Flamethrower from The Fourteen Fists of McCluskey

The flamethrower from The Fourteen Fists of McCluskey links Rick Dalton’s screen career to a later real-life crisis: a weapon he feared and practiced with for a film remained in his toolshed, where he used it against an armed intruder. First a prop that made Dalton’s performance credible, it returned as an instrument of lethal violence in his own home.

The weapon on screen

In recounting The Fourteen Fists of McCluskey, Marvin Schwarz emphasizes the film’s scale of action, asking how many Nazi soldiers Dalton killed and pointing out that Dalton himself operated the flamethrower. Dalton says he never counted the dead, though he agrees that 150 sounds plausible. The weapon belongs to the film’s extravagant register of shooting and killing, but Dalton’s account draws attention to the practical danger behind the spectacle.

Dalton says he practiced with the flamethrower for three hours a day over two weeks. He calls it a dragon and admits he was frightened of it, explaining that the training was meant not only to make him look convincing onscreen but also to help him handle a weapon he genuinely feared. The practice gave his performance a basis in physical familiarity, while his description makes clear that the apparent fantasy carried a real hazard.

The part that brought it into Dalton’s life

Dalton says his role in the film came through an abrupt change in casting. Fabian originally had the part, but broke his shoulder while making The Virginian eight days before shooting. Paul Wendkos remembered Dalton and persuaded Columbia Pictures to arrange a loan-out from Universal Pictures. Dalton frames the result as a career irony: during his Universal contract he made five films, yet his most successful was the one he made on loan to Columbia.

The flamethrower therefore belonged to a production that mattered beyond its action scenes. It was part of the work that gave Dalton a successful film role and a story he repeatedly told about the luck that secured it. His training with the weapon, initially preparation for a performance, also left him with practical experience that would acquire a far more consequential use.

From film equipment to a weapon at home

After Dalton returned from Rome with his new wife, Francesca, three hippies—two women and a man—broke into his Benedict Canyon home carrying butcher knives and a pistol. Dalton was in a floaty chair in the swimming pool when one of the women nearly shot him. Cliff Booth fought the intruders inside, protecting Francesca and striking the man and one woman in the face.

The flamethrower had been left over from McCluskey and stored in Dalton’s toolshed. In the course of the violent fight, Dalton used it to set the armed woman on fire. He later described the result to a neighbor as having burned the intruder to a crisp. The weapon’s transition from film set to home invasion collapses the distance between the violence Dalton performed for the camera and violence he confronted in his private life.

Significance

The flamethrower’s recurrence is a concrete reversal: the implement Dalton once trained with because it frightened him becomes the means by which he stops an immediate threat in his own house. Its presence in the toolshed carries the residue of his film career into the scene, making the earlier production materially consequential rather than merely a recollection. In McCluskey, the dragon is part of a staged spectacle; at home, it is still a tool from that spectacle, but its force is no longer bounded by a movie.