One Famous Submachine Gun: The Madsen M50

Submachine gun to the stars

July 09, 2025 By Will Dabbs, MD

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Benny Parker was disgruntled. His mother had begged him to go to law school. However, after three semesters in college he had studied way more girls than pre-Law. As an alternative to returning home broke and humiliated, Benny answered a classified ad for work with an exciting multinational corporation.

The job description was, “Security Specialist.” Once his cursory training was complete, Parker found himself on a remote oil rig off the coast of Baja, California. Unlike what the brochures had claimed, the work was hard, hot, and tedious. There was also a tragic dearth of women. That, and the uniforms were patently ridiculous—blue coveralls with red belts and matching plastic hard hats with little lightning bolts on the front. It was then that Benny Parker realized that he was not actually a security specialist. He was a henchman.

The company name on the letterhead read, “SPECTRE,” and his boss, whom he had only met once during new-employee orientation, was some unhinged lunatic foreigner named Ernst Stavro Blofeld. The company offered a decent health plan, but the SPECTRE dentist was a legit actual ex-Nazi. He had overheard the guy talking about it in the lunchroom. Tragically, he was committed now. The rig was an hour by helicopter from the mainland. It wasn’t like he could just quit.

One week into his monthlong rotation on the oil platform, Parker was bored out of his gourd. With nothing to do but police up trash on the rig, he began longing for college classrooms. This job was just the worst. The weapons were indeed cool. His training officer had issued him with an antiquated M1911 pistol in a garish red leather holster along with a weird Danish 9mm submachine gun. Training consisted of field stripping the pressed steel weapon and firing off a few magazines into the Pacific.

It all seemed superfluous. If anybody actually attacked them…countless miles out in the middle of shark-infested ocean…Parker was sure he would be ready. He shook his head in disbelief at his sordid circumstances. However, the frustrated young man’s reverie was broken by the sound of helicopters approaching in the distance and an ominous accented voice over the intercom beginning a countdown…

Big Screen Cred

There’s really no reason any of us should recognize the Madsen M50 submachine gun. Introduced in—you guessed it—1950, the M50 was an obscure, weird, rare weapon. Had it not been for a handful of high profile movies like the 1971 James Bond classic Diamonds are Forever referenced above, the weapon most likely would have been lost to history.

As it was, the M50 earned inordinate exposure on screens both large and small. At a time when actual Combloc weapons were essentially unobtainium, the M50 stood in arming the Bad Guys in a variety of Cold War blockbusters. Examples include Ice Station Zebra, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, The Godfather, Battle for the Planet of the Apes, Raid on Entebbe, Black Sunday, The Wild Geese, Missing in Action, and the underappreciated Blaxploitation parody Black Dynamite.

Scene from a movie with the M50 — Its use in movies like the 1971 James Bond classic Diamonds are Forever made the Madsen M50 recognizable to a generation of gun nerds. If you can see past the ever-lovely Jill St. John, note the SPECTRE henchmen’s ridiculous uniforms. (Photo provided by MovieStillsDB.com)

The gun also featured prominently in such TV classics as McHale’s Navy, Mission Impossible, Hawaii Five-O, and Star Trek. However, not all screen-use of M50 SMGs was just in the 1960s through the 1980s. Firearms News’ Editor-in-Chief, Vincent L. DeNiro, used one in the martial arts action movie The Cutoff, which was shot at Screen Gems Studios in 1997 (Vince worked as a theatrical weapons armorer for many years).

In the case of the Beneath the Planet of the Apes, the M50 submachine guns were encased in a custom fiberglass shell to make them appear more otherworldly. In Star Trek, the M50 armed Roman security officers in the episode Bread and Circuses. It was also featured as a background prop (on a rack with other weapons) in such classics as Omega Man.

Origin Story

The M50 was made by the Dansk Industri Syndikat of Copenhagen, Denmark. The Danes were hardly the international arms-making juggernauts that the Germans or Americans might have been. However, because of its widespread use in movies, the M50 actually became fairly familiar to American audiences, particularly those of us of a certain age.

The first prototypes were built in 1946. Erik Saetter-Lassen was the primary designer. The original factory designation of the weapon was the P16. Initial production versions were designated the Model 46. Early adopters included the Danish police along with Thailand and a couple of countries in South America.

Madsen M50 SMG — The Madsen M50 was a simple and robust design. (Photo provided by author.)

Four years later, the design was tweaked into the Model 50. The Danes then embarked upon an aggressive marketing campaign to sell the piece internationally. Military attaches from the US, the UK, Canada, and India all received formal demonstrations. The British were legitimately interested and procured several examples for review in the early 1950’s. They eventually ended up with the domestically-produced Sterling instead.

The British trials resulted in an improved version of the weapon called the Mark II that eventually was further upgraded into the M53. Most of the changes involved the gun’s barrel and a new curved magazine. Danish guns did eventually see some modest commercial success, and the weapon was also produced under license in both Brazil and Thailand.

Mechanical Particulars

The Madsen M50 was a unique design. Developed at a time when the world was already covered in a thin patina of surplus pistol-caliber SMGs left over from World War 2, the M50 represented a fairly radical departure from convention. While the basic layout with the magazine located ahead of the pistol grip was conventional enough, the specifics were unlike anything seen before or since.

The M50 is an otherwise unremarkable straight blowback design that fires from the open bolt. Curiously, there is a grip safety built into the magazine well at the front of the gun. For the weapon to fire, the gun must be firmly gripped with both hands. Many real world operators supposedly wrapped this steel tab in rubber bands so they could fire the weapon one-handed if needed.

Madsen M50 disassembled — Takedown represents a voyage of discovery for gun geeks inured to more common designs. The basic mechanical layout of the M50 is undeniably clever. (Photo provided by author.)

The tubular steel buttstock folds to the right. Original guns featured a leather cover over the stock tube, but many of these have deteriorated and been removed over time. Much like that of the M1A1 paratrooper carbine, the stock of the M50 is not positively retained. To extend the stock just give it a snatch. Folding it simply involves pushing hard enough to overcome the detent.

The top-mounted charging handle is small-ish and reciprocates with the bolt. There are two sling swivels riveted to the left side of the receiver. The sights are small and fixed. The safety is a sliding tab on the left side of the receiver that is not terribly convenient. The gun is full auto only.

Trigger and mag release on M50 — The generous steel tab located behind the magazine release is the grip safety. I hate that thing. (Photo provided by author.)

The most remarkable aspect of the design is the way you take the gun down for cleaning and maintenance. The receiver is comprised of two pressed steel halves that pivot at the back of the pistol grip. To strip the gun, you remove the barrel collar and then open the two receiver clamshells from the front. Once the trunnion opens, the barrel falls free. The bolt and recoil spring assembly are then easily removed. Reassembly demands a little body English. The trigger and fire control components are built into a tray of sorts permanently attached to the inside of the receiver.

The 32-round box magazines are patently horrible. A double-column, single-feed design, they are impossible to load to capacity without a loading tool. There is a dedicated tool that is supposed to ride inside the pistol grip. However, my example does not fit and, regardless, it doesn’t work very well. Loading magazines is both onerous and time-consuming. Oddly, the magazine release is a steel tab that you operate by slipping your thumb underneath it and pressing outward. This operates in reverse of more conventional designs and takes a little getting used to.

Trigger Time

The most redeeming aspect of the M50 is its rate of fire. The gun runs at around 550 rpm, comparable to that of a German MP40 or British Sten. This makes it
eminently controllable and not unduly profligate in its ammunition expenditure. I despise the grip safety. If nothing else, unless you have three hands, there is no way to drop the bolt over an empty chamber other than just pointing the gun in a safe direction and squeezing the trigger. Much like magazine disconnect safeties in certain handguns, I see no practical benefit.The steel stock rates a solid decent. However, pressure to the side will tend to let the stock slip a bit past center in either direction. This can happen unexpectedly when running the gun quickly.

Target showing accuracy of Madsen M50 — The M50 offers perfectly acceptable combat accuracy. This is a typical 12-meter burst. (Photo provided by author.)

That’s all the bad stuff. The Madsen M50 is an other-wise solid design. The manual of arms is easily mastered, and the gun shoots straight for its genre. Once you have invested a couple of magazines taking its measure, the M50 shoots well. Like most SMGs of this sort, I find that the gun runs best if you just sight grossly over the top and remain conservative with your trigger finger. It was an easy enough chore to keep my bursts on a man-sized target at across-the-room distances.

Ruminations

Overall, the Madsen M50 is an interesting historical footnote. It never was destined for greatness, and there is little of substance that might set it apart from its contemporaries. Considering the M50 was trying to compete with the Uzi and the Swedish K, it is surprising the gun did as well as it did.

A few M50’s ended up seeing combat use in a lot of different places. The gun was used by state actors of eighteen different nations to include American Green Berets in Vietnam. The M50 saw action in a variety of modest brushfire wars across the globe. However, it was the gun’s exposure in movies that really made it recognizable. The M50 would benefit from a double column, double feed magazine, and that forward grip safety is the Devil. However, the gun still has much to commend it. In the era before the HK MP5 and countless rifle-caliber carbines, the M50 did transiently represent the state of the art.

Madsen M50 with replica grenade — The Madsen M50 was an effective pistol-caliber submachine gun that was thoroughly optimized for mass production. (Photo provided by author.)

Most of the M50’s available on the American gun market are pre-86 dealer samples. These are Law Enforcement-restricted imported machineguns that were brought into the country prior to the accursed 1986 machinegun ban. However, a recent ruling by the BATF has reclassified about 4,000 of the pre-86 dealer sample pool as transferables. That is out of around 17,000 total pre-86 dealer samples. This ruling has put quite a few Madsen M50’s into circulation, but the prices have gone up commensurately.

The Madsen M50 is a weird, ugly gun, but it is also a movie star. The M50 was at the right place at the right time to build a modest Hollywood career. Nowadays, thanks to the BATF’s recent ruling, a few of those old classic guns are available to normal folk as well. That is if you have $24,000 lying around for one.