Cliché Film Props

For someone who loves ‘movies’ as much as I do, I seem to find a lot in the American variety that really pisses me off of late. I’ve been on here in the not-too-distant cunting worn-out dialogue of the ‘we’re running out of time!’ variety. I’ve cunted the tedious scenarios, of which there are many; hero walks away from huge explosion without looking back sort of thing, in slo-mo of course. Then there’s the persistent and wearisome use of product placement…

When watching a flick last night, I was reminded of how American film-makers have even managed to make a cliché from the use of props. A character had been out to get steak for dinner. She came back carrying the obligatory plain brown paper bag, with guess what sticking out the top? You got it, a fucking baguette.

Here are a few other worn-out prop clichés to back up my point;

*coffee and doughnuts; six steaming hot plastic cups and a box of doughnuts, carried into the office in one hand by a character determined to be friendly
*napkin; so that somebody can show how sick they are by coughing blood into it
*parked car; conveniently parked for a falling body to smash into
*mobile phone; works anywhere, except when it’s most needed to work
*photograph; of loved ones, propped up by serviceman, to show he’s for the chop
*cardboard box; pic of family sticking out, carried out of office by someone just fired
*helicopter and/or black SUV; crucial for CIA, NSA or the Feds to stage arrival
*breakfast; always cooked by wife but left by husband, who’s inevitably running late
*car keys; conveniently under visor for escaping hero (car then won’t start natch; ‘come on come ON!’, cliché dialogue supplement)
*file; for buzzard female lawyer to slam shut and say ‘we’re done here’ to cops

You can even have characters as cliché props. There’s the hero with the social outcast friend, the high school lead with the nerdy but supersmart sidekick…

Throw all these various knackered tropes into the mix, and it’s hard to disagree with Ricky Gervais’s assessment that Hollywood product these days is awful. It’s lazy, tired, unimaginative, dominated by prequels and sequels and superhero crap, not to mention being infected by incessant wokery.

So if you want to see a rinse-and-repeat bore, packed with clapped out dialogue and plot lines, and yes, even worn-out props, just take a trip to your nearest multiplex, and you’ll be amply rewarded by the ‘choice’ on offer. For myself, I think I might have to stick with the ‘Golden Age’ classics and works from Europe and Latin America from now on.

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Nominated by Ron Knee.

115 thoughts on “Cliché Film Props

  1. I like when someone hears a noise downstairs at the dead of night. They get up, go to put the lights on but they don’t work. Power cut? Go downstairs in the dark then say “hello”!!!!. As if a crazed burglar/ demon/zombie or whatever are likely to say ” oh hello. sorry about the noise”
    Twats

  2. Strange. Kind of reminds me of back when my Dad was a Private I.

    He was one week away from retirement.
    It was his last case.
    Would have been the biggest of his career and he’d have been set for life.

    He’d got some intel on a group of VIPs who were up their eyeballs in sleaze and corruption.
    The brass told him to look the other way……

    …….but he just couldn’t let it lie.

    He mailed the evidence to me…
    Then he went missing the next day.

    It’s been 40 years….

    The evidence wasn’t worth a jot because the silly bugger backed it up on a floppy disk. I haven’t seen one of those or a floppy disk drive since abaaaht 1997.

    • Just reading an article where illegal immigrants are getting private health care, so as not to ” impose a burden”on the NHS….🤬

  3. You never saw a shitter in a film until Hitchcock’s Psycho in 1960. And then he had the nerve to make it a plot device as well. He loved doing fuck yous to the censors.

    • The scene with a bunch of suits taking a piss in the gents’ ‘rest room’ while discussing their case has become a much used device as well. In the interests of equality, I reckon we’re due a scene or two of the hot shot female lawyers doing the same while they’re in adjacent cubicles taking a leak.

    • I think that Hitch probably kicked off the whole shower as a place for a murder thing as well.

      The shower has also become a cliché prop, the place where a suffering hero/heroine goes to cleanse themselves, being a symbol for their emotional cleansing and renewal I suppose.

  4. Settled down to watch a subtitled foreign film abaaht the arctic convoy during ww2,
    chugging along nicely until the skipper calls down to the engine room
    ‘half ahead chief’ cut to said chief engineer a fucking young woman with suitably sweaty face and engine oil strategically applied to visage WTF! there were no women to my knowledge on the arctic convoys??? Binned.

  5. I think the conveniently placed Ass Destroyer 5001, with multi speed wobbly knob end and realistic thrusting action was blatant product placement in Back Door Sluts 5!

  6. I quite liked those horrible little gremlins from… well… Gremlins.
    Gizmo was a goody goody ‘aww. in’t he cute’ cunt though.

    Gremlins also brings to mind Phoebe Cates, and the very rude things I would like to dor to/with her.

  7. It makes a change when your bicycle gets pinched in the early part of the film and you end up looking for it throughout the entire film and never finding it. That’s Italian neorealism for you.

  8. What about the Swedish film “The Vanishing” when a man’s girlfriend goes missing at the beginning of the film and spends the entire film looking for her and she never turns up.

  9. Remember as a child when the only thing to be taken to see, was slitty eyed Roy Rogers, dressed up like poof cowboy and his hat never came off in a fight with heterosexuals.

  10. Remember what Roy Rogers dog was called Sammy?

    Bullet.
    That’s a good dogs name that is.
    Roy was a freemason .
    One of the shady cabal who controls the world 😁

  11. I never liked that homeless cunt Charlie Chaplin.

    Wasn’t funny.

    I liked Harold Lloyd,
    I liked Buster Keaton.
    I adored Laurel and Hardy.

    But Chaplin?
    Hated the Little Tramp.

    Big issue!!!!

  12. Sirs:

    I like the clackity clack — shoont — kachunk sounds of assembling firearms, preferably in the back of a moving van with such incredible suspension nobody is jostled even a little bit

    My favorite line comes when the protagonist’s spouse has just been killed by the crazed Russian in revenge for the missing bag of SuperMeth that nobody realized was in Jaspar’s book bag. Jasper’s been kidnapped by the werewolves and the house was destroyed by a RPG. Someone comes in the room, looks at protagonist, and asks “Are you okay?”

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