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A GUIDE TO HELICOPTERS IN CINEMA & TELEVISION |
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Narrow Escape (aka: A Thousand Men And A Baby, 1997) - Marcus Cole's TV movie,
about the crew of a US warship 'adopting' a Korean orphan, features Boeing CH-46 Sea Knights
used for ship-to-shore transport duty. Other helicopters appear on screen for scenes on the
ship's main deck. Narrow Margin  (1990)
- Peter Hyams' remake of the 1952 thriller about organised crime has an air strike on
the heroine's isolated mountain cabin in which the bad-guys shoot down a police helicopter
so it nosedives into ground, before the film's action switches to a train as the hero (Gene
Hackman) transports an endangered witness (Anne Archer) to safety.National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 (1993) - in a scene copied from Lethal Weapon 2, gunfire from a helicopter destroys a beach trailer residence, but the killers have attacked the wrong address - so Bruce Willis (in an uncredited cameo), not the film's hero (Emilio Estevez), surrenders unhappily. National Treasure (2005) - with Jerry Bruckheimer producing a Disney film starring Nicolas Cage, you can reasonably expect a slick actioner with a sympathetic, larger-than-life hero. The film's main aerial sequence (the credited pilot is Alan Purwin) occurs around the USS Intrepid in New York harbour, where a Bell 206B JetRanger sightseeing-chopper creates a diversion for the protagonist to escape from FBI custody. The feds are using a blue Eurocopter EC120B as the "crow's nest" spotter aircraft of their surveillance operation. The Negotiator (1998) - Samuel Jackson and Kevin Spacey are both good value in this hostage thriller, which makes commendable use of helicopters when cops to peek in through tower block windows and see what's happening inside the building before their SWAT teams storm the scene. The Nest (aka: Nid de guêpes, 2002) - directed by Florent Emilio Siri (who went on to make Hostage, starring Bruce Willis) this is basically a French-made rip-off of Assault On Precinct 13. It features a police Eurocopter AS 550 that over flies a warehouse siege when the cops lose contact with a security transport in which a Euro mafia godfather is being delivered for trial. The Net (1998-9) - this TV spin-off, based on Irwin Winkler's 1995 movie, has a trio of bogus NSA agents on the heroine's trail in a fade US marshal's Bell 206 JetRanger.
Never Give Up (1978) - this Japanese action drama from director Junya Sato features a team of special forces' commandos in training to use 'rapid ropes' for their descent from a Bell Twin Huey. In the film's climactic mock-battle sequence, a couple of Boeing CH-47 Chinook transports and three UH-1 Hueys are involved in an army field exercise, providing airborne support for tanks and infantry. During these manoeuvres, another special forces' squad are deployed from Hueys to hunt down a renegade commando. In the final shootout, a Bell 206 JetRanger tracks down escaping hero Ajisawa (Ken Takakura), and a soldier uses the chopper's side-mounted machinegun to open fire on him. However, with assault-rifle sharp shooting, the hero causes the attacking JetRanger to crash into a hillside, where it explodes on impact. Never Say Never Again (1983) - this enjoyable remake of Thunderball finds 007 (Sean Connery) repeating his mistakes with villains and women, but only features one brief helicopter scene. In the final reel, after his underground mission, Bond returns to the Bahamas island, but he does not quite travel in style when he's transported by a Eurocopter (MBB) BO-105, as he's suspended in a harness on cables dangling beneath the chopper, ready for a quick landing.
Niagara (1953) - "in a great piece of flying and filming, a large US Coast Guard Sikorsky S-55 plucks a damsel in distress from the brink of Niagara Falls." - NATHAN DECKER Nighthawks (1981) - in this drama about terrorism, the hero (Stallone) faces a ruthless killer (Rutger Hauer), when the villains hijack a cable car and the cops recon the hostage scene in a police helicopter. Nightmare At Noon (1988) - "Nico Mastorakis' movie has an interesting gunship conversion of a JetRanger helicopter with stub wings and the following weaponry: two gatling guns (stub wing tips), two 19-shot rocket pods (inner stub wing pylons) and two WWII vintage 4.5-inch triple bazooka rocket tubes (outer stub wing pylons). Rocky Mountain Helicopters (of Utah) operated this modified chopper." - COSTAS TSAGANAS Night Of The Comet (1984) - in this post-holocaust comedy-horror, a helicopter carries a pair of young female survivors to a secret US military underground bunker. Night Of The Living Dead (1968) - in the closing chapter of George A. Romero's seminal horror, the hunters of the undead are seemingly aided by aerial reconnaissance, when a Brantley B-2 ultra light helicopter flies over the countryside. The Night The World Exploded (1957) - "a Bell 47G helps to save the world in this sci-fi thriller." - NATHAN DECKER 1984 (1984!) - Michael Radford's timely screen adaptation of George Orwell's nightmare future has a curiously old-fashioned whirlybird used as the spy-in-the-sky. This footage appears, repeatedly, in the promo-video for Sex Crime by the Eurythmics. 9th Company (aka: 9 Rota, 2005) - this Russian war film about Afghanistan features Mil Mi-24 Hind assault helicopters in key scenes. A pair of Hinds fly above mountainous terrain during the opening credits. Hinds and a Mil Mi-17 Hip gunship appear in the CGI-enhanced airfield sequence where a transport plane is shot down and crashes spectacularly. Hinds are seen flying above the armoured column but fail to provide air support when the military vehicles get attacked. Finally, the Hinds have one big shoot-up in a battle for the heights, during this drama's somewhat lacklustre climax.
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