The rhino from Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls recently sold for nearly $60,000 on the auction site, Propstore. Alrighty then. Update: How much would you pay for a full-size rhinoceros? How about one that gave birth to Jim Carrey on film? As it turns out, collectors will happily pay huge sums for such a piece ... Propstore | The Jim Carrey-birthing rhino from Ace Ventura 2 sold for nearly $60,000
The rhino from Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls recently sold for nearly $60,000 on the auction site, Propstore. Alrighty then.
Update: How much would you pay for a full-size rhinoceros? How about one that gave birth to Jim Carrey on film? As it turns out, collectors will happily pay huge sums for such a piece of movie history.
The ‘Oversized Mechanical “Butt-Birth Rhino’, as listed by Propstore earlier this month, went up for auction yesterday, with an original estimate of $4-8,000. When the hammer came down, the final price was a stampede-inducing $59,850.
There are dozens of other props and items from the annals of cinema up for sale on the site at the time of writing, including a life-size Kurt Russell statue, based on his MacReady character from John Carpenter’s The Thing. We haven’t found anything quite as horny as that Ace Ventura rhino, though.
Our original story follows…
19th March: As we saw yesterday, those specialists in movie history, Propstore, are back with another auction positively crammed with props and relics from cinema’s past. There are cursed books from the Evil Dead franchise, weapons from Wesley Snipes’ Blade, and lots more besides.
But what if you wanted a really deep cut from 20th century motion pictures? What if you had lots of money, and wanted an unmissable talking point for your hallway or ballroom?
With this in mind, we offer, for your consideration, the ‘Oversized Mechanical “Butt-Birth” Rhino' (the listing’s words) from 1995’s Ace Ventura: When A Nature Calls.
If you’ve seen the film, you may remember the scene: Jim Carrey’s pet detective, Ace, hides in the carcass of a mechanical rhinoceros at a theme park. To the horror of tourists passing by, Ace then emerges from the rhino’s arse, writhing and screaming like something from the Alien franchise.
The lot in Propstore’s auction is for a version of the prop built for location filming (Carrey’s birthing scenes were shot on a soundstage), and measures a mighty 10 feet long. It’s constructed from fibreglass and styrofoam, and has a seat and control panel inside.
The prop has spent a good few years in a branch of Planet Hollywood, per Propstore’s listing, and has since had its latex skin and other parts, which were never built to last, replaced in the interim. One of the photos on the auction house’s site shows that, prior to its restoration in 2019, the poor old beast was in a sorry state.
It’s quite a piece of memorabilia, and appears to have attracted a lot of attention from bidders. Propstore’s own sale estimate was between $4,000 to $8,000; at the time of writing, absentee bids are already up to $20,000.
The auction itself won’t take place until the 25th March, so who knows what it’ll sell for – we’ll update this post when the hammer comes down in just under a week’s time.
“Sharon, darling, could you put down the vol-au-vents? I appear to have gotten a little stuck…”
