with a spiked battering ram on the grill. If you can pimp out the engine to make it go above 30 mph and get your enemies to fight you in the warehouse where you work so your boss can't have you arrested for stealing company property, it could be pretty sweet."

Have you ever driven a forklift? It's nothing like a car. They don't have suspenders and they turn, ass-first, in 180 degree circles.

Good article.

4/2/2009 10:16:25 AM
mGolos

Where's the carrot from Shoot Em Up? He kills like 3 or 4 guys with one...

4/2/2009 4:41:15 AM
Darclipto

But what about Harry's 15-inch black rubber c**k, from "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels"?

3/26/2009 4:30:00 PM
c4mpincarl

jujuskinny - I agree, the cross-bat-gun is definite #1 material. For shame Cracked!

3/14/2009 12:57:11 AM
DeviousDVO

Someone mentioned way down below that John Cusack trains, and I found out that the assasin is in fact Benny "The Jet" Urquidez(sp?) who was his former kickboxing coach.

2/9/2009 10:43:21 AM
petzljake

Umup0: I dislike sports of all nationalities, but just because an object has heft (especially when wielded in the nut regions) doesn't make the sport inherently manly. s**t, a badminton racquet in the nuts could incapacitate you (side-on) but that doesn't mean that I'm going to start acting as though it's suddenly badass.

Besides, I think that prior to the 'wimpy euro sport' reference, they praised the ass-kicking qualities of the equipment itself enough, comparing it favorably to a baseball bat of the same material.

1/11/2009 2:52:10 PM
auslander

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