Safes & Vaults versus Hollywood

wylk · 2009-12-22T18:17:07+00:00

Purely for fun I though I’d start a discussion of how Hollywood treats safes & vaults. Sometimes it’s quite ridiculous, sometimes it’s interesting. What are your favorites? James Bond, I forget which movie, used a credit-card-sized X-ray viewer to open a wall safe by viewing the wheels. Very difficult to do unless the X-ray source is on the other side, and even then quite unlikely. Nevertheless the lock industry has long offered “radiation resistant” wheel packs and other countermeasures. What impressed me was the image looked like a real X-ray view of a real safe lock. And the wonderful product-placement choice of “Sharper Image” on the imaging card. Ocean’s 13 used a similar idea in the opening, this time to view the locks and boltwork of a massive vault door. The image looked plausible though the device was pure baloney. Goldfinger. Quite silly representation of a vault, and it seemed that everybody knew the combination. But it sure was impressive-looking, and the door was moderately realistic. Bond, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (I think). Over a lunch hour, he uses a suitcase-sized auto-dialer to open a safe. A clever idea, and portrayed more realistically than most gadgets and techniques. Today they are somewhat common; did they exist in 1969? Ocean’s 11, my favorite scene is near the beginning when the vault/explosives expert “blows” what looks like a real York door (US patent 929,907, dated 1909). It looks to me like they even got the boltwork right (easy if it’s a real door) and the mechanism is even shown in the “locked” position as the door is opening. Just ignore the utter silliness of shaped charges cutting through the door and slicing through the bolts :-) Any thoughts on the above, or addition? Jim

wylk

IBM has an advertisement that includes a vault door. It’s not a bad representation of a real door, and the resemblance to a question mark is probably intentional.

wylk

Sometimes Hollywood gets it right, by using a real door. This is from the TV series Bones, season 3, episode 6, “Intern in the Incinerator”. Though some cosmetic changes are made, this looks like a real Mosler door with a disappointing 3-movement time lock. The glass is missing and they covered the lettering announcing Mosler as the maker. And they added a motto relevant to the plot.

I’m guessing they found an abandoned bank in Los Angeles for filming.

wylk

This one appeared in an episode of the TV series Rizzoli & Isles (season 6, episode 8, “Nice to Meet You, Dr. Isles”). The door is a fairly good prop, the builder must have worked from a photo of a real one. It does the necessary job (convince the viewers they are seeing a jewelry store).

wylk

This door was in an episode of TV’s CSI: Cyber (season 1 episode 12). It clearly (to me) is a prop door but as before, it gets the point across to the audience, again in a jewelry store. In the center of the image an actor is trying to outperform the vault door but I easily ignored her.

wylk

Another Hollywood door showed up, new at least to me. This is from the TV series “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” season one episode 3 “The Asset” which originally aired on October 8, 2013. Yeah, that was a while ago. Here are a couple of pictures -

This door has been seen several times. It’s been in the 2007 movie How To Rob A Bank (see the post in this thread from March 28 2018), an IBM ad (post from June 17 2016) and the movie Ocean’s Eleven (post from February 2013). Nice to see an “old friend” show up again, it’s a decent prop.

VaultDoors

I just finished the Combination Viewer Vault inventory, found 32 locations in all. Did I miss any?

combination-viewer-vaults.pdf

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VaultDoors

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wylk

VaultDoors wrote
I just finished the Combination Viewer Vault inventory, found 32 locations in all. Did I miss any?

It will take me a while to correlate your list and my larger vault-doors list, but I’ll get there!

[unknown]

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