# Re-used props



## Metryq (Jan 24, 2012)

I think there is another thread on re-used props, but I was unable to locate it. So please forgive a re-used thread. 

I was reading a thread on another site where a member was trying to identify a giant poster on a wall, which turned out to be one of Andreas Cellarius's illustrations for *Harmonia Macrocosmica*. The armillary sphere at the center of the illustration (plate 11) focussed my attention on George Pal's _The Time Machine_, which—believe it or not—I was running in the background.

The Time Traveler stops to look at something like an armillary sphere in the museum before Weena pulls him on to the talking rings. I've seen the movie a hundred times, and the prop never caught my attention, but the forum discussion made me really notice it this time...





...and I knew I had seen it before, same studio just four years earlier:




I read that Stanley Kubrick destroyed all props, models and blueprints after _2001: A Space Odyssey_ completed production because he did not want it all appearing in dozens of other movies, as happened with the gear from _Forbidden Planet_.


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## Anne Lyle (Jan 24, 2012)

He evidently forgot about the costumes, though - IIRC, one of the _2001_ spacesuits was used in Babylon 5...


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## Boneman (Jan 24, 2012)

Good one... I saw a piece of film used twice in two different movies. In 633 squadron a mosquito (I think) strafes a german ack ack gun, and the guy claps his hands over his eyes and then falls down. Even when I first saw it, I remember thinking it was ridiculous - the bullet would have blown his head off (There's an interesting point: if a plane is doing 450mph and fires a bullet, does the bullet do its own speed, plus the 450mph?). Then, damn me, he recovers from his wounds and gets killed in exactly the same way in exactly the same situation in Mosquito Squadron five years later!!!. It was a clip lifted from 633 squadron. Either that or he was malingering and got caught at it by the germans, because he turned up as  camp guard in The Great Escape - the tall streak who always locks Steve McQueen up... I wonder if he got two fees...?


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## Foxbat (Jan 24, 2012)

Can't remember where but I've definitely seen the robots from *Crash Corrigan's Undersea Kingdom* used before.


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## Metryq (Jan 24, 2012)

Anne Lyle said:


> He evidently forgot about the costumes, though - IIRC, one of the _2001_ spacesuits was used in Babylon 5...



Probably one of the re-creations made for the sequel, _2010: The Year We Make Contact_ (1984). Since all the blueprints had been destroyed, too, set designers for the sequel had to reverse engineer new blueprints out of the original film (_Cinefex_ #20, pg. 15).

The _Cinefex_ article mentions Kubrick destroying all the props, models and sets, but lends more credence to another story that the studio simply didn't want to pay to store them anymore. (_Bull_—the first story makes more sense to me, or we'd have seen those models _everywhere_, like Robby the Robot.)


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## Ursa major (Jan 24, 2012)

Boneman said:


> There's an interesting point: if a plane is doing 450mph and fires a bullet, does the bullet do its own speed, plus the 450mph?


Yes, at first. After that, it would be affected by air resistance and the pull of gravity (as it would be if the bullet had been fired from a stationary gun).


(I would not have thought that the mechanism that prevents accumulated velocity exceeding the speed of light plays much part in things at these... er... relatively low velocities.)


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## Starbeast (Jan 25, 2012)

I always thought it was interesting (cost cutting of course) and sometimes cool that the original tv series _*Lost in Space*_ would recycle their props.


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## Metryq (Jan 25, 2012)

Starbeast said:


> I always thought it was interesting (cost cutting of course) and sometimes cool that the original tv series _*Lost in Space*_ would recycle their props.



They not only recycled their own props, they shared with _Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea_. _Star Trek_ recycled some of its props, too. Today's production budgets tend to be much higher, and rapid prototyping techniques make props much easier to turn out.


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## Starbeast (Jan 25, 2012)

Metryq said:


> They not only recycled their own props, they shared with _*Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea*_. Star Trek recycled some of its props, too. Today's production budgets tend to be much higher, and rapid prototyping techniques make props much easier to turn out.


 
Oh-man, I haven't seen _Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea_ in ages, but you are absolutely right. I remember one monster in _Lost in Space_ which was human size, then seeing it in _Voyage_ as a giant creature attacking the Seaview submarine.

I think Irwin Allen's team also used the same props in his other shows like, _Land of the Giants_ and _The Time Tunnel._


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## Metryq (Jan 25, 2012)

I think the TV series _Buck Rogers_ and the original _Battlestar Galactica_ also shared some props, just like the Irwin Allen shows before them. Sci-fi shows are always cheaper by the dozen. The starship _Searcher_ from the second season of _Buck_ started life as a cruise ship in the first season episode "Cruise Ship To The Stars." And I'm suddenly reminded of "Happy Birthday, Buck," an episode which filled air time by recycling clips from a dozen previous episodes.


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## Toby Frost (Jan 25, 2012)

If I remember rightly, the government soldiers in _Firefly_ wear a mixture of German helmets and body armour from a _Starship Troopers_ spinoff that was being filmed in the studio next door.


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## clovis-man (Jan 25, 2012)

Metryq said:


> I read that Stanley Kubrick destroyed all props, models and blueprints after _2001: A Space Odyssey_ completed production because he did not want it all appearing in dozens of other movies, as happened with the gear from _Forbidden Planet_.


 
Rod Serling must have had a pass key to the Forbidden Planet storage shed. The stuff from the movie kept appearing in Twilight Zone episodes.


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## TheTomG (Jan 25, 2012)

It was being environmentally friendly before such a thing was fashionable! Hurrah SF for leading the way in recycling; "waste not, want not!"


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## Starbeast (Jan 28, 2012)

*Robby the Robot* from _Forbidden Planet_, also appeared in the movies _The Invisible Boy, Gremlins, _three episodes of _The Twilight Zone_, an episode of _Lost in Space_ and as funny robot in the 1960's kid show _The Banana Splits, Futurama, _commercials and much more.

See the full list on Wikipedia


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## steve12553 (Jan 28, 2012)

The starship from *Forbidden Planet* also appear in the *Twilight Zone* at least once, also. Recycling attractive props happened a lot. Within the Star Trek universe many props (and sets) were reused, some after some doctoring, some as is. I think it was all fair game.


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## Metryq (Jan 28, 2012)

Naturally, a given series will re-use its own props, but the most interesting re-uses are when an original prop appears somewhere completely unexpected. For example, the PKE meter from _Ghostbusters_ (the handheld unit with the LED "arms" sticking out of it) appeared in _They Live_ as a communicator.

And let's not forget Dr. McCoy's surgical salt shakers, or Luke defending the galaxy with a Graflex flash unit.


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## JunkMonkey (Jan 28, 2012)

Here's one I spotted a while ago: (Though they're costumes really rather than props.)




Flight to Mars 




Cat Women of the Moon 




King Dinosaur  by the_junk_monkey, on Flickr




1953 ... 'Robot Monster!' by x-ray delta one, on Flickr



PS: Here's confirmation of the _Firefly / Starship Troopers _costume reuse:
http://www.recycledmoviecostumes.com/sci-fifantasy003.html


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## Starbeast (Jan 28, 2012)

JunkMonkey said:


> Here's one I spotted a while ago: (Though they're costumes really rather than props.)


 
These costumes were also in _Destination Moon (1950)_ & _Abbott and Costello Go To Mars (1953)._


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## JunkMonkey (Jan 28, 2012)

You're right. I'd forgotten about _Destination Moon.  

Cat Women of the Moon _also made use of some of the the same sets as _Project Moon Base_ (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046213/)

I'm sure we could turn this into a game.  Sort of like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon but with props...


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## clovis-man (Jan 28, 2012)

JunkMonkey said:


> Here's one I spotted a while ago: (Though they're costumes really rather than props.)
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 
You have to love the pastel colors used in the early technicolor space movies.


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## Ursa major (Jan 28, 2012)

I don't recall seeing the film. Did the two astronauts in the red (orangish?) suits get killed before the others?



As for re-use, Wiki says this about _Flight to Mars_:


> This film reuses almost all the cabin interior details from _Rocketship X-M_ (Lippert Pictures, 1950, and filmed at another studio), except for some of the flight instruments. Even the spaceflight noises are reused. Similarly, the concepts of spaceflight are those postulated in that earlier film.


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## Toby Frost (Jan 29, 2012)

Weren't those suits re-used in the Teletubbies?


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## JunkMonkey (Jan 29, 2012)

Cat Women of the Moon  by the_junk_monkey, on Flickr

Take the wall away and stick someone sat behind a desk at a weird angle in the hole and you have a giant wall sized monitor! Genius!  Pity about the shadows of the actors 'on the moon' falling across the desk of the general 'on Earth' but there we go.




Project Moon Base by the_junk_monkey, on Flickr

Bravura piece of acting by the actor playing the General here by the way  - in a later scene out hero paces back and forth right in front of him  and he doesn't loose the eyeline with the invisible camera he is  supposed to be addressing.


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## JunkMonkey (Feb 9, 2012)

JunkMonkey said:


> Here's one I spotted a while ago: (Though they're costumes really rather than props.)






D-094b[1] by the_junk_monkey, on Flickr


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## Ursa major (Feb 9, 2012)

That's rather an appropriate title for a novel being published as one half of an Ace Double.


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