The Final Countdown

Along with death, taxes and a Meryl Streep Oscar nomination there is one more certainty in the world: mention the words ‘Final’ and ‘Countdown’ to anyone, and they will start humming: “Der-ne-ner-ner, der-ne-NE-NE-ner…”

Thanks to Eighties pop-rockers, Europe, the Final Countdown has become synonymous with poodle perms, tinny synths and a horrific, caterwauling chorus. (Which, be in no doubt, was unquestionably used as audio torture during the darkest days at Gitmo.)

But once upon a time (well, 1980 to be exact), the phrase was perhaps best known as the title of a film with an intriguing time travel premise. So come with Exploding Helicopter, as we spiral backwards through the cinematic time tunnel.

The plot

A present-day American warship is caught in a mysterious electrical storm that sends it spinning back through time to 1941 and – Cor, lummy! – the hours before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.

Understandably, the ship’s patriotic captain is all for using the might of his modern-day weaponry to prevent the infamous Japanese attack. But what if – as other conscientious members of his crew point out – this might alter the course of history in unintended and unpredictable ways?

The stage then is set for some classic time-travel speculation about the consequences of America never entering World War II. Would Europe still be under the jackboot of Nazism? Could the hammer and sickle of Soviet Russia now be fluttering over the continent? Most importantly: might any combination of actions have avoided Trump? And if so, is it too late to maybe give them a shot?

The cast

Topping the bill is human dimple Kirk Douglas. The singularly-chinned thespian plays Captain Yelland, the straight-arrowed military man who has to make sense of his crew’s time-travelling travails.

Alongside him is Martin Sheen, whose main role is to sport a magnificent plume of beautifully coiffured hair, of the kind not generally seen outside a show ring at Crufts. When not tossing his lustrous locks from side to side – a move that seemingly leaves him in constant danger of a neck injury – his other job is to butt-heads with Douglas about the consequences of meddling with history.

The rest of the cast is a weirdly eclectic mish-mash of actors. There’s Superfly himself, Ron O’Neal, cult movie impresario Lloyd Kaufman and Asian utility actor Soon-Tek Oh who is cast as (hold on to your seats, folks) a kamikaze crazy Jap.

Revered character actor Charles Durning also has a role as a shady US Senator, which seems fitting as – if anyone knows about being stuck in time – it’s the prematurely aged Chuck, who has spent the majority of his forty-plus year film career playing crusty old codgers.

Is this any good?

On one level, The Final Countdown is a terrific idea. The film’s characters have to grapple with a moral quandary centred on one of the defining moments of World War II. And with the fate of the world at stake, the drama literally couldn’t be higher.

Except. The trouble is, well, we already know how all these events played out. Clearly, everything the characters are worrying about will never come to pass – so there’s no real sense of high stakes, jeopardy nor tension.

Instead, like the aircraft carrier on which the action takes place, the drama chugs slowly and predictably forward across its 100-minute run-time. Ironically for a film about time travel, it feels an awful lot longer.

All told, it’s more the final let-down than countdown.

Exploding helicopter action

In order to prevent the space-time continuum being dangerously damaged, Captain Yelland orders that two characters be left stranded on a deserted island (He reasons that they’ll be rescued later, but not before they can raise the alarm about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour).

The pair are flown out to the isolated outcrop in a helicopter. But when one realises the plan, he grabs a flare gun and threatens the pilot. A struggle breaks out, during which the flare gun goes off, causing the helicopter to explode.

Artistic merit

The chopper fireball is incredibly brief. It’s only on-screen for a couple of seconds before the action cuts away. You can only conclude that they were trying to hide the poverty of their special effects with such a rapid edit.

Exploding helicopter innovation

The Final Countdown is far from the only example of a time-travel exploding helicopter. Biggles: Adventures in Time (1985) and Samurai Command 1549 (2005) both feature helicopters exploding in eras where they did not belong. This movie, though, made in 1980, has the distinction of being the first one to pull off this feat.

Interesting fact

As the copious amount of military hardware onscreen may suggest, The Final Countdown was made with the full co-operation of the American Navy.

So pleased were the Navy with the outcome, they included footage in their recruitment drives. It is unlikely, however, that any film schools felt similarly compelled to use excerpts from the movie to promote the virtues of quality movie-making.

Review by: Jafo

Check out the review of The Final Countdown by our friends Bulletproof Action. 

Firestarter

Widowed psychic Andy (David Keith) and his pyro-kinetic daughter Charlie (Drew Barrymore) are on the run. They’re fleeing a shadowy Government organisation known simply as "The Shop" who want to capture the pair and harness their spooky powers for their own nefarious ends.

When initial attempts fail, The Shop’s head honcho Hollister (Martin Sheen) hires crazed one-eyed goon John Rainbird (George C. Scott) to hunt the pair down. After Rainbird snares his prey, our heroes are locked-up in a top secret laboratory where Sheen subjects them to a barrage of sinister experiments. Will Andy and Charlie have to live out their days as human guinea pigs, or can they use their psychic powers to escape? Well, you won’t need the power of extra-sensory perception to guess what happens.

Now, when you call your film Firestarter (1984), you really need to serve up a sizzling hot entertainment. Unfortunately, this lukewarm offering is rather undercooked.

Much of the blame has to go to director Mark L Lester who allows the plot to gently simmer for far too long. So, instead of watching Charlie wreak pyro-manic carnage, the film gets bogged down in endless scenes of domestic drudgery as Dad tries to council his young psychic padawan about her deadly powers. It's like watching an X Men sequel played out as Ken Loach-style misery-porn.

Still, the film is not devoid of fun. Patient viewers are eventually rewarded in the final act when Lester finally turns up the gas and gives our heroes the chance to unleash their powers with unrestrained abandon.

Drew Barrymore channeling her inner Bonnie Tyler

As the title helpfully suggests, Charlie’s special skill allows her to set objects ablaze while her father can manipulate people by implanting suggestions into their minds. So as a legion of Government agents move in for the kill, our heroes are given bountiful opportunity to creatively use their abilities.

More entertaining though is how David and Barrymore demonstrate their freaky mental powers with their thespian skills. To convey the effort of using his Jedi-like mind tricks, David clutches his head whilst adopting a particularly pained and earnest expression. No doubt aiming for an air of Svengali-like mystery, he simply looks like someone trying stoically to deal with a bad case of piles. No wonder he was - according to Stephen King, on whose book this film is based - fourteenth choice for the role.

Meanwhile Barrymore looks no less ridiculous. Presumably unable to coax ‘psychic’ from his young E.T star, Lester just uses an off-screen fan to wildly blow her long tresses about. I’d not seen so much hair portentously billowing about since Bonnie Tyler’s ‘Holding out for a hairbrush’ pomp.

Unsurprisingly, given Firestarter’s slow-burning approach, it’s not until the film’s denouement that we’re treated to the exploding helicopter – and there’s no prizes for guessing its source.

David Keith: psychic and piles sufferer

During her escape bid, Charlie starts torching everything in sight. Pursuing agents and their vehicles are spectacularly turned to toast as the enraged brat becomes a human flamethrower.

Into this nightmare swoops a lone helicopter. Via a megaphone a passenger optimistically orders Charlie to "stay right where you are". Ever the obedient child, Charlie duly stands stock still, but only so that she can take careful aim at the chopper and blast it out of the sky with a fireball. Perhaps that instruction to stand still should have included an order not to torch aerial vehicles either.

Artistic merit

The chopper conflagration is fitting addition to the numerous acts of destruction at the end of the film. The explosion is nice and clean and engulfs the chopper entirely. Extra marks for Charlie's pinpoint pyro-kinetic accuracy.

Exploding helicopter innovation

The first and only known exploding helicopter caused by pyro-kinesis.

Although it’s not necessarily the earliest use of psychic powers to destroy a chopper. Tanya Roberts used psychically controlled flamingos to crash a whirlybird in Sheena: Queen of the Jungle which was also made in 1984.

Do passengers survive?

Not a chance. The pilot, and potentially an additional passenger that decided to man the loud speaker, were undoubtedly cremated in the explosion.

Positives

Barrymore, in her first post E.T. outing, is excellent as the kid trying to handle a set of powers that are ruining her life. Mr Sheen also puts in a typically well-polished performance.

Negatives

The soundtrack, courtesy of new age synth warblers Tangerine Dream, has not aged well. For anyone who grew up in the eighties the ethereal plinking and plonking conjures painful memories of French mime artists and pretentious stage magicians. Awful.

Favourite quote

Charlie McGee: "Get out of here, you bastard! I'll burn you up! I'll fry you!"

Interesting fact

The book has had a few additional adaptations. 18 years after Firestarter, the direct-to-TV 'Firestarter 2: Rekindled' was produced - featuring Dennis Hopper and Malcolm McDowell. A series, set 20 years after the events of Firestarter, is also apparently in development.

Review by: Joe

Apocalypse Now

“Travel the world, meet interesting people. Kill them.”

So goes the unofficial Army recruitment slogan, which tries to suggest the military is little more than a glorified holiday – albeit with a little light homicide thrown in.

In fact, there are striking parallels between serving in the Army and taking a package holiday. With both, your travel, accommodation and catering needs are all taken care of, and the citizens of the country you’re visiting are never keen to see you.

Sceptics might point out that most holidays don’t require you to risk potentially fatal violence. All I can say is: those sceptics clearly aren’t familiar with some of the ‘lads’ holiday I used to go on.


In many ways, it makes more sense to view Apocalypse Now in terms of a particularly indifferent package holiday. The plot sees Army officer Martin Sheen offered a mission (or mini-break holiday) by some slippery top brass types. They want him to make a hush-hush trip to Cambodia to quietly assassinate Marlon Brando – a top Green Beret Colonel who’s gone bonkers, disappeared into the jungle, and is now proving to be an embarrassment to the Pentagon.

Bored of his budget hotel room in Saigon, Sheen accepts the offer, especially as the trip to Cambodia involves a relaxing river cruise. Unfortunately, his travel companions prove to be either naïve or highly-strung, and Martin soon finds himself holed up in the boat’s cabin getting wasted on the mini-bar. (In this he mimics the majority of young English male tourists, who tend to return from a sunny fortnight even whiter and with a liver twice its original size.)

Knocking back straight whiskies, Sheen misses numerous opportunities for surfing, water-skiing and pedalo larks along the river. Maybe he just forgot his Speedos.

Still, he does get to enjoy some of the nightlife, including a strip-show and a rather vivid firework display which – featuring live ammunition - shows shockingly lax regard for health and safety legislation.

And you know that thing about places never looking quite as good as in the brochure..? It’s the same story when our Martin arrives at Brando’s Cambodian resort, and learns that the ‘light and airy room commanding stunning views’ he expected is actually a bamboo cage, in which he’s swiftly imprisoned.

And instead of those nice little potted palm plants you often find in sunny resorts, there’s an assortment of severed heads littering the camp. Er, when did you say the next boat back was? Still, at least he didn’t fly Ryanair.

And mercifully, Camp Cambodia is free of the ultimate holiday annoyance: Germans putting towels on sun loungers then going for an hours-long walk into town. But it does have Dennis Hopper, whose unhinged, manic jibbering suggest he’s had too much midday sun without the factor 30 on. Also lounging around is Scott Glen, who stares gauntly into the middle distance all day – presumably wondering why, even in a three-hour plus film, he doesn’t get a single line.

Eventually it’s time for Sheen to check-out and settle his bill, which in this case requires him to end Brando’s stay at the camp with some proverbial ‘extreme prejudice’. I only hope Big Marlon’s travel insurance covers him for the damage.

Anyway, all this is merely prologue, for earlier in the trip Sheen takes a connecting flight with Robert Duvall’s air cavalry helicopters. They arrive at a particularly lively beach resort where the locals seem none too pleased by the sudden appearance of the loutish holidaymakers, ghetto-blasters on full volume.

As one helicopter lands to evacuate some wounded tourists, an irate local runs up and throws a grenade-containing hat. The soldiers dive for cover and va-voom – one stationary chopper fireball.

Artistic merit

We get a lovely aerial view of the entire sequence, affording a birds-eye view of bystanders, realising the helicopter’s about to explode, scattering hither and thither. As the chopper is consumed with flame, the rotor blades continue to turn, which is always a nice touch.

Exploding helicopter innovation

First known destruction of a helicopter by an exploding hat. Earliest known Vietnam related exploding helicopter.

Do passengers survive?

Hard to tell. One body is blown clear by the explosion, and we also see a man covered in flames clamber out the wreckage. Whether they lived to write a postcard home is unknown.

Positives

As you’d expect, the Ride of the Valkyries-soundtracked chopper assault is a highlight for helicopter aficionados such as ourselves.

The whirlybird armada unleashes hell on a small village, blowing up bridges and huts with abandon. The whole scene is rendered in full Technicolor, pyrotechnic glory, due to Coppolla‘s no-expense spared staging.

Negatives

Marlon Brando appears in a particularly indulgent cameo. I say appears, but it’s hard to be entirely sure since the much-lauded actor – embarrassed about his enormous girth – performed most of his scenes amidst virtually black-out shadow, with just tiny sections of his physiognomy visible at any one time. Even so, I can confidently state that the man has really fat ears.

Throughout his career, Brando was notorious for not bothering to learn his lines, but it now seems he’d reached a point where he couldn’t be bothered to even appear in his own scenes.

You’d think such obvious contempt for your craft might leave an actor struggling to find paid employment. Not so in Hollywood, where producers responded by offering Brando ever larger sums of money to appear in ever shorter amounts of film. Where do I sign up?

Favourite quote

“Never get out the boat.”

Interesting fact

The wonderful narration which frames the film nearly didn’t happen, as Coppola abandoned the idea during filming. However, sound editor Walter Murch – convinced it was the only way to make the project work – assembled the film with a narration recorded by himself.

The final narration was written by Vietnam war journalist Michael Herr, author of the seminal account of the conflict, Dispatches.
While the narration is spoken by Martin Sheen, Herr’s distinctive hard-boiled, gonzoid, voice can be heard clearly in the words. If you love the ambience it lends to the film, then Dispatches is well worth seeking out and reading.

Also, the film is now arguably more famous for what occurred off camera than in front of it: Francis Ford Coppola’s monstrous bullying and on-set harem, fatty Brando refusing to step out the shadows even for his own scenes, Martin Sheen’s druggy nuttiness. The Seventies film book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls captures all the madness admirably and is worth a peek.

Review by: Jafo

Still want more? Then listen to the Exploding Helicopter podcast episode on Apocalypse Now. Listen via iTunes, Player FM, Stitcher, Acast or right here