MovieChat Forums > Mr. Majestyk (1974) Discussion > Silly question - how many watermelons?

Silly question - how many watermelons?

posted 7 years ago by jgroub
2 replies | jump to latest

There would literally have been thousands - if not tens of thousands - of melons in that "barn", or whatever it was. They had around 20 people picking melons for almost a week. If you're picking a melon a minute, that's 60 melons an hour. 10 hours a day, that's 600 melons per person. 20 people picking, that's 12,000 melons.

Even if it's half that, or a quarter of that, it's not as if they brought thousands of bullets with them. They could only have shot up a couple hundred melons - at the absolute most. Right?

I want the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.

[–] strntz (10830) 6 years ago

I guess it depends on how far a round would travel once it hits the first melon. If the round continues on until it hits the ground, a single round could take out a dozen melons alone.

In any case, they were able to salvage a lot of the melons, maybe a majority or even a high percentage of them. Someone with ballistics experience would be able to give a better answer.

[–] liscarkat (16543) 3 years ago

My dad used to do ballistics research for LAPD. In tests he was able to fire bullets from rifles all the way through 1-inch-thick steel plate. It's very unlikely the machine guns in the movie would have that kind of penetrating power, but they would certainly be able to blow through quite a few melons with one bullet.