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A GUIDE TO HELICOPTERS IN CINEMA & TELEVISION |
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The Abyss (1989) - James Cameron's underwater SF adventure has some helicopters in early
scenes, ferrying scientists and military men to ships on station above the submarine base. 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 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: 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 (a totally unavoidable cliché of any spy movie), of course!
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.
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. Air America 
(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) 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 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 only 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-24 Hind) 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. The Air Patrol (1962) - "featuring police helicopters in action. The poster art shows what appears to be a Bell 47 with pontoons." - NATHAN DECKER 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.
Akira (1989) - superb Japanese anime feature with futuristic helicopters chasing a gang of bikers down Tokyo highways. Alias (2004-6) - this TV action series stars Jennifer Garner as a glamorous spy. In the 3rd season episode, Succession, CGI work in the Berlin kidnap sequence features a sky-crane helicopter (modelled after the Sikorsky S-64) that's used to haul an elevator car from the top of a lift shaft and fly away with it as payload. Later, a Delta Force ambush during the CIA hostage exchange uses a Eurocopter AS 350, but this chopper is damaged by gunfire from the ground. In episode Breaking Point, a rogue CIA squad have an AS 350 to help rescue our heroine from a military prison camp. Legacy has yet another Eurocopter A-Star, but this one is supposedly with "whisper mode" for stealthy approach during a mission in Japan, where the airborne assault team drop to the ground on ropes. Season four (2005) episode, Index, features a 1988 model Aerospatiale AS 350-B1 Ecureuil, used to enable the heroine (Jennifer Garner) to escape from custody of French police after her mission in Paris. She jumps off a rooftop and grabs onto the helicopter's landing skids. In later episode, The Road Home, a flying model UAV assault chopper with a "biometric targeting system" pursues the heroine through a warehouse. The final season's opener Prophet Five has a Eurocopter AS 350 medevac used by bad guys to kidnap agent Vaughan (Michael Vartan). Episode Solo also features a black AS 350 chopper providing machine-gun covering fire during the rescue of agent Rachel (blonde Rachel Nichols) from an enemy-controlled oil-rig platform. SOS has two black AS 350 helicopters carrying CIA rescue teams to an oil tanker in Atlantic. Maternal Instinct sees a Bell 206 JetRanger called in for airborne escape vehicle after the heroes' rob a bank in Vancouver, but the villains use a rocket grenade to destroy this helicopter. Alien Nation (1988) - Graham Baker's SF buddy movie sees alien half of LA cop duo rescue his partner (James Caan) from harbour seawater using low-flying police helicopter. A spin-off TV series, plus a batch of TV movies (with different main cast), followed. 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. 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 machinegun 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) - a Bell 47G helps cut a radiation-zapped, 60-foot US Army officer down to size in this bemusing atom-era tale directed by Bert I. Gordon. Amazing Incredible Helicopters
(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 exmaples - 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.
...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 47-G2 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 AS 350). 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. 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 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 LongRanger used by a police detective from the city, to reach the rural community where one of the murders occurred.
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.
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. Arachnophobia (1990) - Frank Marshall's mutant spider thriller sees a helicopter drop a team of scientists (led by Julian Sands) into dense jungle, where they find lots of deadly creepy crawlies. 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.
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 Program - on its underside!) during their mission to search for the hero. 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.
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 Austin Powers In Goldmember (2002) - "a black Bell Cobra is flown by a henchman in the movie-within-a-movie sequence (starring Tom Cruise, and directed by Steven Spielberg)." - BILL HIERS
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.
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). |
