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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.
Carriers (1997) - a Bell 206E JetRanger appears in the climactic scenes of this medical thriller about a biological weapon being unleashed in America. Cars (2006) - "Pixar's latest adventure features the insanely cute and friendly Dinoco Blue helicopter (reminiscent of Dauphin types), which spends race weekends sitting on top of the Dinoco Blue team's trailer dancing and winking. At the end of the movie he gives Mater the ride he's dreamt of all his life! Also in the film is a JetRanger type news helicopter that accompanies a gaggle of paparazzi who track down Lightning McQueen in Radiator Springs." - WINNIE LEUNG 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. The Cassandra Crossing (1976) - this disaster movie, shot on European locations, features an SA315 Alouette II HB-XDL (from BOHAG Helikopter), flown by the contract US Army team trying to pick up a dog from the train.
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. 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 (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.
Chopper One (1974) - TV adventure series from the Spelling-Goldberg stable about an air patrol team of the Los Angeles police, this co-starred Dirk Benedict (who went on to appear in The A-Team), and benefited from good aerial photography. Chopper Squad (1975) - derivative Australian TV action show about the exploits of a coastal rescue helicopter pilot and his flight crew. Routine small screen fodder, that's all but forgotten today. The chopper was a Bell 206 JetRanger. 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. 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!
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. 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.
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. 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).
Courage Under Fire (1996) - Meg Ryan plays a US medevac pilot, Captain Karen Walden, who is awarded a posthumous medal after her chopper crashed during the Gulf War. The flashbacks show how she destroyed an Iraqi tank from the air, to save the crew of another downed helicopter. 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 overrun by mad 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 (2002-3) - 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. 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. Cypher (2002) - in this sci-fi mystery, the heroine (Lucy Liu) uses a hi-tech (sleek, black, but 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 takeoff in the machine from a tower block helipad to evade capture by the villains. |
