At the beginning of this thread the movie “Goldfinger” was mentioned. I ran across a video on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxesP0QmJ_I) of the Fort Knox sequence, here are some images.
Above, an overall view. The door looks reasonable with a crane hinge, pressure bars, and hand wheels. I’m surprised there is a uphill ramp leading to the door considering the very heavy nature of gold.
Above, a better view of the door as it opens. Things start to fall apart for picky vaultophiles. Notice there are two pressure bars, not three. There are two concentric hand wheels in the center which would normally be one for the pressure system, one for the boltwork; but notice there is also a boltwork handle to the right. Although the door is motor driven there is also a handle (perhaps not so odd in case the drive system fails). The prop folks did get the offset pin on the pressure bar.
Above, we can see the door open. A section of the frame has dropped away and is being replaced with a flat plate; I’m not aware of any actual doors that did this but the prop guys did seem to understand this problem with round doors. The boltwork is not visible but there is round glass covering time locks and/or servicing access. The even put a handle on this porthole. And the pressure-bar anchor has a somewhat realistic curved notch for the offset pin. It would appear there are 12 locking bolts which is a small number, and they aren’t very big.
The vault itself is absurdly spacious. In another thread I compared it to Doctor Who’s Tardis, larger on the inside than the outside.
Above, Goldfinger is closing the door. There is a large hood to shield the indicators and there are four realistic-looking combination dials. I’m always surprised that everybody seems to know the combination. Alternatively you could argue the movie only portrays a kind of “day locking” feature where the combinations have already been entered at the start of business, after which it is intentionally trivial to open and close the door as needed. Notice on the right a few rifles chained to a rack with a riveted padlock (open?).
Above, the door is being opened by a good guy. This is a better view of the dials and it can just be seen that they are new-looking dials of a very old style, with a large gap between 100 and 0 (or 1).
Compare this with actual images of a Fort Knox (Mosler) door:
Overall I’d give the prop guys an “A” but not an “A+”.
