Law enforcement officer by day, movie prop collector by night.
Richard Johns from Kelowna has a rare collection of film props that he has spent years gathering and restoring.
He's the owner of Empire Movie Props and this year he's taking his handmade, life-sized Stargate portal to the Kelowna Fan Experience.
Complete with lights, the gate stands 15 feet tall in his living room year round, but he's hoping to wow the crowds with it this weekend at the event.
"I had a stove repair person come over and he walks into the house, he looks at me and he looks at the big Stargate… and he says, 'you have a Stargate in your living room.' I said: doesn't everyone?"
The props stay up in Johns' house year round. He had custom mannequins made for the ape costumes. (Dominika Lirette/CBC)
A Jaffa warrior from the Stargate TV series will be standing guard next to the gate in a full set of armour, which took Johns over two years to collect and another six months to restore.
"The pieces I got were all the damaged, broken pieces," he told Daybreak's Dominika Lirette.
Buying the complete set would have cost him about $5,000, so he collected each piece separately instead and spent 250 hours restoring the costume.
"When you see them on the show, they get shot and fall down… their outfits get blown apart, those are the pieces I got. I had to put them all back together, paint them."
Johns has also collected two costumes from the 2001 Planet of the Apes film that starred Mark Wahlberg, which will be part of his display at the Kelowna Community Theatre this weekend.
To hear the full interview listen to media below:
With files from Daybreak South
