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A GUIDE TO HELICOPTERS IN CINEMA & TELEVISION |
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The Baader Meinhof Complex (aka: Der Baader Meinhof Komplex, 2008) - this docudrama about German terrorists features an Agusta A109
which flies by the prison yard. There's also stock footage of Hueys and newsreel clips of helicopters involved in some anti-terrorist operations. Babel (2006) - this drama features a Bell 412 air ambulance that saves a couple of American tourists who are stranded in a Morocco desert village.
Bacterium (2006) - in the opening scenes of this low-budget sci-fi horror, a Bell 47 chases a car along a desert road, forcing the driver to crash, and the chopper lands nearby so that hazmat-suited henchmen can use a flame-thrower to burn the car and destroy stolen evidence of secret military experiments. Later, when the monster escapes from the old house, the helicopter fails to evade the creature's tentacles, and (in some obvious but amusing miniature work) the gigantic blob catches and eats the pilot, crewman, and the helicopter, too!
Bad Company (2002) - Joel Schumacher's comedy thriller pairs a streetwise hustler (Chris Rock) and a CIA spymaster (Anthony Hopkins) in a sting operation against Russian mafia gang who plan to sell a suitcase packaged nuclear bomb. In the final action sequence, helicopters are used to help track the bad guys' getaway van through the streets of New York.
Balls Of Fury (2007) - comedy mixing an Enter The Dragon plotline, and James Bond antics, with table-tennis championship heroics, this features a Eurocopter A-Star that brings FBI backup agents to the villain's secret hideout.
Batman (1989) - "in Tim Burton's big-budget movie version of the classic superhero mythology, the Joker's (Jack Nicholson) helicopter seen at the end of the film is a modified Aerospatiale SA341 Gazelle." - NATHAN DECKER
Batman: Gotham Knight (2008) - this animated superhero series features a Bat-copter/ plane that closely resembles the Bell/ Boeing V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft. Battle Circus (1953) - director Richard Brooks' worthwhile but flawed documentary style adventure, about a military hospital camp in the Korean War, anticipates Altman's satirical M*A*S*H, and that film's TV spinoff. As heroic action movie it's marred by the romance between a surgeon (Humphery Bogart) and a nurse (blonde June Allyson), but there's still plenty of aerial medevac sequences, featuring a Bell 47D-1 (H-13E) chopper, all photographed with convincing details of how wounded soldiers are airlifted to safety.
Battle Royale (2001) - this Japanese sci-fi actioner has a khaki green Eurocopter AS-350 used for transport flights to and from the island.
BAT*21 (1988) - offbeat Vietnam war story about the difficulties of a priority rescue mission - to pluck a missing officer (Gene Hackman) from enemy territory, and the friendship which develops between him and a recon pilot (Danny Glover). Exciting fixed-wing action precedes the climactic helicopter evacuation sequence. The film features a UH-1N (Bell 212) Huey. "Filmed in Malaysia, with Malaysian Air Force Sikorsky S-61A helicopters posing as American search and rescue craft." - NATHAN DECKER BayWatch (1989-99) - a popular US TV series about L.A. county lifeguards patrolling California's beaches, this show had occasional appearances by Coast Guard helicopters (especially AS365 N2 Dolphins) for rescue and surveillance missions.
"Leaving the aircaft carrier: Sikorsky SH-60F Oceanhawk (of US Navy) and Bell UH-1N Twin Huey (from US Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron)... Nathan Decker is wrong about the Admiral's 214ST, it was actually a Bell, or Agusta-Bell 412 (a four-blade Twin Huey in essence) and the support gunships were actually Bell 205s, or UH-1Hs as the US Army would call them." - IAN VINCENT FRAIN "We actually shot the aerial sequences (and the majority of the movie) in Slovakia. The reason the French Special Forces are flying in a Russian Mi17 is because that's all I could get from the Slovak Air Force! I had originally wanted a Super Puma, but, them's the breaks!" - JOHN MOORE (director, Behind Enemy Lines) Biggles: Adventures In Time (1986) - First World War air ace (Neil Dickson) and his heroic chums spread havoc among German troops when a helicopter travels back in time to overfly the trenches. Big Man Japan (aka: Dai-Nihonjin, 2007) - this satire on superhero movies features one brief helicopter appearance, with a Kawasaki (licence built Eurocopter) BK 117B-1, which hovers over the scene when special forces troops break into the hero's suburban home. (Unfortunately, the DVD box cover artwork shows a different machine, the Bell 212 Twin Huey, which does not appear in the film.)
Bionic Woman (2007) - a rather tired remake of the 1976-8 spin-off show from that decade's Six Million Dollar Man series, this Canadian production stars British actress Michele Ryan as cyborg agent Jaime Sommers. The pilot episode has a Eurocopter AS 365 Dauphin for medevac to a secret base, a Sikorsky Black Hawk chasing the escaping heroine, and a Bell JetRanger that interrupts the bionic women's rooftop fight scene.
Black Scorpion (1999) - campy TV superhero adventure series from Roger Corman, this stars Michelle Lintel as Darcy Walker, a cop by day and masked crime fighter by night in Angel City, a parallel world version of Los Angeles. In the first episode, Armed And Dangerous, a former pilot (Martin Kove) has flashbacks to a helicopter dogfight with another Vietnam veteran. There's stock wartime footage of US Army Hueys, plus an aerial combat sequence, featuring two Hughes/ MD 500 series gunships, borrowing action from another Corman movie production, Future Fear (1997). Blade Trinity (2004) - in the opening scenes of this action-horror movie about vampire hunters, two helicopters (a Bell JetRanger and a Eurocopter AS 350) carry a team of bad guys into the Middle East desert, on a daylight mission to investigate a secret tomb. Blind Horizon (2003) - in this mystery thriller, a Huey flies by a burning tanker-lorry in the road accident scene.
Blonde And Blonder (2007) - this spoof caper movie features an AS-350 B2 Ecureuil used by federal agents for Niagara resort scenes, which sees the helicopter following the villains during a speedboat chase. Blood Diamond (2006) - Edward Zwick's contribution to the mercenary and reporter cycle of third-world adventure movies uncovers diamond smuggling in Africa provides a showcase for Russian helicopters. There's a Mil Mi-8 Hip used by the heroes to reach a refugee camp, and a Mil Mi-24 Hind that spearheads a Sierra Leone army attack on the revolutionaries' jungle base.
Blood: The Last Vampire (2000) - this Japanese anime, set on a US airbase in 1966, mixes 2D characters with 3D backgrounds and features one brief appearance of a Kaman H-43 Huskie, with distinctive twin-meshing rotors, long exhaust, and tail boom fins. The Blues Brothers (1980) - after numerous car chases, our heroic musicians visit city hall to pay taxes, while cops and troops with tanks surround the building and two choppers buzz over the area to prevent any escape.
Body Snatchers (1994) - Abel Ferrara's remake of this chilling alien invasion story is set on a military base, and climaxes with an escape attempt via helicopter and subsequent use of airborne weaponry against a convoy of the pod people's army trucks. Bones (2005-) - is a TV show about a forensic scientist and FBI agent solving homicide cases. In season four's episode The Hero In The Hold, the heroine flies in a Bell 212 to a ship and rescues her kidnapped partner just before the decommissioned vessel is blown up and sunk. In season six episode The Doctor In The Photo, a Eurocopter AS350-B2 appears in two scenes, parked at the medical rescue heliport. Braddock: Missing In Action III (1988) - features a fake Russian Mil Mi-24 Hind. This is actually an old 1960s' Sikorsky S-62 with dummy engines added to the sides and fake wings bolted on. Not as good a job as Rambo, but then again I'm sure they had a much smaller budget. - NATHAN DECKER Brave New World (1998) - this TV adaptation of Aldous Huxley's SF satire features an off-screen helicopter crash (see Rotary Action cliché #1) that strands two researchers in territory of savages they were flying over. Later, in this drama's climactic scenes, three Robinson R44 Astro helicopters buzz the media-stalked protagonist as he stands atop a microwave communications tower.
Brewster's Millions (1985) - Richard Prior uses three SA360 Dauphins to fly his baseball team the Hackensack Bulls to from New Jersey to Battery Park to practice for a game with the New York Yankees... on Long Island. - ALEX YOUNGS The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954) - there's some early air-sea rescue footage with Sikorsky HO2S-1 (R5) helicopters in this Korean War drama about a lawyer (William Holden), who's recalled to active service as a US Navy jet pilot. The aerial action is exciting and the visual effects won an Oscar.
British Airshows 2003 - this compilation DVD has highlights from a series of special events celebrating the centenary of powered flight, with the main focus being on historic aircraft, warplanes and jets. There is brief footage of two Royal Navy Lynx helicopters (made by GKN Westland), plus some incredible dizzying aerobatics preformed with a little Schweizer 300. Unfortunately, the Blue Eagles' appearance at Blenheim Palace is not featured. The extras disc has footage of three Mil Mi-24 Hinds, plus two Boeing CH-47 Chinooks, which deploy troops on rapid-ropes. A Robinson R44 Astro is the camera-ship for aerial views of a 50-year-old Vulcan bomber's aborted takeoff run. There are also brief clips of a Eurocopter Tiger and NH-90 performing dazzling stunts like hovering flips and barrel rolls at the 2003 Paris Airshow. Broken Arrow  (1996)
- John Woo's thriller about stolen nukes has rescue helicopters searching for lost USAF
pilots after a stealth bomber crashes in Utah. A park ranger's truck is destroyed by airborne
thieves who then strafe the canyon floor, from where the hero (Christian Slater) shoots at
their gunship so it crashes, but flips over so the whirling tail rotor nearly kills the fallen
heroine (Samantha Mathis). Another chopper is bought down by an EMP shockwave after the
bomb explodes in a disused mine. Then, three more helicopters bring troops to secure the blast
area, and pursue the villains to a hijacked freight train where, in a digitally enhanced scene,
a bad guy standing atop the moving train gets sliced in half by the rotor blades of a low-flying
chopper (pun intended). Several rotary action decapitation scenes exist in various movies, but
this marks first time a human torso is struck on-screen.
The Bronx Executioner (1988) - this Italian schlock sci-fi actioner, where scavenger humans battle decadent androids in an unrecognisable NYC of wasteland and castle estates, features the brief appearance of a Schweizer model 300 (a former Hughes light helicopter design from the 1960s) used to drop supplies to the beleaguered local law-enforcer. The Brothers Bloom (2008) - this 'postmodern caper' movie features two (probably CGI) helicopters flying over Prague after a bomb explosion as diversion for a robbery in the city's castle.
Bullet In The Head (1990) - John Woo's searing drama about three friends from Hong Kong in the Vietnam War has one set-piece airborne assault on an NVA camp, which uses US Army stock footage of Huey gunships, but also features some dramatic scenes of low-flying helicopters.
Burn After Reading (2008) - a farcical spy movie by the Coen brothers, in which a helicopter (probably an A-Star) hovers directly above the protagonist's stopped car, adding a persecution complex to his growing paranoia. Burn Notice (2007-) - American TV action series about an ex-spy turned vigilante. In the final episode of season two, after the big shootout at the marina, the 'management' exec of covert ops baddies flies aboard a Eurocopter EC135 to Miami, for a secret agent 'recruitment' meeting with the hero (Jeffrey Donovan). Rejecting the proverbial offer he can't refuse, our disgruntled hero jumps out of the helicopter into the sea. That footage is recycled for the recap intro of season three, and then the same helicopter reappears in the season's final episode but a modern EC120 is only used for airborne shots; when the chopper lands, programme makers mistakenly use an Aerospatiale AS 355F1 TwinStar instead, in a notable continuity error.
By Dawn's Early Light (1990) - during a limited nuclear strike by the Soviet Union, the American President's helicopter escape to the safety of a USAF airbase is affected by an EMP blast-wave, so his chopper crashes, leaving the chief executive blind in hospital without any control of the US military, and unable to prevent WW3... |
