Thread: Safes & Vaults versus Hollywood

The Thunderbolt and Lightfoot movie was based on a true burglary where a big gun is used to blow through the vault wall. The glaring flaw I saw in the Italian Job (new version) was the cops thinking that the safe, which looked quite heavy and fell a good distance, landed in the boat and then sped away. I don't remember the opening of it in the water and my Newton is rusty but unless it was actually floating off of the sea floor, pulling on it would not tend to pull it to you rather than you to it.

If presented with someone running or boating away with what looks like the safe then they would think "They are getting away!" and follow. Now that is not thinking but it is what someone would do as it is a condition I can see happening. As for the underwater opening that would be tough. I wonder if Myth Busters would take this one up.

Ac tually underwater opening of a safe has been done live on TV in the past. I don't remember the exact year, but the famous Sal Sallizzi was contracted to open the recovered locked safe from the Andrea Doria. The safe was kept in a salt water pool to prevent deterioration of it or the contents. He opened it on live TV and sadly it was empty so no real excitement, kind of like the Al Capone vault opening on live TV.
BBE.

The most realistic movie I can remember with regard to picking & safe manipulation was the Escape Artist.
Gary

The Twilight Zone aired an episode "Time Enough At Last" starring Burgess Meredith as a bookworm bank teller who survives an H-bomb while reading inside a bank vault. See for example:

Time Enough at Last - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

and

YouTube - "Time Enough at Last" (Part Two)

Looking at the vault, it looks genuine but the door seems to be "neutered". The lugs on the pressure bars are missing, the glass covering the boltwork is gone, and probably some of the mechanism has been removed. My best guess is they found a closed bank for filming and the door had been rendered unlockable for safety reasons.

This in turn reminded me of the SciFi novel "A Canticle for Leibowitz" where it was pointed out a fallout shelter trapped its occupants because the door was designed to open outwards but was blocked by rubble after a nearby blast.

A recent movie "Public Enemies" (2009, Johnny Depp, Christian Bale) includes a few scenes of large vaults as the movie portrays some of John Dillinger's bank robberies. It was broadcast recently and I used the DVR to get a good look.

The first vault is poorly filmed from a vaultophile's viewpoint except for one exceptionally large door hinge. The second may be a Mosler door but the time lock is missing. The third is also nicely displayed and may be a Remington and Sherman. I think it was the middle bank's scene that also panned past the emergency door. One of these banks (I don't know which one) was filmed in the Milwaukee County Historical Society which is a former bank.

They do seem to be real vaults as opposed to Hollywood mockups.

Aside from this and a couple of steam locomotives I didn't see much else to recommend.