The Diamond Mercenaries

The Seventies were a golden era for heist movies. Back then, filmmakers spoiled us with a myriad of variations on the traditional stick-em-up. We had Sam Peckinpah’s gritty The Getaway, George Roy Hill’s stylish caper The Sting, and Sidney Lumet’s moving Dog Day Afternoon.

But naturally, Exploding Helicopter is not reviewing one of those illustrious efforts. Instead, you’ll be getting the lowdown on The Diamond Mercenaries (1976) – almost the very definition of a run-of-the-mill hack-job – which was directed by cinematic journeyman, Val Guest.

The reason for this is fairly simple. It appears that there are good heist movies, and then heist movies with exploding helicopters in them. Like a Great Dane and a Chihuahua, the two entities don’t tend to mix.

The plot

A team of mercenaries plot an audacious raid on a seemingly impregnable diamond mine. But when rumours of the heist reach the owners, they bring in their top security man to foil the raid.

The stage is then set for a battle of wits. Can our merry band of thieves pull off their daring robbery? Or will the sly security chief outfox his prey before they steal the gems?

To find out, you’ll either have to watch the film or keeping reading this review. (Assuredly, both will be a terrible waste of your time, but at least reading this drivel won’t take you an hour and half.)

The cast

Heading the cast – in more ways than one – is the late, great, extremely follically-challenged Telly Savalas, a monumental TV star in the Seventies. (Heck, he was even named after the television.) Known universally for his role as the cue-ball-headed cop, Kojak, Big Tel here plays the security chief tasked with preventing the robbery.

It’s a tricky job, and not made any easier by having to wear an eye-melting selection of garish Seventies shirts. (Exploding Helicopter’s particular favourite is a hallucinogenic emerald green number with, yes, owls splattered all over it.)

Starring alongside our top baldy sex symbol is Sixties counter-culture icon, Peter Fonda, who features as a diamond mine employee charged with infiltrating the gang. The Easy Rider and LSD enthusiast cruises through the film with a blissed-out cool that suggests he might have smuggled a healthy-sized collection of happy pills onto the set. Or perhaps he just stared at Telly’s shirt for too long.

You’ll likely notice a couple of other famous faces among the criminal clique, some more welcome than others. Christopher Lee – everyone’s favourite blood-sucking vampire – pops up as a poetry-reading British soldier gone bad.

And speaking of creepy men who stick sharp objects into young women: everyone’s least favourite acquitted murderer, OJ Simpson, also squeezes in a guest appearance. The “Juice” is famously a very poor actor (he struggled mightily with the role of ‘innocent person’ at his own trial, for example) and he’s on typically bobbins form here. Bleurgh.

A theft of your time

Heist movies have been reliably entertaining audiences for decades, by following a very simple three-point formula.

First, show the team – generally a ragbag assortment of misfits – being brought together. Second, outline the painstaking preparations for the big ‘job’. And third, deliver an exciting finale where the robbery is carried out in all its elaborate detail.

Really, it’s a fool-proof plan. Or at least, it was until director Val Guest started tinkering with it.

So, instead of seeing the gang recruited, the criminal coven in The Diamond Mercenaries comes ready-formed. And their preparations for the job? That involves nothing more than some desultory leaning over a table, looking at a giant map. Compelling drama, this is not.

Mercifully, things do improve once the heist begins – or more precisely, goes completely tits up. Once the raid is rumbled, the last half hour transforms into a veritable action bonanza.

The gang have to shoot their way out of the diamond mine, before making their getaway in a Jeep. This sets-up an exciting desert-set car chase, with each side trading gunfire as vehicles race across the sand dunes.

But this climactic surge of excitement is, frankly, too little too late. Ultimately, The Diamond Mercenaries is no 24-carat sparkler. It is a very dim gem, indeed. Perhaps they should have named it The Diamante Mercenaries.

Exploding helicopter action

All this brings us to what should be the crown jewel of every film: the exploding helicopter. This conflagration actually occurs at the start of the film, during a sequence designed to establish the formidable defences of the diamond mine.

What happens: a couple of criminals are attempting to sneak in, when their presence is detected. Natch, a helicopter (a Bell Jet Ranger, fact fans!) is despatched to investigate.

As the chopper flies overhead, one of the intruders fires a solitary rifle shot at it. And before you can say, “Surely a single small calibre bullet is never going to damage a helicopter…” POOF! The whole thing disappears so magically fast you’ll be looking for David Copperfield’s name in the end credits.

Artistic merit

This singularly underwhelming helicopter explosion is a strong example of a phenomenon that regularly plagued films of this vintage: spontaneous combustion.

You’d think a vehicle robust enough to fly and carry multiple people would be able to absorb a reasonable amount of small-arms fire before being fatally damaged. And yet, during the Seventies, you basically only needed to sneeze in the general direction of a helicopter before it would erupt in flames. They really did seem to explode at the slightest provocation

Presumably, film audiences of that era were simply an impatient bunch and overly eager to get to the bit where everything blew up. And so filmmakers gave ‘em what they wanted. But looking back, maybe someone should have mentioned that anticipation is half the pleasure.

Interesting fact

Obviously, nothing about the movie itself is interesting. But the cast and crew of this yarn do have a spookily high number of connections to the James Bond franchise.

Both Christopher Lee and Maud Adams appeared in The Man With The Golden Gun. Telly Savalas played 007’s cat stroking nemesis Blofeld in On Her Majesties’ Secret Service. And Val Guest was one of the many directors who worked on the Sixties Bond parody Casino Royale.

Eagle-eared listeners will also identify a further connection to the famous British spy series. That’s because the dulcet tones of Robert Rietty can be heard providing the voices for several of the supporting characters. Dubbed ‘the man with a thousand voices’, Rietty memorably voiced Emilio Largo in Thunderball, and Tiger Tanaka in You Only Live Twice, as well as many other minor characters throughout the series.

Review by: Jafo

Capricorn One

A wise man once said that sometimes the expectation of seeing a helicopter explode in a film is just as rewarding as the moment itself. Such was the case when I sat through 70’s conspiracy thriller Capricorn One (1978), recently.

Set in a kind of 70’s alternate reality where the US is engaged in a space race to get a man (or men) on Mars, we’re drawn into a world of subterfuge and conspiracy as they attempt to fake the landing and subsequently prevent anyone from finding out.

The motive for faking the mission comes after an oversight by NASA boffins leaves the shuttle’s life-support system ill-equipped to, well, support any life. Rendering it just a “system”, I suppose.

So as not to lose face in front of the pen pushers in Congress by postponing the mission, Dr Kelloway (played to perfection by Hal Holbrook) decides to fake the mission.

His plan is to send an empty shuttle into space and rely on his snake-like powers of persuasion and a couple of guarded threats to bring our reluctant astronauts on side - played by James Brolin, Sam Waterston and OJ Simpson.

After that, all the astronauts need to do is enact the actual Mars landing on a specially constructed sound-stage somewhere in the middle of the Nevada desert.

And this is where things get interesting. When the real shuttle unexpectedly burns up upon re-entering Earth’s atmosphere, killing all of its supposed crew, it’s down to Dr Kelloway to ensure the astronauts - who are now dead to the world – follow, tout suite.

Acting more like college drop-outs than scientists - Brolin, Waterston & OJ play the least convincing astronauts you’re likely to meet this side of spring-break in Fort Lauderdale. How OJ was even chosen for this mission - remember, this mission was meant to be genuine to begin with! - defies belief.

Regardless, these chumps miraculously manage to escape the secret government compound in the desert and spend, more or less, the entire 3rd act of the film involved in a cat and mouse chase with two mysterious black military helicopters.

It’s at this point that my anticipation levels went through the roof. We know these birds are going down in a plume of smoke and twisted metal - it’s just a question of how and when.

With endless possibilities racing through my mind, I can barely be bothered with the other plot line involving rogue journalist Elliot Gould and his attempts to blow the whistle on the whole charade.

So, back to the exploding helicopters and it’s a whole 115 minutes into the films runtime that director Peter Hyams finally shows us what kind of a man he is. Albeit, with the help of some pretty heavyweight Hollywood muscle.

In one of cinema’s more bizarre cameos, Telly Savalas makes a surprisingly comic turn as a narcky old crop-duster pilot who agrees to lend Gould the use of his biplane to search for the missing astronauts.

This leads to an impressive aerial dog-fight between the plane and the two choppers, with Brolin clinging grimly to the plane’s wing. With jagged rocks and hazardous terrain aplenty, it becomes clear how these two choppers will meet their inevitable demise.

Savalas plunges the crop-duster towards an incoming cliff face, barking at Gould to “pull the lever” and release the crop spray. Temporarily blinded, our hapless chopper pilots career into the rock face.

Quite how they hadn’t foreseen this impending obstacle baffles me - movie pilots seem to be devoid of all spatial awareness and depth of field, I’ve noticed.

Chopper one hits the rock face nose first and drops like a stone. No explosion. Was someone asleep on the job. I break into a cold sweat. Surely we haven’t come this far together be denied at the final hurdle?

Fortunately, the pyro-technician for the second chopper is wide awake and it goes up like a Christmas tree. Normality restored, I can relax a little.

For reasons I’m not quite sure, Savalas then shouts “perverts!” for comic effect. By this point one can only assume that Gould was scrabbling to find the lever with the words ‘ejector seat’ on it.

With these two relatively pedestrian helicopter explosions out of the way we’re then treated to one of the strangest sequences to end a movie ever committed to film.

Brolin runs in slow-motion through a cemetery to gatecrash his own funeral. Hyams repeatedly cuts away to the mourners, who remain at normal speed, then back to slow-mo Brolin, and so on and so on, for what seems like an eternity.

What grates about this scene is that Hyams could have employed the same technique to much better effect on the previous helicopter explosions.

“Pervert!” I say.

Number of exploding helicopters

One.

Exploding helicopter innovation

None really. Relatively predictable helicopter vs. rock face premise. Standard usage of 70s pyrotechnics and remote controlled chopper technology. No gimmickry. Old-school.

Positives

The expectation of seeing these two choppers explode far outweighs the pay-off.

Negatives

The lack of slow-motion chopper explosions despite the overuse of it a few minutes later. Unforgivable.

Telly Savalas.

Favourite quote

“Hey, Dr. Kelloway. Funny thing happened on the way to Mars.”

Interesting fact

The film features two military “black helicopters”, which is now a term that’s become synonymous with conspiratorial military activity in the United States.

Review by: Boty

Check out the Exploding Helicopter podcast episode on Capricorn One on iTunes, Podomatic, YourListen or Stitcher.