Private Dwayne Hicks sat in an expansive classroom alongside the rest of his platoon of newly minted boots. Each Marine had a well-used Pulse Rifle sitting on the table in front of them. The weapons were clean enough to be used as surgical implements and smelled vaguely of CLP.
Gunnery Sergeant Mike “Madman” McGehee stepped to the front of the class carrying his own Pulse Rifle as though it was something with which he had been born. Holding the weapon at arm’s length, he said, “I want to introduce you to a personal friend of mine. This is an M41A pulse rifle… 10 millimeter with over-and-under 30 millimeter pump action grenade launcher.”
Hicks made a mental note. Though he was brand new to the U.S. Colonial Marines, he felt he might someday have need of that snappy bit of prose.
The following narrative presupposes that you have already seen the movie Aliens at least a time or two. If that is not the case, I sure wouldn’t admit that to anyone. I’ll hang on until you have rectified that.
Origin Story
It is not hyperbole to say that James Cameron is the most successful movie maker in history. His films have made more than $11 billion worldwide. Titanic and Avatar would be more than enough to cement a director as a legit success. Add to that Terminator, True Lies, and The Abyss, and you have a skillset that is equally at home across comedic, sci-fi, action and dramatic genres. However, I would assert that all of those movies pale in comparison to his one true masterpiece.
The story goes that Cameron walked into a meeting with studio executives equipped with nothing more than a white board and a dry erase marker. He supposedly then wrote the word, “Alien” in big letters across the board. This was an obvious reference to Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi opus of the same name. Then he simply added a single character to form the word, “Alien$.” The clear implication was that his vision for the Alien sequel was about to make them a whole pile of money.
And that it did. Aliens returned $180 million against an $18.5 million budget, and those were 1986 dollars. However, all that cash is secondary to what that incredible movie actually represented. Aliens showed us just how cool a deftly executed combat science fiction film could be.
Details
For the sci-fi movie nerd purist, Aliens really hit the sweet spot. Falling as it did right at the end of the era of analog special effects, the film showcased Cameron’s writing and directing skills, James Horner’s epic musical score, and Stan Winston’s preternatural special effects. The cumulative end result captured lightning in a bottle.
While the monsters, uniforms, and miniature spacecraft effects were both superlative and groundbreaking, it was the weapons that really raised the bar. Simon Atherton and the mob at Bapty outside of London supplied the hardware. Founded in 1919 by Major PS Bapty, this company did the guns for such classics as Star Wars, the Indiana Jones films, scads of James Bond movies, and a bunch of Marvel superhero flicks, to name but a few. Cameron himself played an integral role in the design of the ordnance.
Particulars
The handguns were fairly pedestrian. The standard Colonial Marine sidearms were generally unmodified pistols from the era.
Corporal Hicks carried a cut-down Ithaca 37 12-gauge shotgun. This custom one-off weapon closely resembles an Ithaca Stakeout, a curious 1970s-vintage AOW shotgun that saw some modest commercial success. However, Hicks’ unique version sported a pistol grip adapted from that of a German MP40 submachine gun.
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The M56 Smart Gun was a heavy support weapon carried by PFCs Jenette Vasquez and Mark Drake in the film. These beastly guns were created by mating a German MG42 belt-fed machinegun to a Cinema Products Model III Steadicam camera harness. The prop guns were accentuated with a variety of motorcycle parts, specifically the handlebars from a 1976 Husqvarna Magura 360, the control panel from a 1981 Kawasaki KZ750, and the footpegs from a Kawasaki AR-125. As this was the era before digital effects, all of those epic star-shaped muzzle flashes you see in the movie were produced in real time using 8mm blanks.
Star Power
All that stuff is fairly mesmerizing, but the real hero of the movie was the M41A Pulse Rifle. The original plan was to build the Pulse Rifles around MP5 submachine guns with straight magazines. The astute gun nerd truly committed to his craft can see an image of the prototype of the MP5-based Pulse Rifle on PFC Frost’s “Peace Through Superior Firepower” t-shirt worn in the film. (You can find a decent reproduction here.) However, the blank-adapted 9mm MP5 hosts did not produce the sort of dynamic muzzle flashes Cameron wanted for his movie. As a result, the Bapty crew switched to .45-caliber M1A1 Thompson submachine guns.
The film’s backstory held that the M41A was produced by Armat Battlefield Systems based in Saginaw, Michigan. These weapons purportedly fired 10x24mm explosive-tipped caseless light armor-piercing rounds from a 99-round magazine. Astute Jarheads typically downloaded their magazines to 95 rounds to enhance reliability. A digital counter on the side of the gun kept track of rounds remaining. Slung underneath the barrel of the M41A was a four-shot 30mm pump-action grenade launcher.
Proper Props
There were either three or four actual operational Pulse Rifles created for the movie along with several inert foam versions. These original lightweight polymer props come up for sale from time to time and typically command upwards of twenty grand apiece. Only one of the live prop weapons had an operational grenade launcher. These guns were painted in Humbrol “Brown Bess” paint that appeared green under the lighting conditions used in the film. Each Pulse Rifle chassis was formed from sheet aluminum and was actually fairly crude up close.
The M41A props were crafted from three different guns. The host Thompsons had the furniture removed and were blank-adapted, but were left otherwise unmolested. The grenade launcher was built from a severely shortened Remington 870 12-gauge shotgun. The handguard and forearm were taken from a Franchi SPAS-12 shotgun and reversed. The rest of the weapon was bodged together by the mad geniuses at Bapty. All but one of the prop weapons was disassembled after the film so the components could be reused for other projects.
Revolutionary Replicas
I have coveted one of these guns ever since I sat in the CINE 4 theater in Oxford, Mississippi, back in 1986 to see the film for the first time. The Pulse Rifle is the apex predator of firearms. There is an airsoft version, but these are both expensive and hard to find. As I result, my homeschooled kids and I whipped up a replica.
The foundation for my first non-firing M41A was a piece of 1-inch square steel tubing. The SPAS-12 bits came from a cheap airsoft gun. The fire control group was genuine WWII surplus and subsequently expensive. The rest was handcrafted from pine lumber and weathered to suit. The round counter was painted on and covered with a little square of Plexiglas.
The end result is far from perfect, but it’s not half bad, either. However, Information Age 3D printing tech now offers something much more realistic. I sourced the new parts from OuterRim Armorer via Etsy. Etsy has a lame prohibition against selling realistic-looking firearms. Just message Bryan at OuterRim if you’re interested in a Pulse Rifle of your own. You can find him here.
Finishing out the project takes a little talent. Unlike a conventional model kit, there are no instructions, and many of the parts seem a bit incongruous. However, everything does indeed have a place, and the end result is frankly spectacular.
If afforded a decent optical sight and a little tactical bling, a live and functional.45 ACP Pulse Rifle would actually make a superb home defense tool. One can only dream!
The M41A is yet another aspect of James Cameron’s inimitable artistic skill. Now, thanks to Bryan at OuterRim, sci-fi nerds with a little mechanical aptitude can add a facsimile to their own collections for not a lot of cash. You can contact him directly at [email protected] if you’re interested in getting your own 3D-printed Pulse Rifle kit.
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