The Staple Gun

If you didn’t know, I like props. I used to make them professionally and I’ve spent most of my life working on them. I tend to focus on them more than most when I’m watching anything and will zero in on specific ones sometimes. I like them enough that I did a post a couple of months ago, where I focused on the suitcase in Sisyphus the Myth. I hadn’t intended this to be a recurring series, but when the opportunity presents itself it makes sense to grab it. And when I saw this specific prop used in three separate dramas that I was watching at around the same time, I knew I had to talk about it.

Today, we are highlighting the Kim Won Hae of the 2021 kdrama season: The Staple Gun.

For some reason, The Staple Gun was THE prop of the spring. I’ve never seen one used in so many dramas at one time, let alone do I even remember it being used in another drama. Like maybe in a construction scene, yes, or a slasher movie - but those don’t count. While the dramas they were used in were more in the darker genres, the use of it was slightly odd. It was never used properly in any of these dramas, too. So for this post we won’t be singing the praises of The Staple Gun much like we did with The Suitcase. Do I love it in real life? Yes. It made a lot of my work life so much easier, but we aren’t here to talk about tools being used as tools. We are here to talk about tools being used as props in weird ways. And then me rating those weird ways.

SELL YOUR HAUNTED HOUSE

I first saw The Staple Gun being used in the teasers for Sell Your Haunted House. And the reason I noticed it was because of the way that the character used it…and how odd that was.

Here’s the insider scoop on how to operate the gun: you can’t just press the trigger and expect the gun to do anything. It just won’t. You have to depress the nozzle of the gun on something (like wood) before the gun will fire (you’ll want to remember this later). So right off the bat, I was judging it hard. I think I even commented on Twitter about it. But we can’t be too harsh on The Staple Gun in Sell Your Haunted House. It is used supernaturally and gets some points for that. During the show it fires out some sort of force field to trap the spirits during the exorcism, so in reality it’s not firing nail or staples so it’s not really doing anything wrong.

They never explain why or how it does this thing in the drama, though. Or even why it was chosen to do the task. I’m assuming it has something to do with her being in real estate so people won’t question her bringing it into a house, but it could have been something else. Like an artifact or something like that, it didn’t need to be a real life item. I do give it bonus points for being battery-operated.

Rating: 4/5 wine glasses for the creativity of the prop, and the way it is used was kind of fun when you see it in action.

DARK HOLE

Like a week after I saw it being used in Sell Your Haunted House, I saw The Staple Gun used again in Dark Hole. This time it was more hefty and pneumatic and was being used to stop the zombie creatures. It’s biggest flaw, that it was the wrong weapon for the job. For the most part, it was just something extra for the character to lug around and had no real purpose. Again, it won’t fire unless depressing on something (which it doesn’t) and while they did pretend that it was hooked up to something for the pneumatics to work, it wouldn’t have lasted that long without having to cycle back with air, and wouldn’t have much pressure behind it anyways. It was more of a nuisance than anything.

2/5 wine glasses. Maybe if all else failed whacking it in the face of the monster would actually do some sort of damage.

TAXI DRIVER

I wasn’t expecting to see The Staple Gun also being used in Taxi Driver. I really wasn’t. It came out of left field and was towards the end of the series. It was the reason I decided this post needed to be, because three dramas back-to-back was just three dramas too many. Again, the safety prevented everything that was being shown, however out of all the uses this one was the most realistic. It was in a shop, and (as you can see in the photo) hooked up to the air supply. Could it fire without being depressed? Again, no. Now, I haven’t mentioned this until this point, but it is possible to rig it to do that (which OSHA definitely does not approve of), but it’s really a waste of time for some random mechanic to do in the first place and it doesn’t really look like that’s the case since we do get some shots of the nose. It’s just out of all the other scenarios, this was the only time that I could actually seethat the safety had been taken off being true, though.

Rating: 3.5/5 wine glasses. A solid use and the most accurate, albeit a tad boring.

EXTRA CREDIT: THE RED SHOES (2005 MOVIE)

Weeks - nay months later - I was hanging out and decided that I wanted to throw on a horror movie. I chose The Red Shoes because it’s been on my list for a while and it had premiered that week (if you haven’t caught on by all of my social media posts I’m doing a Korean Summer Horror thing), and who was to appear but our old trusty The Staple Gun. I won’t tell you how The Staple Gun is used, or in what part, but it was there in all its glory.

Rating: 5/5 wine glasses. Unexpected, a shocker. Old Trusty’s finest performance.

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