My Friend Bob Dickerson sent me a link to this site which shows the progression of knives used in the Rambo movies. It's probably old stuff, but I hadn't seen it all in one place.
Reactionary that I am, I have to admit that of all the knives shown, my favorite is the knife in the photo above. It is a prototype that was not even shown to Sylvester Stallone. Simple, clean, functional. Better pictures of it can be seen here.
I'm not a fan of the Gil Hibben cleaver-type knife featured in Rambo IV. It seems that they wanted to play against all the futuristic designs they had used previously by coming up with something that looked crude and (barely) functional. The blade has a broken-off look, reminding me that one of the theories of the origin of the bowie knife is that Jim Bowie, during a fight with Mexicans, had a saber blade break off about 12 inches from the handle and found he preferred it at that length. (This theory doesn't hold up because Bowie did not fight Mexicans until the six months of his life, and the bowie knife was already a household word by then.)
This is Gil Hibben's knife design for Rambo III, with optional battleaxe crosspiece. Can someone explain this one to me?
That design looks to be designed mainly for combat purposes. The addition of a battleaxe pointing to the sides are intended for more damage imaginably like that of a huge spear on ancient times.
ReplyDeleteThe battleaxe crosspiece is fairly ridiculous and doesn't make sense.
ReplyDeleteIt makes it look like a flying machine of some sort.
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