fire extinguisher: the ultimate weapon

[Goon]

        After watching "The Rats" last night I was reminded of an old B-movie tradition.  While this doesn't happen in every movie, many films have a scene where a character grabs a fire extinguisher off the wall and proceeds to blast and/or club the offending creature with it.  "The Rats", "The Monsters that Challenged the World", "The Blob", "Tremers 2"  (Ok, so they didn't use it directly on the little buggers...)   So!  How many fire extinguishers have you seen pressed into service over the years?  The best are when something that would make a more potent weapon is ignored.  Anything to be dredged up from memory?
-----ooo-'U'-ooo------Kilroy was here.

[Dano]

Actually, a dry chem extinguisher would utterly incapacitate a person and probably most monsters.  Imagine a stinking, irritating powder blasted into every non-covered oriface on your body, saturating your hair and getting into your clothes.  They put out fires great, but when you see the mess they leave you half wish you let the damn place burn.

Didn't Bruce Willis use one in Die Hard?

[J.R.]

I think he used one in Die Hard 2, if it all. Fire extinguishers would make dandy weapons in a crisis; they fire at a distance and they could incapacitate someone. They are pretty heavy as well, I wonder if perhaps they were intended to have a secondary use as a weapon?

[Neville]

a) Can't remember Willis using a fire stinguisher in any Die Hard movie.

b) Indeed, it is a good weapon. See Sandra Bullock in "The Net". Crappy movie, anyway.

c) About don't using weapons when they are available, I think Arnold forgot about the gun from the security guard in the climax of "Collateral Damage". Instead, he used an axe (!) because, you know, he played a fireman.

[peter johnson]

The Rats!!  The Rats!!
My wife and I watched it too, and thought exactly the same thing!!  Gawd lawdy mama, what a stinky flick!!  We just loved it.  Other stuff:
The rat that pops out of the toilet for absolutely no discernable reason -- okay, maybe it was attracted to the perfume, but why only one then? -- and then makes that horribly laughable CGI-induced snarly-face & growls!!
The gal & her exterminator friend go into the abandoned lab -- abandoned 2 years ago & it still has electricity working(?!?!) & plants growing indoors without benefit of sunlight -- it having been established that the other exterminator guy is off uptown somewhere, & then all of a sudden, THERE THE OTHER EXTERMINATOR GUY IS WITH THEM IN THE LAB!!!  I guess the budget didn't allow for a Continuity Person.
Tens of thousands of rats collected in a swimming pool will not try to leave the pool, but only rise to the edge of the pool, sorta like a liquid might (Liquid rats?).
By saying that an explosion will create no shrapnel, it will magically be so.
Massive, multiple explosions will kill off a swimming pool full of rats completely, with no survivors, and no apparent damage to the pool at all.
We just loved this thing . . .
peter johnson

[chris]

At an old job I had, we actually did the Letterman thing and had a fire extinguisher/rolling chair race.  It was fun until we saw the mess we made.  I mean, judging from the movies, they're a lot of fun with little to no clean up afterwards.  What a gyp.  As for fire extinguisher as a weapon scenes, I think the scene in Irreversible wins by a long shot.  Fire extinguishers will never be the subject of laughter again.

[Abby]

Wasn't a fire extinguisher used to save the day in the original cut of Phantasm?

And fire extinguishers contribute to the death of a woman in Girdler's Asylum of Satan, but, uh, see ... they weren't really intended to look like fire extinguishers ... it was supposed to look like poisonous gas. So that doesn't count at all. I just look for any excuse to drop Girdler movie plugs.

[Dano]

Chris: CO2 extinguishers kill a fire with cold and the CO2 dissipates into the air.  No mess.

Sounds like you used dry chemical extinguishers which suffocate the fire (and anything else they get) with smelly yellow powder that doesn't dissipate into thin air.  This is one reason you don't see them on movie sets.  

The advantage?  Dry chem extinguishers can put out a fire from like 20 feet away.

[chris]

That's great!  I'm doing this again tomorrow!  To think of all the years of fun I've lost.

[Goon]

            Heh heh heh....
The bit with the rat in the toilet was great.  The girl see something MOVING under the lid after experience with some extremely P.O.'ed rats...  And then decides to try to get as CLOSE as she can....   What was she expecting,  "Mr. Hanky, the christmas poo"?  Also, the fountains of CGI rats erupting into the pool were some of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen.  And your right, if the rats could jump/climb out of the pool when it was full of water, why couldn't they get out when it was full of rats?
---ooo-'U'-ooo----Kilroy was here.