8 Props That Were Originally Designed For Other Movies
Michelle Pfeiffer's knife in Stardust was actually meant for Magneto.
One of the filmmaking disciplines so many of us take for granted is the tireless efforts of the prop department, to find and create tangible items which help bring a given movie's world to believable life.
It won't surprise anyone to learn that props, costumes, and sets often end up being recycled on multiple movies for both cost and practicality reasons, but every so often a prop will be first seen in a movie it wasn't initially meant for.
These eight props, from awesome creature designs to fake body parts, insane sci-fi contraptions, and everything in-between, were designed and created for a movie which it ultimately never ended up appearing in.
But because it'd be a crying shame to let such beautiful craftsmanship go to waste, each of these props found a second life years or even decades later in another movie entirely, perhaps in a totally different genre even.
And so, never again underestimate the ingenuity of props departments to make the most of their resources and ensure that their work eventually gets seen by millions of viewers one way or another...
8. Jerry's Final Form Was The Original Design For Ghostbusters' Librarian - Fright Night (1985)
Cult classic 1985 horror film Fright Night memorably climaxes with vampire-next-door Jerry Dandrige (Chris Sarandon) transforming into a bat-monster-thing and eventually being killed when he's exposed to sunlight.
The sequence is best remembered for the brilliantly revolting prop of Jerry's skeleton which promptly explodes into nothing, and as fittingly terrifying as it looks, it was actually originally intended for Ghostbusters the year prior.
The monstrous skeleton was designed by special effects maestro Richard Edlund to be the final form of the librarian ghost from the start of the hit comedy, but depending on who you ask, Edlund scrapped it either because it was too scary for family audiences or too costly to complete.
Either way the nearly-finished prop was nixed for Ghostbusters, but Edlund cannily decided to recycle its skeletal structure for Fright Night's finale, helping save precious pennies on the relatively low-budget horror flick.