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Abduction (2011) - in this mediocre action thriller, CIA agents use an A-Star helicopter in help their pursuit of the runaway teen hero.



Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012) - the present-day closure of this cross-genre historical horror movie has a brief scene with a presidential helicopter, Marine One, landing on the White House lawn.



Seaguard helicopters in The Abyss
Sikorsky S-62 in The Abyss
The Abyss (1989) - James Cameron's underwater sci-fi adventure has a pair of US Navy transports (Sikorsky S-62/ HH-52A Seaguard) in early scenes, ferrying scientists and military men to ships on station above the submarine base. Other helicopters appear on TV screens, and there's a shot of one chopper along the shoreline during the finale's tidal wave sequence in the longer 'special edition' of this genre movie.



The Accidental Spy (aka: Takmo mai sing, 2001) - this Jackie Chan comedy adventure, directed by Teddy Chen, features a Bell 206 JetRanger with a rope ladder deployed to save the hero from a runaway tanker lorry. Amusingly, the airborne rescue fails in this lengthy stunt sequence, and Chan has to escape by jumping out of the burning vehicle just as it topples off a road bridge.



Active Stealth (2000) - "an insipid ripoff of Broken Arrow, this stars one of the lesser Baldwin brothers, and is about a missing hi-tech airplane and the bad actors racing to find it. In the end, bad guy Morgan (played by Terry Funk) shows up in a stock-footage AH-64 Apache attack helicopter to blow away some of the other characters." - NATHAN DECKER







Act Of Valour (2012) - this action movie features actual US Navy S.E.A.L. troops. The featured helicopters are a Boeing MH-47E Chinook that airlifts a boat from the sea, and a couple of Sikorsky SH-60 Seahawk transports used for ship-to-shore operations.



The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai: Across The Eighth Dimension (1984) - W.D. Richter's unique comedy SF adventure sees Peter Weller's superhero escaping from pursuing villains by using a very convenient rope ladder dangling from a helicopter.



The Adventures Of Rocky & Bullwinkle (2000) - airborne villains Boris and Natasha (Jason Alexander, Rene Russo) fly their stolen helicopter (a Bell 47-G4) at street level in Chicago to attack the 3-D cartoon heroes fleeing in a car.



Aftershock (2010) - this Chinese drama, about survivors of a 1976 earthquake disaster, features several Mil Mi-17 'Hip' transport helicopters in emergency rescue scenes during the climactic present-day scenes.



Aftershock: Earthquake In New York (1999) - TV news chopper helps Tom Skerritt get across town in this TV disaster soap. Later, a rescue chopper fails to airlift a trapped boy to safety from the top floor of a wrecked building due to downdraft pressure on the collapsing structure.



Agent Cody Banks (2003) - a young hero is recruited as teenage spy for the CIA in this junior 007-style adventure, which features use of the "Solotrek XFV ('Exoskeletor Flying Vehicle')" - a personal flyer invented by former US Navy combat pilot Michael Moshier - as mountaintop transport for the heroine (Angie Harmon), and as programmable method of capturing henchman (Arnold Vosloo). There's also a Hughes 500 chopper which is stolen by the heroes during their last-minute escape from the villain's secret base, just before the whole place explodes (an unavoidable cliché of any spy movie), of course!
Agent Cody Banks in airborne escape
Pictures (above and right): from AGENT CODY BANKS.
Solotrek XFV flown by Angie Harmon



MD 900 Explorer in Agent Cody Banks 2
Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London (2003) - "We shot some aerial stunt sequences near Pinewood Studios for Agent Cody Banks 2. We had two MD [McDonnell Douglas] Explorers painted black with SAS style troops standing on the skids and then exiting the helicopters by rapid ropes. During the filming of this sequence we had four helicopters working in close formation: the two MD 900s, a [Eurocopter] AS 355-F2 from the police deploying its 'night sun', and our Agusta 109A as the camera ship. We also had a sequence over London with an Agusta 109 Power and an MD 600, but these didn't make it into the movie." - JEREMY BRABEN, Aerial Director of Photography

"Eastern Atlantic Helicopters, from Shoreham Brighton Airport, supplied the MD 900 Explorers that supposedly carried the 'special forces' team." - IAN VINCENT FRAIN



Agent Red (2000) - two helicopters carry the team of marines on a secret mission to the military base on an island, where the hero (Dolph Lundgren) intends to steal a hi-tech aircraft.



Dauphin helicopter in Agents secrets
Agents secrets (aka: Spy Bound, 2004) - this French espionage thriller features one brief sequence with an Aerospatiale AS-365 N2 Dauphin 2 used for air taxi flight.



police amphibicopter, in AI
amphibicopter flies to Manhattan
amphibicopter enters building
AI: Artificial Intelligence (2001) - Steven Spielberg's darkly whimsical sci-fi adventure features a police 'amphibicopter' (without any rotors), which is hijacked by the robot-child for his journey to Manhattan, where it flies inside a skyscraper. Later, to evade capture by airborne cops, the amphibicopter becomes a submersible but it becomes trapped underwater, stuck beneath a collapsed Ferris wheel on the sunken Coney Island.



Airheads (1994) - in the climactic sequence of this comedy, a mobile stage is airlifted - by a twin-rotor Sea Knight helicopter - into the town square for an impromptu rock concert.



The Air I Breathe (2007) - this urban drama features a police AS-350 A-Star that circles a rooftop helipad, just before SWAT cops kill the bank robber.



rescue Huey in Air America
military Huey in Air America
Air America star (1989) - Roger Spottiswoode's comedy thriller about CIA activity in Asia opens in Los Angeles, where a radio news' eye-in-the-sky chopper (a Bell 47J Ranger) hovers near a traffic jam so the pilot (Robert Downey Jr) can berate a rubbernecking trucker for delaying the ambulance on its way to a road accident. Later, in Laos, the young pilot wakes up hanging by a rope from an airborne chopper. There's also a daring rescue by a fellow pilot (Mel Gibson) of the crew from a wrecked cargo plane but, when the UH-1H 'Huey' helicopter crashes due to enemy small arms fire, it lands in the treetops and flips over upside-down, forcing the trapped pilots to jump down into the jungle.

"The flying Huey was a Thai Air Force helicopter leased for the movie, and they also had a UH-1 hulk for the crash scene. The flying was done by Royal Thai Air Force observers aboard each aircraft, and apparently they were freaked out about the stunts and the possibility of damage to their machines." - NATHAN DECKER
Bell 47J in Air America



Air America (1998-9) - this lazily produced and hopelessly contrived TV series, created by Philip DeGuere, stars Lorenzo Lamas and Scott Plank as maverick CIA guys, Rio and Wiley - expert pilots and macho heroes fighting assorted bad guys down south in a tropical paradise (actually Costa Rica). I saw two episodes on DVD clumsily edited to feature length (one story had a Bell JetRanger on a recon flight shot down by a jungle mercenary's RPG, and then a replacement chopper on a rescue mission gets attacked by an enemy's fixed-wing aircraft), and that was quite enough. Thankfully, just one season of the show (26 x 45 minutes) was made. You'd have to pay me large sums of cash to watch any more of this dreary nonsense.



Air Force One (1997) - Wolfgang Petersen's enjoyable blockbuster stars Harrison Ford as a US President fighting terrorist-hijackers that seize control of his official jet. Military helicopters appear in several scenes: as a getaway vehicle (a UH-60L Black Hawk) for the special forces team, but also search and rescue (flight of three Hueys find the President's escape pod), and air transport duties. There are lots of flashy visual effects, but none of them are especially concincing. The Russian helicopter (a Mil Mi-24P Hind-F) used in the film is a real Russian machine owned by the US Army. At the time, it was kept at Fort Polk, Louisiana, for opposition forces training.
Hind helicopter in Air Force One



Air Patrol (1962) - this crime movie features a Los Angeles police helicopter in action. The poster artwork shows what appears to be a Bell 47 with pontoons.
Air Patrol poster



Airport 1975 (1974) - this aerial disaster movie sees a midair collision between a Boeing 747 'Jumbo' jet and a private plane, leaving a stewardess (Karen Black) at the controls. A relief pilot (Charlton Heston) is lowered through a gaping hole in the stricken jet's cockpit from a USAF helicopter.

 AIRWOLF

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Airwolf

Akira (1988) - this superb Japanese animated feature has hi-tech versions of Boeing 107/ CH-46 Sea Knight as ubiquitous military helicopters in many urban neo-Tokyo scenes. There's also a mini-gunship hover-bike which flies like a tiny chopper without rotors through sewer tunnels and hospital corridors. Later, an Apache type attack helicopter crashes on a city street in one scene of the army's confrontation with a violent super-powered teenager.

 ALIAS

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UAV attack in Alias TV show

Alien Armageddon
Alien Armageddon (2011) - sci-fi action movie about yet another invasion from outer space, this includes wreckage of a crashed Huey helicopter.



Alien Nation (1988) - Graham Baker's SF buddy movie sees the alien half of an LAPD team rescue his partner (James Caan) from harbour seawater using a low-flying police helicopter (a Bell 206 JetRanger III). A spin-off television series, plus a batch of TV movies (with a different main cast), followed, eventually creating a popular genre franchise.
JetRanger in Alien Nation



Alive (1993) - at the end of this movie, based on a true story about a plane crash in the Andes mountains, there are a couple of Bell 212 Hueys (from the Chilean air force), which finally rescue the survivors.
Huey rescue helicopters in Alive



Alligator (1980) - a police helicopter is used to search the city for a monster on the loose after it escapes from the sewers.



Alligator 2: The Mutation (1991) - police helicopter appears during a climactic struggle against the monster, just in time to rescue the heroic cop from a lake.



All The President's Men (1976) - Alan J. Pakula's classic drama of investigative journalism is based on the Washington Post reporters' own book about the Watergate scandal. The opening sequence features TV newsreel footage of presidential helicopter Marine One.



Alone In The Dark (2005) - directed by Uwe Boll, this sci-fi horror adventure features a pair of Eurocopter AS 350 machines, carrying special troops to the site of a disused gold mine (the monsters' lair). During the climactic battle scenes, two Apache gunships (cheap model effects or CGI?) arrive; bringing reinforcements against the creatures' attack, but the beasties manage to destroy one of these military choppers, and the other helicopter just disappears.



Alphas (2011) - season one of this TV series about plain-clothes superheroes includes episode Catch And Release, with a miniature bug-like drone gadget that flies like a tiny rotorcraft.



The Alternate (1999) - this low-budget siege thriller about mercenary terrorists holding US President (John Beck) hostage features a Bell 206 JetRanger landing in the street to bring FBI negotiator (Michael Madsen) to the crime scene. Later, a Eurocopter BK-117 drops a three-man commando team onto the roof, but they are shot dead by top villain (Bryan Genesse), who eventually gets airborne, in another JetRanger, and uses a machine-gun and grenades to attack the cops surrounding the building. In a cheap and rather unconvincing but nonetheless spectacular special effects sequence, the bad guy's stolen chopper is hit by an RPG fired by a police officer, making the helicopter drop to the ground and promptly explode.



The Amazing Colossal Man (1957) - in this sci-fi monster movie by Bert I. Gordon, a pair of Bell 47G choppers help the military search for the titular 60-foot giant, who escapes from a Nevada army base and goes on a rampage through Las Vegas, before soldiers catch up with him at the Hoover dam.



Amazing Incredible Helicopters star (1999) - this excellent 60-minute TV documentary produced by Donna Anderson, and directed by Pieter Van Soelen, offers a concise history of technological developments relevant to vertical flight and helicopters, with superb archive footage, still photos, and non-stop narration by Lou Richards. It then focuses on the success of various Sikorsky and Boeing machines, and includes brief interviews with servicemen involved in US Air Force and US Navy operations. Although the film boasts many spectacular clips of military choppers in action (including notable examples - the Huey, Black Hawk, and Comanche), the filmmakers don't neglect the value of US Coast Guard and civilian services, with an emphasis on search and rescue flights.
Amazing Incredible Helicopters DVD



The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) - this remake about Marvel's popular superhero features an NYPD chopper (Eurocopter AS350-B2) used by a police captain on patrol over the city at dusk. The helicopter shoots a taser to knock down Spidey so that he falls onto the street below.



Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy (2004) - knockabout comedy (starring Will Ferrell), about rival news readers in 1970s' San Diego, featuring a Bell 206 JetRanger as the TV station's helicopter.
TV news helicopter in Anchorman



Bell 47G helicopter in ..And Justice For All
...And Justice For All (1979) - Norman Jewison's satire on the American legal system has one hysterically comic scene, about halfway through the film, where a crazy judge (Jack Warden) takes a lawyer (Al Pacino) for a wild ride in a Bell 47G helicopter. The judge is a Korean War veteran, and the lawyer has a fear of heights. Their flight ends when the chopper runs out of fuel, and crash lands in shallow water.



And Now You're Dead (1998) - this Hong Kong produced actioner was filmed in Prague, and stars Bruce Lee's daughter Shannon. It has thieves using a helicopter to help break one of their gang out of police custody, followed by a bungee jump out of the low-flying chopper into the middle of street level gun-battle. However, the pilot gets shot, so this sequence ends with a quite realistic crash 'n' burn.



The Andromeda Strain (1971) - in this classic science fiction thriller, a helicopter carries investigators in biohazard suits to a little US town stricken by an instantly lethal plague from space.



The Andromeda Strain (2008) - a TV mini-series remake of the above, this has a Huey flying scientists from a US military camp to the disease-stricken town, where the helicopter sprays a poison to kill carrion birds, and then drops off its passengers on the body-strewn street. The chopper returns to collect two survivors and the fallen satellite. As it transports a snooping TV reporter, another Huey is forced to make an emergency landing when a fight breaks out and, when the reporter escapes, a hidden bomb destroys the helicopter. Later, there's a flight of six JetRangers from the army base, on a mission (like crop sprayers) to dispense bacteria over the infected landscape.



Angel (1999-2004) - in 1st season episode, Sanctuary (2000), the big action climax scene has the hero's ex-girlfriend Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) trapped on the L.A. detective agency's rooftop, when a hired gunman shoots at her from a helicopter (a Eurocopter AS350). The hero, Angel (David Boreanaz), rushes to save her and, when he gets to the building's top floor, he jumps straight up through a skylight and into the air to reach the chopper's landing skids. The villain gets to see our hero's scary face (he's actually a vampire with a soul!), before Angel throws him out of the helicopter and then forces the pilot to land nearby, just as the local cops arrive.



Bell 222A in Angels and Demons
Angels & Demons (2009) - this movie directed by Ron Howard is a sequel to The Da Vinci Code - also based on a novel by Dan Brown. In one early scene, there's a brief shot of a CGI helicopter (possibly an Agusta A-109) which transports Prof. Langdon (Tom Hanks) across Rome, to a meeting in the Vatican.

The plot concerns an Illuminati sect of kidnappers using a bomb made from stolen antimatter ("Vatican city will be consumed by light." Oh, what a good idea!) to disrupt papal elections. In the finale, a Bell 222A takes off from the crowded square outside a church, as the supposedly heroic padre (Ewan McGregor) performs a symbolic ascension into a cloudy night sky, in desperate hopes of reaching sufficient altitude before the WMD goes off and destroys the whole city.

Absurdly, the rogue priest somehow manages to parachute down to safety, landing beneath a visual effects' blast wave that causes only minor property damage. It's all preposterous Hollywood nonsense with only slick production values to save it from being completely unwatchable rubbish.



An Annapolis Story (1955) - definitely a clichéd plot, but the scenes of a Piasecki HUP (flown by Sam Peckinpah!) are great. It's directed by Don Siegel, and stars John Derek and Kevin McCarthy. I have one of the old ships... mine was owned by the French. - JOHN C. GOBLE
Annapolis Story helicopter



modified Bell 47 in Annie
Annie (1982) - this musical directed by John Huston, from comic strip Little Orphan Annie, features an orange Bell 47G customised with stub wings, painted fuel tanks and a modified cockpit. The helicopter pilot is Charles A. 'Chuck' Tamburro.



Antibodies (aka: Antikörper, 2005) - a German crime drama about a serial killer, with closing scenes that feature a Bell Long Ranger used by a police detective from the city, to reach the rural community where one of the murders occurred.

 APOCALYPSE  NOW

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Apocalypse Now

Apollo 13 (1995) - at the end of Ron Howard's excellent docudrama about a failed Moon mission, two Sikorsky SH-3 (S61) Sea King helicopters are seen during the splashdown and recovery sequence, rescuing the three NASA astronauts (played by Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, and Bill Paxton) from their damaged spacecraft's re-entry capsule.
Sikorsky Sea Kings
Apollo 13 splashdown



Appleseed (aka: Appurushido, 2004) - this Japanese animated feature film, based on characters from Masamune Shirow's manga comics, is post-apocalypse sci-fi, with 3D anime of some futuristic police helicopters. There's an Osprey-type gunship that picks up the heroine after the opening battle. A twin-rotor Chinook-type lands on the heliport where many smaller choppers use as patrol base. Later, police rotorcraft chase enemy cyborgs attacking the city and two flyers are destroyed in combat scenes. Finally, an Osprey-type machine flies an E-SWAT crew through a night rainstorm on their secret mission to a disused med-lab complex.



Appleseed Ex Machina (aka: Ekusu makina, 2007) - produced by John Woo, this animated sequel directed by Shinji Aramaki has more sci-fi helicopters on patrol above an urban utopia and, in later scenes, flights of choppers hunt down terrorists and a rogue cyborg.

 ARABESQUE

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Arabesque

Bell 212 in Arachnophobia
Arachnophobia (1990) - Frank Marshall's mutant spider thriller begins with a Bell 212 helicopter that drops a team of scientists (led by Julian Sands) into dense Venezuelan jungle, where they find lots of deadly creepy crawlies.



CGI Apache in Arachnoquake
Arachnoquake (2012) - this low-budget silly monster movie, about giant spiders invading New Orleans, features CGI work of an Apache gunship, but the military helicopter fails to stop the enormous queen spider from spinning a huge web between tower blocks in the city.



Armageddon (aka: Redline, 1997) - not the Bruce Willis space adventure, but a low-budget European cyber-thriller starring Rutger Hauer as the leader of techno-smugglers out for revenge after he's betrayed by his partners in crime. The opening scene features a pair of Mil-24 Hinds, and the gang are harassed by a robot drone helicopter (UCAR unmanned combat rotorcraft) fitted with machine guns.



Armageddon (1998) - Michael Bay's save-the-world adventure puts unlikely heroes (led by Bruce Willis) from an oil rig into space to destroy an asteroid that threatens planet Earth. As genuine NASA hardware, and astronaut training and launch centres, feature as backdrops for the Hollywood sci-fi plot, helicopters (including a HH-60G Pavehawk and a Sikorsky S-76 Spirit) are almost ubiquitous in exterior scenes, but they are used only as transports, or security patrols for when nuclear weapons are deployed on the space mission.

astronaut heroes of Armageddon
Armageddon, behind the scenes



Around The World Under The Sea helicopter
Around The World Under The Sea (1966) - "this science fiction thriller has a Sikorsky HH-52A Seaguard, of the US Coast Guard, appearing at the start of the movie, and again at the end to rescue the heroes from their submarine out at sea." - BILL HIERS



Arthur And The Great Adventure (2009) - this partly animated (in 3D CGI) fairy tale for children is a sequel to Arthur And The Invisibles (aka: Arthur et les Minimoys, 2006), also directed by Luc Besson. During the miniaturised scenes, mosquitoes in the back garden sound like small helicopters, and they are flown by elfish 'pilots' like ornithopters or gyrocopters, used for air-taxi duties. Back in the world of humans, the miniature version of the young hero takes to the air in a wooden toy plane, while a reformed-villain character fails to get airborne in a model helicopter (a Sikorsky S-58/ H-34 Choctaw), which simply falls off a shelf in the child's bedroom.



Artificial Telepathy (2001) - this sci-fi thriller shot in Bulgaria has slick CGI visuals of two Mil Mi-24 Hind gunships which attack a team of spies in open country, but missiles from a NATO jet fighter destroy both helicopters. There's another digital Hind providing air support to a squad of Russian commandos, when the bad guys attack the heroine's residence. However, after strafing the area, destroying a couple of parked vehicles with rockets and turning the cabin homestead into firewood, the military chopper is forced to nosedive straight into ground (this CGI 'crash' sequence is unconvincing) when the psychic hero (Victor Brown) uses his miraculous psi powers to defend himself. Also in the film, a team of mercenaries led by an ex-American agent (Judge Reinhold), use a Mil Mi-8 Hip transport (a real one, not CGI, with UNWFP - the United Nations World Food Programme - on its underside!) during their mission to search for the hero.



Assassins (1995) - this action thriller is directed by Richard Donner. For a sequence in Seattle, at night, cop cars pursue a stolen taxi and a metro police helicopter (a Bell 206 JetRanger) joins the chase, but the two killers escape when the driver (Sylvester Stallone) evades arrest by parking his yellow cab in a fleet car park full of look-alike vehicles.
Bell 206 in Assassins



The Assault (aka: L'assaut, 2010) - based on a true story, this French action drama features a Eurocopter SA330 Puma, in scenes at Marseilles airport where GIGN troops rescue the hostage passengers from a plane hi-jacked by Muslim terrorists in Algiers.



Assault On Precinct 13 (2005) - this very watchable but largely unexciting remake of John Carpenter's 1976 cult thriller, features SWAT guys descending on ropes from a tactical helicopter (a Eurocopter AS 350 piloted by Dave Thomassini) onto a flat roof of the besieged police station.



Asteroid (1997) - airborne hero (Michael Biehn) plucks householder from burning roof in bush-fire survey stopover. Later, military choppers help evacuate Kansas City folk to avoid space threat. Other helicopters appear in urban rescue missions when the asteroid strikes Dallas.



The Astronaut Farmer (2006) - when US media gets wind of an indie launch plan, a Bell 206 JetRanger from TV news flies over a Texas ranch where Charlie Farmer (Billy Bob Thornton) is building a rocket.



A-Team rotary action
The A-Team (1984-8) - popular TV comedy thriller show about vigilante mercenaries, created by Stephen J. Cannell, this had frequent helicopter action scenes, that were mostly flown by regular character H.M. "Howlin' Mad" Murdock (Dwight Schultz) who spent time between missions in various hospital psych wards, despite there being some ambiguity regarding his actual state of mind.

In the opening scenes of episode, Judgement Day, a black Bell 222 is used to kidnap a woman that tries to escape on a jet ski. This helicopter seems to be 'Redwolf' (from TV series Airwolf) with a little re-painting job (also no ADF pod or guns). - CARSTEN HAGEN



A-Team movie
The A-Team (2010) - this big screen remake of the popular 1980s' TV series features several helicopter sequences, although some of the many flying stunts are done with a mix of practical and virtual elements. The heroes escape from trouble in Mexico by hijacking an old medevac 'Huey', out-flying airborne pursuit by the local police's gunship. This getaway Bell 205 flight showcases wacky piloting - with barrel rolls and a mid-air stall by Captain H.M. Murdock (Sharlto Copley) - to dodge bullets and evade an inevitable missile attack, until the cops' chopper is destroyed by a USAF jet when the Mexican flight violates US airspace. Later on, the heroine (Jessica Biel) arrives in Iraq during the American forces' withdrawal, landing in a Bell 407 (a stand-in for the ARH-70 Arapaho) at the US army base. To complete their covert mission, alpha team use an Osprey tilt-rotor to shoot-up an enemy car and airlift a stolen cargo container to safety. The heroine uses a Eurocopter EC-120 for transport in Germany. There is also brief CGI of an MD 500E used for a kidnap from the bank tower in Frankfurt, when the captive with a parachute is thrown from the building and caught in mid-air by the helicopter's landing skids. A Eurocopter AS-350 is used by authorities to pick up arrested CIA agent after an explosive dockside showdown.



The Atomic City (1952) - this Cold War spy movie about kidnapping and ransom involves top secret info about nuclear weapons at Los Alamos. There's a classic Bell 47D-1, with wheels instead of skids, leading the search for a scientist's son.
Bell 47 in The Atomic City



Atomic Train (1999) - SF disaster, and two-part TV mini-series, where airborne the hero (Rob Lowe) climbs down a rope ladder onto a runaway freight train to find a smuggler's nuclear bomb. Another helicopter lands on the tracks ahead, then narrowly avoids being hit by the speeding loco. Later, flights of choppers drop fire-suppressant chemicals on a blaze of toxic waste that's caused by the wrecked train.



Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes (1978) - in this cult classic movie (a truly horrible sci-fi spoof), there is an early scene where the cops, with guns blazing, are attacking the bad tomatoes. A police helicopter (reportedly, a Hiller UH-12E), swoops in for a landing but suffers a tail-rotor strike, caught on film. The helicopter spins out of control, crashes and burns. It obviously was not planned, and the filmmakers even dubbed in some cheesy reaction shots. I don't know what happened to the pilot, but it's obvious the helicopter was completely destroyed. I don't know for certain, but I'm willing to wager that it's probably one of the few on-screen crashes that actually happened. - DAN SWEET, Columbia Helicopters



Cobra helicopter in Austin Powers Goldmember
Austin Powers In Goldmember (2002) - a black Bell AH-1 Cobra gunship is flown by a henchman in the movie-within-a-movie sequence (starring Tom Cruise, and directed by Steven Spielberg). - BILL HIERS



Automan (1983-4) - decades before today's commonplace CGI effects, Glen A. Larson's sci-fi TV series about a police computer's hologram cop used other, ingenious, methods to depict aerial action on screen, as this outtake photo shows...

The helicopter was painted black with our special 'whiskey/wax' mixture and then outlined with a highly reflective tape. When illuminated from another helicopter, this [Automan] helicopter appeared to be cursor generated. - RICHARD HART, National Helicopter
outtake photo from Automan



Avalon (2001) - a futuristic attack helicopter (with its skew-angled overlapping rotors!) appears in the virtual reality scenario of this Japanese sci-fi mystery-thriller, shot on location in Poland. The heroine destroys this gunship in the film's pre-credits action. Later, a Russian Mil Mi-24 Hind chopper assaults a whole team of combatants during a flashback, and when the story returns to the 'Avalon' wargame, the Hind re-appears unexpectedly, firing a salvo of missiles to cause a 're-set' (game over) for elite 'Class A' players.
Hind gunship attacks game-players in Avalon CGI helicopter in Avalon

 AVATAR

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Avatar - Scorpion rotorcraft

 THE  AVENGERS  (TV)

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helicopter in The Avengers

 AVENGERS  ASSEMBLE

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Avengers Assemble

AVP - Alien vs. Predator (2004) - this sci-fi action/ monster movie, features a Eurocopter AS350-B3 that's perched on a frozen mountaintop in Nepal, waiting to pick-up a lone climber when she reaches the summit. There's also a purely CGI helicopter (obviously based upon a Eurocopter AS365 Dauphin design), flying over Antarctica to rendezvous with an icebreaker ship.
A-Star in AVP movie



AVPR: Aliens vs. Predator - Requiem (2007) - sci-fi monster-mash rumble franchise sequel, featuring a Bell 205 'Huey' used by surviving heroes for escape from their quarantined town's hospital rooftop. However, the helicopter is caught in blast from a nuclear missile, causing it to crash in the forest near a waterfall (this last seems copied from a sequence in Resident Evil: Apocalypse).

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