In the film Blade Runner, Deckard carries a pistol called a Pfläger-Katsumata Series D 5223 – a name created by the fan community to have the initials “PKD” after Phillip K. Dick, who wrote Blade runner’s source material (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep). What we are looking at today is an extremely realistic recreation of the prop gun used in the filming. Like the movie original, it was made from a Charter Arms .44 Special revolver so that it could actually fire blank rounds during filming. The other major element of the gun is the receiver form a Steyr SL bolt action rifle – the Steyr receiver is attached to the top of the revolver, complete with bolt handle. A second dummy trigger was added to mimic the look of the double set triggers offered on the Steyr, and a number of additional bits were added to give the final creation a more sci-fi look.
Many thanks to Phil for loaning me this very cool piece to show to you! I thought it would be interesting to take a look at how prop guns are often created from real guns.
Very cool idea and the result looks fantastic. Long live all film gun nerds!
The revelation that the gun made for the 1982 movie Bladerunner was a hybrid of 2 actual guns is not surprising. A lot of the “Ray-Guns” in Star Wars were made in the same way. So Bladerunner was ‘Following Tradition’ in a way. And Bladerunner came out in ’82 not produced in that year. It failed it’s initial theatre run but by the end of the year it became legendary.
End of pistol grip gives knife vibes.
I read the book in the 70s, and saw the movie at a drive-in theatre in Vermont when it came out. One of several of PKDs books that have been made into movies, basically all of them good, for example Total Recall (from “We Can Remember it for You Wholesale”, the first movie was better.) and A Scanner Darkly (from the book of the same name) – see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adaptations_of_works_by_Philip_K._Dick for a complete list.
(Pedantic note: “We Can Remember it for You Wholesale” is a short story not a novel.)