by The Matt
No.5 Hail to the king, baby!
You could spend your whole life trying to measure up to the panty melting manliness that is one Ashley J. “Ash” Williams, S-Mart employee in good standing and Deadite-slayer par excellence, but to even make the attempt is an endeavor doomed from the start. Hint: Ash’s badass quotient far exceeds yours. Not only does Ash, personified by geek icon Bruce Campbell, accomplish more during a simple vacation to a cabin in the woods than you’ll ever manage to fit into your entire lifetime, but he also always wins, always gets the girl, and always does so while making some of the coolest one-liners in the history of cinema.
But even the studliest of male specimens can’t possibly take on the hordes of undead monsters spewing forth from the Necronomicon’s blasphemous pages without the proper gear. Where most movie heroes would settle for a single implement of destruction, Ash is not most heroes. Most heroes aren’t even fit to brew Ash a cup of coffee. No, Ash knows he’s gonna need BOTH hands to dispense some righteous fury. This would be a problem, seeing as how Ash had to sever one of his hands in 1987’s Evil dead 2, but Ash is the proud owner of an engineering degree and we all know the only thing those are good for.
“Pictured: What a $20,000 engineering degree is good for.”
Oh yes, that IS a chainsaw attached to Ash’s severed left hand. And to complete this lovely little ensemble we have a 12-gauge, double-barreled, S-Mart quality Remington shotgun, affectionately reffered to as “The Boomstick” by primitive screwheads everywhere. Even a total badass like Dirty Harry only used one weapon in one hand in his quest to punish criminals. Ash knows God gave him two hands for a reason: so that each one could be filled with awesome, badassed perfection. The number 5 spot on this list goes to Ash Williams’ chainsaw/shotgun combo.
Groovy.
No.4 Wolverine’s Adamantium Claws
Everybody wants to be Wolverine, it’s a scientific fact. There’s a reason why he’s so overexposed in both comic and movie form. Born over 100 years ago, James Howlett was gifted with a healing factor that allows him to shake off mortal injuries like Sarah Palin shakes off common sense, feral senses and razor-sharp bone claws in each hand. Combined, these attributes are more than enough to make him one of the most dangerous men on the planet.
He’s either really pissed or he needs more fiber in his diet.
Captured by the Weapon X program, which needed someone capable of surviving the adamantium bonding process, Wolverine was torn apart and rebuilt from the ground up, a process so physically and psychologically devastating that it left his mind a raging inferno for several years. The procedure was a success, however, and what was once merely a dangerous man was now the ultimate killing machine, with unbreakable adamantium claws and a skeleton coated with the same metal.
Friends and foes alike fear Wolverine’s claws, nothing can withstand them and even the strongest opponent will be wary of engaging a pissed-off Logan. Having your entire skeletal structure rearrange itself to pop your claws out at a speed approaching that of a bullet-train isn’t going to do wonders for anybody’s disposition. With Logan prone to fits of berserker rage, it’s a safe bet that nobody’s going home happy once the claws come out. Not Logan, and certainly not anybody on the receiving end of his fury.
No.3 The Predator’s Energy Caster
It takes a special kind of scary monster to spawn a franchise. Dozens of horror movies are released each year, with every flick trying to introduce a new creation to the pantheon of movie monsters. Few ever succeed. But Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1987 classic Predator was such a movie. Created with some input from James Cameron, the titular Predator, whose race as never been given an official name in the intervening years, had everything needed to make a memorable antagonist: a unique design, otherworldly features, motivations unfathomable to mere humans and oh my goodness, the weapons!
Although the Predator’s arsenal would grow to absurd proportions in subsequent sequels and spin-offs, it’s the original movie’s weaponry that concerns us today. Chiefly, the one that inflicted this wound:
“Clearly, this is a tragic spicy chili related incident.”
The energy blast shot by the Predator’s shoulder-mounted caster can go through body armor and future gubernatorial candidates with equal ease. It’s a scary weapon, made even more so by its signature “homing” sound effect. If you see it’s tri-fold crosshair centering on your forehead, better make sure you think one last deep thought, because the only thing your head will shortly be good for is decorating the landscape with a burst of arterial spray, your nuked gray matter now only good for feeding whatever animals come along to feast. (And everybody knows gray matter isn’t good nuked. You have to slow cook it in an oven for at least two hours and sprinkle some oregano before… What? Why are you all looking at me like that?)
No.2 Doom’s BFG
This is the gun that makes other guns pee themselves, out of fear or envy we’ll never know. First introduced in the immortal 1993 FPS Doom, the BFG acronym had many apologists, people who insisted the letters didn’t stand for what we all knew they did. At first the game makers denied the letters stood for anything. Then they began to use the term “Bio-Force Gun”. But every gamer knew what BFG really stood for.
BIG! FUCKING! GUN!
Seriously, even The Rock looks tiny in comparison up there. And that’s a version of the gun from the 2005 movie adaption. The size of its video game relatives make that prop seem like some sort of Nerf version for kids. (Note: Yell! Magazine does not recommend purchasing plasma weapons for your kids. Unless you don’t particularly like your kids for some reason, in which case go nuts.) But you wanna know what the cherry on this gun-nut wet dream is? One shot is all that’s required to reduce any enemy to his component atoms and you don’t even need to have good aim! The plasma ball discharged by the BFG will reach out with snake-like murder tendrils to kill anything in its path. Happen to be reading a book on a park bench when this thing goes off? Tough shit. The BFG simply goes “Meh, looks dangerous” and fries your ass for daring to be in its general area of operation.
No.1 The Plague
Jason Eisener’s modern-day grindhouse epic Hobo with a Shotgun is filled to the brim with instant classics as far as weaponry is concerned. You couldn’t be blamed for assuming that the titular shotgun deserves a place in this article. But seeing as how this is a list of “fictional” weapons, a $49.99 pawn shop special just doesn’t have that certain “oomph” required to bully it’s way on to this list. Likewise, the sewer cover execution. While certainly a triumph for gore hounds, it’s not exactly a convenient tool to lug around and the reload time is a pain in the ass. Abby’s exposed arm bone/stabbing implement? Deadly, sure, but it kinda sucks that you need to get your hand cut off before bringing it into play.
There’s a “boned” joke in here somewhere.
Nope, if you wanna take on a crazy hobo with a shotgun, you need to bring out your A-Game. If you wanna take on a crazy hobo with a shotgun that happens to be played by the world’s most badass human being, aka: Rutger Hauer, well, you need to take that game and kick it into the stratosphere.
Enter: the Plague.
Shrouded in mystery, not to mention several hundred pounds of armor designed to make even the stoutest of hobos go running back to his refrigerator carton, the Plague are… actually, I’m not sure. We know they go by the American Gladiators style pseudonyms of Rip and Grinder and they’re given a bit of a history in the film, but whether or not you believe that these two are in fact centuries old is to completely miss the point. THEY. WILL. FUCK. YOU. UP. You, the guy sitting next to you, his entire immediate family, his neighbor and his entire immediate family, the postman, little Cindy selling lemonade down the street and her little dog too!
Not a weapon, you say? I say: these are two weaponized dudes here. And the only thing needed to activate this deadly duo, to have them rain hell on you and everything you care about… ?
A single phone call.
Brrrrrrrrrrr…
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