"You need to stop watching movies and lose the damfool notion that it's possible to shoot people just a little bit."
Tam said that. You've said something similar. I know I have. That got me to thinking...
I remember watching re-runs of the Lone Ranger as a kid. The Lone Ranger, being the good guy, shot the guns out of bad guys' hands. The gun. The hand would smart, but it looked like the LR never hit flesh. The baddies didn't have a hole or a missing digit or anything. And the bullet always zinged off somewhere, and never into the face of the black hat or someone else nearby. Classic Olde Timey television.
Other horse operas of the era had similar tropes. Blazing Saddles had the Waco Kid do it to make fun of the concept. I bet Roy Rogers didn't shoot to kill that often, but I haven't seen his complete body of work. (We won't get into Matt Dillon, Marshal at Dodge City...)
But these are all old shows. Much younger than me, and you haven't seen these. What shows, more recent, are people getting winged in the leg or shoulder by a good guy that wants to stop a bad guy but doesn't want to kill them? (And, this being a show, not even hurt them real bad. Wear a sling for a week, rub some dirt on that .45LC hit to the bones of your upper humerus and clavicle, you'll be fiiiiiiine, ya big baby.) Is there some show, that came out after 1974, that keeps this concept alive?
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I guess it happened to Della Reese in Harlem Nights. Her character got shot in the pinky toe. 1989. Kinda obscure.
In T2 the Terminator was ordered not to kill and he shot a lotta folks in the legs. 1991. But a cyborg has much better marksmanship.
2 comments:
In an early Gunsmoke, Chester and the Marshall are waiting in ambush for some bad guys. Chester said, "Aren't you going to give them a warning?" Dillon says,"All we're going to give them is lead."
I got the impression that T shot people in the knee, which might be a little more effective. But we are not, generally, that model.
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