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A GUIDE TO HELICOPTERS IN CINEMA & TELEVISION |
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Call Red (1996) - British TV series, written by Peter Jukes and Brian McGill, about the missions and crew of an emergency medical helicopter.
Only seven episodes were produced.
The Card Player (aka: Il cartaio, 2004) - this murder thriller from Dario Argento has a Bell 412 Huey circling the 'crime scene' area when a body is found dumped in the river. Carriers (1997) - a Bell 206E JetRanger appears in the climactic scenes of this medical thriller about a biological weapon being unleashed in America.
Casino Royale (2006) - in this fresh start to a new batch of 007 movies, the new James Bond (Daniel Craig) arrives at a crime scene in a McDonnell Douglas 600N helicopter.
Catch That Kid (aka: Mission Without Permission, 2004) - during the car chase sequence, an LAPD aerial patrol joins the pursuit of young bank robbers. The helicopter hovers just above the road, but the cops fail to stop the thieves' little go-kart getaway vehicles, which the gang use to escape by driving straight under the chopper's landing skids.
The Cave (2005) - in this monster movie adventure, a Eurocopter (Aerospatiale) SA 330 Puma flies a team of divers into the Carpathian Mountains, where the heroes explore an underground river. The Cell (2000) - features an Agusta-Westland A-109C (from Helinet Aviation Services) taking the comatose serial killer to a research facility... And, later, there's a Eurocopter AS-355F2 (flown by Helinet's stunt pilot, Alan Purwin) carrying FBI agents to rescue a drowning victim at the end. The Cell 2 (2008) - this sci-fi thriller and crime horror movie features a Bell 407 used by the FBI agent searching for a serial killer. The same 407 appears in climactic scenes, when the heroes arrive to save the kidnapped heroine, but she's carried off by the psycho villain who steals the unattended helicopter. One of the cops grabs onto the skids as the chopper gets airborne, and he manages to hang on during a stunt-flying sequence, until the baddie pilot is 'blinded' by the psychic heroine, forcing an emergency landing in the grounds of a stadium. Chained Heat (aka: Das Frauenlager, 1983) - during the finale's riot and seeming breakout, a Bell 206 JetRanger arrives on the scene to help state police lockdown the women's prison.
Charlie's Angels - this millennial remake of the 1970s' TV series about a trio of female private investigators (here, it's Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, and Lucy Liu), features a climactic chase sequence where the omnicompetent heroines (or at least their stunt-doubles) dangle beneath the airborne bad guy's helicopter (a Bell UH-1), and have to perform a hair-raising climb up the rope to prevent the homicidal villain (Sam Rockwell) from escaping, and launching a fly-by rocket attack on the secret homestead of their ever-mysterious boss. For his work on this film, pilot Rick Shuster won the world stunt award in 2001, for best aerial sequence.
Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003) - at the end of this film sequel's spectacular (but quite ludicrous) opening chase sequence, a helicopter emerges from the back of a damaged military truck as it purposely drops over side of a bridge, and the trio of heroines all manage to get onboard the chopper, start its engine and then fly away to safety - just before it hits the ground... all the while maintaining no connection with plausibility or realism, whatsoever. Sadly, this is yet another triumph for cartoonish digital effects over wholly credibile rotary action. Charlie Wilson's War (2007) - this drama based on a true story about secret warfare in Afghanistan, has many brief scenes featuring Mil Mi-24 Hind gunships. Using stock footage combined with CGI, the big Russian helicopters attack ground forces, and later get shot down by rockets and missiles. There's also a Huey in camouflage paint flying a US politician to visit refugee camps in Pakistan. Chase (1973) - "this short-lived American TV series about a special police unit - led by renegade captain Chase Riddick (Mitch Ryan), featured a Hughes 500 chopper." - NATHAN DECKER The Chase (1991) - based on true story, Paul Wendkos directs this lively hijack tale concerning an escaped convict and an airborne TV news team in hot pursuit. The Chase (1994) - Charlie Sheen drives a stolen BMW in Adam Rifkin's comedy romance, and a media circus attends the expressway car chases as our hero is suspected of kidnapping a wealthy heiress. Inevitably, a TV news helicopter joins the action. Chill Factor (1999) - "a genre action movie about biological weapons on the loose. When the Special Forces unit lands on the dam, they arrive in an old French Aerospatiale Gazelle. This is such an out-of-place helicopter that you wonder if it was all the prop department could afford to rent." - NATHAN DECKER China Strike Force (2000) - this kung fu actioner by Stanley Tong features a climax where the villain escapes from cops in a Russian helicopter (a PZL Swidnik W-3 Sokol, a Polish built variant of the Mil Mi-2 Hoplite), with a garishly painted Rolls Royce car hanging beneath it, during the aerial getaway sequence over China's famous Forbidden City. The car hits the topmost part of a pagoda, and it later snags the supporting cables on the side of a skyscraper under construction, causing the chopper to explode, spectacularly.
Chuck (2007-) - in the second episode of this TV comedy thriller, villains kidnap the hero and plan to fly him, in a Eurocopter AS-350 B2, to an offshore rendezvous, but the pilot and bad guy are shot with drug-darts, and Chuck has to land the helicopter using his solo videogame skills. In the 2nd season of this TV spy-fi/ sitcom, episode Chuck vs. The Beefcake has CGI of a Black Hawk gunship shooting at spying heroes sneaking about on a rooftop. Chuck vs. The Predator has an AS-350 getaway flight used for a rooftop escape, until the helicopter is destroyed by a missile from an unmanned military plane. In season three's first episode, Chuck Versus The Pink Slip, there's a black helicopter (an AS-350) used to rescue agents from Mexico, where a mini-gun is fired by one of the airborne heroes at some bad guys. City Hunter (1992) - this vehicle for Jackie Chan's comedy kung fu has paramilitary cops who abseil down from a couple of helicopters to the main deck of a hijacked cruise ship. The City Of Lost Souls (2000) - in this Japanese fantasy action thriller, the antihero hijacks a chopper from an airfield to rescue his girlfriend from a deportation bus. While airborne, he blasts a cop car with his machine gun, then makes the pilot land the helicopter on the road ahead to stop the bus. Soon after, the escaping couple jump out of their helicopter while flying at high altitude, and they drop unharmed by the long fall into an alleyway!
The Closer (2005-) - this TV drama is about a deputy chief of police (played by Kyra Sedgwick) who runs a homicide squad in Los Angeles. In fifth season episode, Strike Three, a police Hughes 500 (model 369), circles the crime scene at night, and spots dead uniformed cops on a street below. Waivers Of Extradition sees a Eurocopter AS-355 used for tracking a car-transporter lorry that's being chased by police along the highway. The Clouded Yellow (1950) - this Hitchcockian mystery thriller includes brief use of a Sikorsky R-4 'Hoverfly' (stock footage?) for airborne police spotter duty in the film's manhunt chase sequence.
Cocoon (1985) - Ron Howard's quirky sci-fi/fantasy about immortality has a US Coast Guard HH-3F Pelican helicopter in the final scenes, where an alien spaceship lifts a cruise boat out of the sea. Code Name: The Cleaner (2007) - this lame comedy with flashback scenes includes a Huey flight for commando troops on special mission into a war zone. Codename: Wild Geese (1984) - this is one of a batch of routine Euro-productions starring Lewis Collins, and directed by Antonio Margheriti, made in the wake of Who Dares Wins (aka: The Final Option). The helicopter scenes include a Eurocopter AS 550, used by the pilot (Lee Van Cleef) to escape from a jungle camp, and there's a Schweizer 300 deployed by the heroes in a, wholly implausible (the model effects work is obvious), flame-thrower attack on the main villain (Klaus Kinski). Cohen & Tate (1989) - a chopper trails the kidnappers of the title into a police roadblock during the film's closing scenes. A Cold Night's Death (1973) - in this creepy horror movie, a helicopter flies a team of investigators to an Arctic research station after radio contact with the crew of scientists working there is lost.
"The helicopter... had become a very standard tool in the film business. But, oh, did it open up all kinds of vistas, all kinds of production values, all kinds of expanded horizons." - JOSEPH SARGENT (from director's commentary on DVD) Commando Leopard (1985) - in the opening sequence, a Huey gunship defends the hydroelectric power station that's under attack, but the sabotage team destroy it, along with the station's dam. In reprisal, the bad guys send three helicopters fitted with flamethrowers (some obvious models for the pyrotechnical effects) - which seems quite implausible, could they do that in real life, I wonder? - to burn the guerrillas' village refuge to the ground. In a later scene, a pair of Bell UN-1N 'Iroquois' Twin Huey choppers bring the villains to a missionary hospital, and although the rebels arrive too late to prevent a tragedy, there's an unintentionally amusing moment when the hero fires a grenade to destroy an airborne Twin Huey, which is transformed into a JetRanger (yet another flying miniature) before it explodes! Con Air  (1997) - Simon West's action thriller has brief shots of the
choppers that escort a prison bus to the airport, where they hover to provide extra security during the transfer of convicts to a plane. Later,
three military helicopters (retired AH-1 Cobras, probably modified and flown by Al Reddick of
Helinet Aviation) intercept the hijacked transport of the title, and they track wrong
aircraft - but a great aerial chase sequence follows, in which gunships play good-cop/ bad-cop with a planeload of killers before the spectacular
yet unconvincing crash-landing in Las Vegas.
Coogan's Bluff (1968) - Clint Eastwood plays a deputy sheriff from Arizona visiting New York to effect the transfer a felon. He arrives and departs the city in a Boeing Vertol BV-107/II (a civilian transport version of the CH-46 Sea Knight, one of seven operated by New York Airways during the 1960s), via the rooftop helipad of the Pan Am skyscraper... Trivia: this film inspired TV series McCloud (1972-6), starring Dennis Weaver. The Copter Kids (1976) - children hunting a gang of cattle rustlers are aided by helicopter pilots.
Coraline (2009) - this fantasy CGI animated feature includes a brief shot where the mechanical 'praying mantis'-styled tractor-digger sprouts rotor blades for a spiral hovering flight above the magic garden. The Core (2003) - although the main action of this sci-fi adventure takes place deep underground, several US military helicopters are seen briefly in early scenes (Sikorsky Chinooks and Blackhawks on transport duty) and the Hawaiian finale's rescue operation (a Seahawk with dipping sonar).
Robert Ludlum's Covert One: The Hades Factor (2006) - is a bio-warfare terrorism thriller, in which the hero (Stephen Dorff) uses a Bell 204 'Huey' type for his flight into an army base. Cradle 2 The Grave (2002) - in this action thriller, five choppers bring various arms dealers to a Californian airfield for the auction of a nuclear weapon. The villain hijacks one helicopter (a Bell 230) for a hasty escape attempt, but a shell fired from the heroes' tank hits the chopper making it crash land, skid into the sidewall of a hanger, and explode. The resulting blast also destroys an Agusta helicopter that's parked nearby.
The Crazies (1973) - George Romero's disaster movie thriller about germ warfare has the scientist hero trying to escape in a helicopter from the military base that's overwhelmed by zombies. Crocodile Dundee (1986) - "in the opening scenes of this Paul Hogan movie, we see a late-model Bell 47G flying over the Australian Outback." - NATHAN DECKER
Crocodile 2: Death Roll (2001) - in the climactic scenes of this thriller about a hijacked plane crashing in a Mexican swamp, the mercenary tracker and pilot (Martin Kove) gets wounded during an escape flight, leading to a scene where his low-flying helicopter is snatched from the air by a monster reptile that pulls the chopper down into the water, where it promptly explodes. Cry Baby (1990) - "this musical by John Waters is set in 1954, so it is proper to see a Bell 47D-1 during the prison escape sequence in the film." - NATHAN DECKER CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000 -) - this scientific detective TV show, set in Las Vegas, follows the sometimes bizarre cases solved by the a night-shift team. Season eight opener Dead Doll has an A-Star helicopter using infra-red camera to help search for a kidnapped and lost CSI. That's followed up with rescue by Huey medevac from the desert location. Episode Who & What is a cross-over story with New York based crime drama Without A Trace, and features a Eurocopter AS350-B2 used by the FBI agent. CSI: Miami (2002 -) - TV drama series that properly launched Crime Scene Investigation as a franchise, this spin-off offers similar lab-based detective stories but with a different location. In the final episode of season one, Body Count, there's an exciting prison break sequence with three inmates escaping in a Eurocopter A-Star painted as a 'fake' police chopper. The cop hero (David Caruso) and prison guards shoot at the armed but fleeing convicts, and their helicopter is damaged by gunfire so that it can only fly short distance away.
CSI: New York (2004 -) - this spin-off TV series adds Manhattan to the franchise's locations for homicide detective work and bio-science lessons with increasing use of sci-fi tech and gadgetry. The first episode of season five sees an Aerospatiale AS355-F Twin Star used by NYPD, but inter-cutting for the flying sequence has one obvious continuity error with stock footage of a different helicopter (a Bell 206 JetRanger). Mid-season episode, The Triangle, features a Eurocopter AS350-B2 used by the bank robber's daughter to escape justice and leave the city.
Cube Zero (2004) - this routine prequel to cult sci-fi classic Cube, features a pair of big helicopters (CGI work based on the Sikorsky S-80 / CH-53E Super Sea Stallion), which carry special forces' troops to pursue the escaped heroes.
Cutie Honey (aka: Kyûti Hani, 2004) - this live-action version of a popular manga/ anime series about a superhero android girl, features an Aerospatiale AS-355N, which brings the heroine's sidekick, female detective Nat-shan, to a crime scene for the film's spectacular opening sequence. After the first battle, super-villain 'Gold Claw' goes into CGI mode for aerial escape from cops via rotor blades that emerge from the top of his costume's helmet. Cypher (2002) - in this sci-fi mystery, the heroine (Lucy Liu) uses a hi-tech (sleek, black, mostly CGI) helicopter to rescue protagonist (Jeremy Northam) from the top of an elevator shaft when he escapes from an underground vault. Later, the heroes take off in the chopper, from a tower block helipad, to evade capture by the villains. |
