Robert Rodriguez's new movie "Machete" will give viewers a chance to see melee weapons in action. | 20th Century Fox
As you may (or may not) know, next Friday “Machete” officially hits theaters. If it isn’t inherently obvious in the title, there’s going to be quite a lot of blood spilled by, well, machetes and other various means; if the trailer’s a reliable source — and they usually are — there’s going to be a whole bunch of stabbing. To get pumped up for the melee-fueled mayhem, I put together a list of the best (and most gruesome) melee weapons to grace the silver screen.
First on the list is the wonderful chainsaw-arm contraption, Ash sports in the “Evil Dead” series. Instead of complaining when his hand gets chopped off, what does Ash do? Replace it with a chainsaw, which he then uses to tear up dozens of undead. And he does it all with a chin that can break steel.
Nothing says melee weapon like a samurai sword — and nothing says samurai sword quite like Uma Thurman in the “Kill Bill” movies. Between slicing through the Crazy 88 gang and her epic duel with Daryl Hannah in a run-down trailer, Uma represents the samurai sword with nothing but her best.
Although most of the movie is filled with gunfire, “Grosse Pointe Blank” does have a great fight scene — and it deals with an embossed pen. John Cusack stepped out of his nice-guy shoes just long enough to bury a writing utensil to the hilt in another hit man’s neck, and did it without getting too much blood on his suit. Only Cusack could be that classy.
If a pen is considered an odd weapon, then a magazine definitely meets the criteria. In “The Bourne Supremacy”, Matt Damon uses nothing more but a periodical to kill an assassin — then he uses it to blow up his house. Nothing says you mean business more than killing someone with their own Playboy.
Harrison Ford always (and without fail) means business, and that obviously includes Indiana Jones. He never strays far from his trusty whip, whether it’s to swing from vines or take out a Nazi’s handgun. A whip just exudes its own separate aura of awesomeness, and when you put it in the hands of Indiana Jones — well, sufficed to say it’s pretty sweet.
Roman gladiators were pretty brutal when it comes to fighting each other, and that’s exactly why “Gladiator” earns a spot on the list. It doesn’t even matter what scene you pick; when the movie has a man with a mace versus a freaking tiger, it makes the cut. Russell Crowe’s acting chops gives the violence purpose and meaning, making the movie all the better; it’s the only one on this list that’s won Best Picture.
Zombie movies use all sorts of things on crowds of the undead. Too few use everyday items as well as “Dead Alive”. Before Peter Jackson was leading Frodo and the gang through the dark lands of Mordor, he was showing audiences just how crazy a lawnmower could make a group of the recently reanimated. Out of all the movies with crazy amounts of gore on this list, this one takes the blood-spattered cake; no one gets out of this movie without getting pelted by thousands of body parts.
However, the best melee weapon — hands down — is really just the next step in the samurai sword technology. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, shame on you; it’s Luke Skywalker’s weapon of choice — the lightsaber. Apart from being about the coolest thing you could ever envision, lightsabers finally solve the age-old dilemma of gun vs. sword; any Jedi worth his (or her) salt can block any amount of bullets that massive waves of Storm Troopers manage to fire off. To make it more awesome, the only way to get one is to train as a Jedi and then build it from scratch. It also appeared in one of the biggest movie franchises of all time.
While there are thousands of movies that definitely could have made the cut, these are just a few of the greats. Hopefully, “Machete” will soon slash its way through more than a few bad guys and earn a spot here as well.
