Alone In The Dark

Given that notorious schlockmeister Uwe Boll recently announced his retirement from filmmaking, now seems an apt time to look back at what may be his most infamous film.

Adapted from a popular computer game series, Alone In The Dark (2005) was – like the rest of his unheralded cinematic canon - released to universal critical derision. Reviewers panned the terrible direction, incomprehensible story, shoddy special effects and awful acting.

Unsurprisingly, the film received a brutal thumping at the box office. And poignantly, the film’s title accurately described the audience experience for those few unhappy souls daft enough to actually traipse to a cinema and sit through this impenetrable merde.

Today, Alone In The Dark languishes in IMDB’s 100 worst movies list and has just a 1 per cent critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But does it deserve its reputation as a bona fide stinker?

For reasons solely related to cataloguing an invented micro-genre of film, Exploding Helicopter sought to find out.

The plot

A paranormal investigator, Edward Carnby, hunts down artefacts belonging to a fictional Native American culture called the Abkani.

Carnby believes these objects hold the key to stopping sinister supernatural forces that are threatening the world. Not only that, the ancient artefacts could also unlock the secrets of his own mysterious childhood.

To achieve this goal, the psychic private eye must confront forces from another dimension, a shadowy government agency and most terrifyingly of all (at least in Exploding Helicopter’s experience of dating) his former girlfriend.

The cast

Christian Slater: karaoke Jack Nicholson

Our ghost-hunting hero is played by Eighties teen icon Christian Slater. Once upon a time, Young Cheeky Eyebrows was the mainstream star of cult favourites such as Heathers and True Romance.

However, he always was a one-trick pony, and his cloying karaoke-version-of-Jack-Nicholson routine inevitably started to wear on audiences. His ability to land plum roles also wasn’t helped by a string of drug, alcohol and assault convictions.

Still, one man’s misfortune is another man’s gain, and Junior Jack’s non-ringing phone meant he was available to lend the tarnished lustre of his talent to ‘paying gigs’ like Alone In The Dark. And while this won’t ever rank among the boy’s finest work, his smirking charm and mischievous air do admittedly give the often flaccid proceedings some much needed ‘watchability’.

The same cannot be said for his co-star, LA party girl turned actress, Tara Reid. Having made her name playing vacuous blondes (i.e herself) in teen comedies like American Pie and Van Wilder, the air-headed fembot was perhaps not the obvious casting choice as a brainy archaeological expert.

Those who manage to sit through the movie may not be entirely surprised to hear that young Tara’s turn resulted in a Razzie nomination. Flatly intoning her lines like a first-grader in French class, the Sharknado star proves singularly incapable of reacting to any of the events taking place around her.

Tara Reid trying to read her cue card

Whether she’s confronting life-threatening peril, learning the secrets of an ancient civilisation, or enjoying a bit of ‘how’s your father’ with Christian Slater, the blonde moppet maintains the same blank ‘where’s my cue card?’ expression throughout.

Elsewhere, Stephen Dorff (Blade, Immortals) gives a performance of workman-like competence. You get the sense that, among those used to grander roles, there was an on-set calculation that the sooner everyone did their job, the sooner everyone would be able to go home again and forget they ever appeared in this guff.

How bad is this?

Ah, we must all tread carefully here, friends. In the past, reviewing Uwe Boll’s work has proven to be dangerous business.

A few years ago, angered by so many negative reviews of his films, the prickly German challenged his worst critics to a boxing match, threatening them to either “put-up or shut-up”. (In a telling comment on the strength of their critical feeling, four journalists took up the challenge and fought the cranky kraut in a televised contest).

But even in the face of a pugilistic pummelling, this blog promises never to pull its critical punches. Exploding Helicopter will always give you a straight verdict straight (before quickly hiding behind a big lad and threatening to tell teacher).

Anyway, everything the critics say is true. The story really is a convoluted mess of impenetrable mumbo-jumbo. (Even Dan Brown - the patron saint of highfalutin nonsense – would be rolling his eyes at some of the unlikely japes on display here.)

The ‘special’ effects are anything but, and somehow worse than the graphics from the computer game which inspired the film. Many scenes are directed with staggering ineptitude (one supposed action scene sees Slater and Reid blaze away on machineguns at an enemy you never actually see).

Yet, for all those lamentable failings, Alone In The Dark just isn’t as bad as its reputation would have you believe. Exploding Helicopter has witnessed, and had the misfortune to review, far worse films. (Yes, we’re looking at you, Deadly Prey).

Never shy of self-publicity (self-released videos of the temperamental Teuton slagging off Michael Bay and Eli Roth went viral), Boll is really just a victim of his own inflated public profile. He may be the worst filmmaker you’ve heard of, but he’s not the worst filmmaker.

Hard though it may be to believe, many other film-makers are even worse – they’re just wise enough to stay in the shadows.

Exploding helicopter action

During the film’s climatic battle, Carnby and a team of soldiers have to fight a horde of otherworldly creatures. Luckily, a couple of helicopters are on hand to give aerial support to the embattled troops.

So that’s alright, then. But wait, what’s this? In an all too familiar mistake, the pilot - when will they ever learn? - flies too close to one of the supernatural animals. The beastie leaps into the air and grabs on to the tail of the chopper. The aircraft spins round clipping the second whirlybird, which then falls from the sky and explodes.

The first out-of-control whirlybird continues to spiral dangerously towards the ground. Finally, it crashes into the earth in front of the camera. But just before we get a chance to see a second explosion, the action cuts away.

Artistic merit

In a word, dismal. Boll completes fluffs the staging of this sequence, depriving us of the action we want to see.

In a directorial cheat, the helicopter that explodes drops out of the frame before a mushroom cloud of flame erupts back into shot.

It’s quite cool watching the second helicopter spin to its doom and crash right in front of the camera. It seemed a prime opportunity to deliver a close-up chopper fireball, but the special effects department must have considered if too much work. So in a huge anti-climax the action just cuts away. Outrageous.

Exploding helicopter innovation

That’s a negative.

Interesting fact

In 2015, Boll opened a restaurant in Canada called Bauhaus. The eatery has subsequently been awarded a Michelin star, making it the best reviewed project he’s ever been involved with.

Review by: Jafo

Active Stealth

It’s a film buff’s favourite game: name that Baldwin.

You get thrown the name of a film and then have to guess which of the brothers Alec, William, Daniel and junior frère Stephen, it features.

It’s simple to play, but devilishly hard to get right. Not least because apart from senior sibling Alec, the rest of the Baldwin clan are as indistinguishable as their work is unmemorable.

Still, fear not, for Exploding Helicopter has a secret formula to help you win this quiz every time.

Don’t believe us? Well, let’s play a round in this review and use it to find out which Baldwin is the star of Active Stealth.

The plot

A drug cartel in the invented Central American country of San Sedros (presumably close to such other fictional creations as Commando’s Val Verde or Delta Force 2’s San Carlos) is flooding America with cheap cocaine.

Officially, the United States is powerless to act. But the niceties of international law have long been an optional extra for Uncle Sam, so instead they cook-up an off-the-books ‘black op’ to put the drug lords out of business.

Using a new, highly sophisticated fighter plane that’s invisible to radar, an elite team of Army Rangers are sent in to shut-down the narcotics operation.

Following the immutable laws of the action movie, the plan quickly goes tits up. All of which (if we may temporarily be permitted to use the vernacular of rap music) leaves our heroes ‘fightin’ to preserve their health, stop the drug barons buildin’ wealth, an’ tryna escape using Active Stealth’. Word.

The cast

Of course, none of this tomfoolery answers the pressing question of the day: which Baldwin is the star of Active Stealth? Not quite sure? Don’t have a monkey’s idea? Let Exploding Helicopter help you.

Daniel Baldwin and Fred Williamson

Whenever you’re faced with such a sticky conundrum, just ask yourself the following questions:

Have I seen it, and was it any good?

If the answer is yes, it's Alec.

Have I seen it, and was it mostly terrible?

If the answer is yes, it's Billy.

Have I heard of it, not seen it, but instinctively know it's bad?

That would be Stephen.

Does this look like something that couldn't afford a Baldwin, but tried anyway?

That's Daniel. The notional ‘star’ of this risible, direct-to-DVD action flick.

It’s true. Unquestionably, Danny is the dullest constellation in the Baldwin firmament.

While Alec (when he’s not stropping-off at photographers, airline stewardesses or indeed his own daughter) can exude a charismatic authority; Billy a wonky seductiveness; and Stephen a roguish danger, the only quality Daniel brings to his roles is confusion as the poor viewer tries to remember which Baldwin he is.

(Note for Baldwin completists: The which-brother recognition task is made even harder by the existence of Adam Baldwin, who despite possessing the sort of instantly forgettable CV that is the hallmark of the family, is not actually a Baldwin brother).

In Active Stealth, Danny Boy is cast as the leader of an elite squad of Army rangers. But his performance is betrayed by a generous paunch that suggests his military training involves more time with the dessert course than the assault course.

Filling out the cast, former American footballer turned thespian Fred ‘the Hammer’ Williamson (Black Caesar, From Dusk Til Dawn) does a turn as Baldwin’s grizzled, cigar-chomping commander. And one-time wrestling champion Terry Funk appears as a villainous muscle-bound henchman.

Daniel Baldwin: "I don't know if I can do this anymore,
jumping out of helicopters for Uncle Sam."

While the name may not be recognisable, the permed mullet will be familiar to all fans of cult Eighties classic Road House, in which the spandex-clad warrior had a memorable showdown with Patrick Swayze.

Haven’t I seen this all before?

As the action unfolds, viewers of Active Stealth will be forgiven for experiencing a strong sense of déjà vu.

In part, that’s due to the utterly formulaic nature of the ‘men on a mission’ plot. But it will also be as a result of the fact many viewers will literally have already seen this film – or at least parts of it.

That’s because owing to its low budget status much of the action has been lifted from other movies. Shots of a stealth fighter plane are lifted from another, equally terrible, DVD actioner: Black Thunder. A helicopter attack towards the end is nicked from Eighties cop movie Bulletproof.

And that explosion of an all-important military base? Stolen from Harrison Ford thriller Clear And Present Danger. Or in this case: Clear And Present Duplication.

Exploding helicopter action

After completing their mission, our escaping heroes are pursued by some of the drug lord’s goons who are aboard a Mil Mi-24 type attack helicopter. Things look very bad for a moment – after all, the chopper is bristling with heavy duty weaponry.

But in much the same way that any respectable gun-toting baddie, faced with a prone hero defenceless on the floor before them, will always find an implausible reason to let them get up again and ultimately kick their face in, so too do the helicopter goons have a sudden lapse of judgement.

Despite being equipped with enough devastating weaponry to wipe out a small town, the henchmen instead opt to fire a pea shooter-looking machinegun from the open door on the fuselage.

Which handily gives one of Baldwin's commando hombres, a pint-sized Mexican sidekick, plenty of opportunity to whip out a rocket launcher and blast it at the whirlybird. The missile streaks towards the aircraft which, inevitably, erupts in a gloriously huge explosion.

Confusingly, our Hispanic friend then delivers the puzzlingly Italian flavoured pay-off line: “Arrivederci, you bastard!”

All of which makes about as much sense as giving a steroid-inflated Austrian a bit of Spanish doggerel as a catchphrase. Hasta la vista, indeed.

Artistic merit

There’s a juicy aerial fireball when the missile first hits the chopper, and we get a second detonation when the flaming fuselage crashes to the ground.

But even before all that, there’s a nice shot of the gun-toting henchman flinching as he watches the incoming rocket and realises his fate.

All-in-all, the above-par helicopter explosion is a lot better than the rest of this uninspired film.

Favourite line

“I don’t know if I can do this anymore, jumping out of helicopters for Uncle Sam.”

Interesting fact

Whilst Exploding Helicopter doesn’t want to trivialise drug addiction, we couldn’t help but be amused by this piece of trivia. In 1998, Daniel Baldwin was found running naked through the halls of New York's Plaza Hotel shouting "Baldwin!" and was arrested for possession of cocaine. He pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and was sentenced to three months in drug rehab.

Popular opinion holds that the 40-second CCTV clip of Danny flouncing down a hotel corridor, flaccid todger swinging, remains the most compelling work he’s committed to film. Like the Hoff’s sublime ‘eating burger off the floor while shit-faced’ clip, it suggests that some Hollywood D-listers can only truly ‘inhabit the character’ when their own character is inhabited by half a pound of coke and four bottles of hard liquor.

Review by: Jafo

Hickey & Boggs

It may be hard to imagine now, but there was a time when the idea of Bill Cosby as a repellent sleazebag with an enthusiasm for drugging then groping women would’ve been unthinkable.

He seemed as cuddly and harmless to US audiences as Rolf Harris was to Brits. No, wait. As trustingly avuncular as that weather chap off This Morning. Hang on. As chucklingly innocent as Dave Lee Travis. Oh, sod it. You know what we mean.

Things went badly south for ‘America’s Dad’ a couple of years ago when scores of ignored but persistent women with strikingly similar sexual assault allegations, like brave little Lilliputians, brought the celebrity giant crashing down.

All of which makes Hickey & Boggs (1972) a fascinating curio. Especially as you may be more than a little weirded out to learn that Cosby’s character in Walter Hill’s buddy cop movie has a singular hobby – illicitly spying on people when they’re asleep. Who knows: maybe this is the flick that first gave him those alleged ideas.

The plot

Hickey and Boggs (Bill Cosby and Robert Culp) are two down-at-heel private investigators who are hired to find a missing woman.

It seems a routine job. But when the people they interview start turning up dead, the pair realise they’re pawns in a much bigger game. One that involves rival criminal gangs and the search for the missing loot from a big bank robbery.

With our heroes caught in the crossfire between warring gangsters and with the police content to blame them for the escalating body count, their quest becomes less about solving the mystery than simply finding a way to stay alive and stay in business.

The cast

The stars of the film are Robert Culp and everyone’s favourite comedian-cum-allegded-pharmacist Bill Cosby.

Here Cosby plays a depressed private investigator who likes to sneak into the home of his estranged wife so he can stare at his children whilst they’re asleep. So definitely not creepy.

The duo had previous worked together on the ground-breaking Sixties espionage series, I Spy (it was the first TV drama to feature a black actor in a lead role).

Robert Culp

Much of the series’ popularity rested on the easy chemistry between Culp and Cosby, who famously ad-libbed much of their dialogue. That easy rapport can be seen in this film. Culp certainly looks relaxed. Perhaps Bill fixed him one of his special cocktails we’ve heard about.

As for the supporting cast, it’s a veritable who’s who of reliable character actors: Jack Colvin (the dogged Jack McGee in The Incredible Hulk), Michael Moriaty (The Last Detail, Law & Order) and Vincent Gardenia (Death Wish). Not to mention Ed Lauter who it seems was contractually obliged to appear in every TV series filmed during the Eighties (Magnum, The A Team, Murder She Wrote, Automan, and The Equalizer to name but a few).

Eagled-eyed film fans should also keep an eye out for a disturbingly fresh-faced James Woods in what was only his second big-screen role. At the time, ‘Woody’ must have only been in his early twenties – which coincidentally is also the age of most of his present day girlfriends.

Is this any good?

Assuming you can put aside some of the casting issues, Hickey and Boggs is a great neo-noir. The genre has always been concerned with the darker side of humanity. But few entries in the canon are as bleak, or so utterly lacking in the possibility of redemption.

Our under-gunned and under-manned heroes survive shoot-outs and police harassment to make it through to the end of the film. But it’s not by dint of their own resourcefulness. Ultimately, it’s their insignificance to the more powerful forces around them that saves them.

As the pair cynically observe at the end of the film,
“Nobody cares.”
“Nobody came.”
“It’s still about nothing.”

Exploding helicopter action

At the end of the film the two competing groups of gangsters look to cut a deal over the missing loot.
They arrange a meeting on a deserted beach but, natch, one of the gangs plans a double cross. (In fairness, they are gangsters.) Machine gun-wielding henchmen arrive in a helicopter to wipe out their rivals. A gun battle breaks out, bullets fly and the chopper is inevitably damaged.

It spins around out of control and crashes into the sand. A fire breaks out on board as some of the crash survivors try to escape. But before they can clamber out of the wreckage, oh no…the helicopter explodes! Fiery death for unnamed characters ensues.

Artistic merit

This is an unexciting helicopter explosion. The confusion on board the damaged whirlybird is decently done but the lack of exterior shots betray the film’s lack of budget.

This scene also features the cardinal sin of low budget action movies - the off-screen crash. What? No money for special effects? Don’t worry, just don’t show a crash at all. No-one will notice! (Note to film-makers: EVERYONE notices.)

What we get here are a few frenzied interior shots as the ‘bird’ goes down followed by an incredibly brief glimpse of something approximating a helicopter fuselage, then a big non-descript explosion. Poor. Very poor.

Exploding helicopter innovation

None to report. The circumstances and method of destruction are very routine.

Favourite line

“I gotta get a bigger gun. I can’t hit anything.”

Suicide Squad

‘If all our goodies are so bad, then maybe our baddies might turn out to be good..?’

This, clearly, must have been the thinking at DC Towers when they green-lit this movie. After the massive, almost global-level, raspberries that were blown at its recent Superman and Superman vs Batman movies, something had to be done. So the bigwigs at Marvel’s ailing rival decided to get down and dirty.

And undoubtedly, on paper Suicide Squad (2016) sounds like a great idea. Simply inject mini-bombs into the necks of a group of super baddies, then send them out to covertly tackle the obscenely hazardous jobs that nobody else can do. Brilliant! But the question is: by this point, is there any idea so good that DC can’t make a complete Horlicks of it?

The plot

With Superman presumed dead, impressively nasty government mandarin Amanda Wheeler has assembled a motley collection of proper wrong ‘uns to tackle any emerging super-powered threats.

The star of her embryonic team is the Enchantress, a polite young lady possessed by an incredibly powerful sixteenth century witch. But it’s okay because Wheeler has the witch’s heart locked in a sealed box, and so can control her. Until the witch steals her heart back within the first ten minutes and starts building a device that will destroy the world. (Though she’d better get a move on if she wants to beat Trump to it.)

The Suicide Squad are unleashed to tackle the new threat, without anyone pausing to acknowledge that their enemy is simply one of their own members gone to pot, the super baddie equivalent of a sacked burger chain worker pissing in the French fries. The stark fact is, if Wheeler hadn’t tried to form the Suicide Squad, the whole mess literally wouldn’t have happened. At source, this is an HR problem dressed up as an action movie.

The cast

First, the good news: the ladies own this movie. Both the bonkers Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) and cold-as-ice Amanda Wheeler (Viola Davis) are terrific.

Will Smith, being Will Smith, of course insisted on his Deadshot character having a schmaltzy backstory (he’s a great dad, doesn’t hurt women and kids, quite the gentleman etc) that jars horribly with the rest of the movie. It’s fascinating how the former Fresh Prince, who in real-life literally worships an alien race of giant lizards – Hello, Scientology! – always ensures he plays grounded characters.

Then there’s Joker. During filming, Jared Leto apparently got into his villainous role by sending live rats and dead pigs to fellow cast members, and watching footage of real gangland killings.

All of which sounds a lot more interesting than anything he manages on screen. Admittedly, Heath Ledger’s titanic Joker performance, crystalized by his early death, was always going to be a tough act to follow. But Leto’s turn here, hammy and mannered without the remotest sense of threat, is pure panto. (Perhaps he should have remembered Laurence Olivier’s advice to that other method junkie, Dustin Hoffman: “My dear boy, why not just try acting?”)

Unsurprisingly, given that the rest of the Squad are each given roughly one-and-a-half lines to establish their character, they remain cardboard cut-outs.

Is this movie any good?

Not according to Rotten Tomatoes, which gave the movie a measly 26 per cent. However, Exploding Helicopter suspects that, after the turgid Man of Steel and the unending torture of Batman vs Superman, critics had already decided that the next DC movie was due for a good kicking.

This seems a mite unfair. True, Suicide Squad is crass, simplistic and dangerously uneven, and nicks ingredients from better movies with grave abandon. But there are some good performances and it rollocks along at such an entertaining pace that there’s not time to consider how duff it all really is.

Exploding helicopter action

There are three helicopter crashes in Suicide Squad, though only the second one actually results in an explosion. It happens when a freshly rescued Harley Quinn is smooching Joker on the opened back ramp of a military chopper. Suddenly a missile hits the front of the craft and Harley, back-flipping out on to the roof of a building below, lands in time to momentarily see the flaming craft hurtling earthwards before it disappears behind another skyscraper. Oh, no! Will Joker survive? Yes.

Artistic merit

Precious little. A standard CGI explosion, at night (always a cop-out), followed by a quick shot of the flaming craft going out of sight. This is seriously middling stuff.

Exploding helicopter innovation.

Nada. Niet. Zero. None.

Non-exploding helicopter action

The sorry spectacle of the weak explosion is partially redeemed by the two non-exploding crashes, which once more prove right a pet theory of Exploding Helicopter – that it is technically impossible for a named character to be killed, or even seriously hurt, by a chopper smash, no matter how catastrophic it looks.

Early on, a chopper carrying the whole Suicide Squad is hit by gun-fire. Hurtling fifty feet towards the ground, it crashes onto a concrete city street then rolls over at high speed around seventeen times. There’s even an internal shot of our heroes bouncing around inside, like an old pair of trainers in a washing machine.

Of course, the actual result of such a crash would be smashed bones, cracked heads, massive internal hemorrhage and across the board deadness. But naturally, this being an action movie, everyone emerges without a scratch. Harley Quinn even gets to say: “That was fun!”

Later in the film, a helicopter containing Suicide Squad Svengali Amanda Wheeler (basically the Simon Cowell of super villain groups, only not so vindictive) is smashed out of the sky and totally wrecked. Naturally, everyone else aboard the craft is rendered either dead or unconscious, but our Mandy’s tip-top and strutting around the place again within minutes.

Favourite line

Spoken by a prison guard, as Deadshot holds a gun to his head: “Ames, If this man shoots me, I want you to kill him and I want you to go clear my browser history.”

Review by: Chopper

The Towering Inferno

No film genre is more synonymous with the Seventies than the disaster movie. (Well, apart from hairy porn movies.)

Beginning with Airport’s aviation perils in 1970, the decade saw Hollywood gamely trying to wipe out great swathes of humanity on a regular basis. Barely a week went by without some grim-faced thesp having to face an earthquake, volcano, avalanche, capsizing cruise ship, meteor or even swarm of killer bees.

But while each terrifying threat may have been different (not to mention increasingly outlandish), the formula the films employed was uncannily similar.

It invariably involved pitting a couple of big name actors against an exaggerated catastrophe, while a cast of once-famous Tinsel town stars (whose dimmed lustre handily made them both affordable and expendable) tried to stay alive until the closing credits.

Looking back, it’s hard to understand audiences’ enthusiasm for seeing silver screen luminaries meet a grisly fate. But there is no better example of this curious phenomena than The Towering Inferno (1974), a film which sets out with the sole aim of serving up some prime chargrilled celebrity.

The plot

As the world’s tallest skyscraper is officially opened, a select group of distinguished guests enjoy a lavish party on the 83rd floor.

Unbeknown to them, cost-cutting and shoddy workmanship during the construction has turned the tower into a glorified death-trap. (Presumably, Donald Trump was involved in the process.) So when a fire breaks out, the guests find themselves stuck on the upper floors with little chance of escape.

Who will live and who will die? Or, in this case, fry.

The cast

The Towering Inferno features not one, but two of the era’s most notable leading men.

Twinkly-eyed charmer Paul Newman plays the architect of the sky-scraping death-trap, while moody scowler Steve McQueen plays the fireman leading the rescue operation.

McQueen and Newman: The Towering Egos

The pair’s flinty onscreen relationship (“You fighting me or the fire?” asks Newman at one point) powers much of the film. Intriguingly, it also mirrored what was happening off-screen.

Both men saw themselves as the film’s biggest star and demanded top billing on the film. It seemed as if there was no solution until producers hatched a cunning compromise.

Famously, McQueen’s and Newman’s names are arranged diagonally across the posters and opening credits.

It may have looked like a typesetting error, but it meant that both actors could claim their name appeared first - depending if you were reading from left-to-right, or from top-to-bottom. Phew!

Inevitably, the petty squabbling didn’t stop there. After counting his lines of dialogue, McQueen discovered that Newman had 15 more than him. This prompted the self-styled ‘King of Cool’ to insist that the screenwriter write half a page of new lines for him.

Never mind Infernos, this movie was more a case of The Towering Egos.

They were expendable

Of course, the true pleasure in these films is seeing which of the expensively assembled cast of stars will get to live and who will perish. (In this respect, the Seventies disaster genre foresaw the rise of countless ‘who’s-next-for-the-chop’ reality shows, such as Big Brother. The key difference is that audiences then didn’t have to suffer some Geordie berk saying: ‘Steeeeve’s gaun tae the diiiiia-ry roooooom’ every three minutes.)

But we digress. Back in 1974, an ageing William Holden, playing the shambolic tower block’s owner, seems a sure bet for some barbecue treatment. You can almost smell the mustard sauce on him. But despite being largely to blame for the disaster, he ultimately shows sufficient contrition to secure ‘humbled survivor’ status. Result.

Richard Chamberlain: Richard
by name, Dick by nature

No such luck for dastardly Richard Chamberlain. As the electrical engineer responsible for the dodgy wiring that actually caused the fire, you’d think he might show just a twinkle of remorse – but not a bit of it. Instead, Tricky Dicky spends most of the movie hurling out insults and getting increasingly shit-faced.

So when a rescue chair winch is set up and Chamberlain, in the process of forcibly skipping the queue, callously kicks several other guests to their death (including – gasp! – the Man From Uncle’s brylcreem smoothie, Robert Vaughan) you know the bells are tolling.

Sure enough, a fortuitously-timed ‘sudden’ explosion blasts out the winch, breaks the rope and sends dastardly Dicky plunging to his death.

And still the stars keep coming. Former Fifties heartthrob Robert Wagner turns up briefly as a sleazy PR man who’s having a secret affair with his secretary. After a sweaty tryst in his office, the pair find themselves trapped by the encroaching fire.

With a fiery doom fast approaching, Wagner makes a kamikaze dash for help. We later learn it was a forlorn effort when the remains of his charred watch are discovered. But the film never resolves the fate of his girlfriend.

Still it wouldn’t be the only time Wagner left a woman to die in mysterious circumstances. Just ask Natalie Wood.

Perhaps the most undignified death is saved for screen legend Jennifer Jones. An Oscar-winning star of the Forties and Fifties (Duel In The Sun, A Song For Bernadette), Jones was coaxed out of

retirement for the role of a wealthy widower who is being courted by a charming conman played by Fred Astaire.

But just as their delicately handled romance blossoms, our Jenny is unceremoniously bumped off. In an ineptly staged scene, with absolutely zero sense of occasion, she simply tumbles from a damaged elevator like a piece of luggage.

Worse, nobody shows the slightest reaction to this supposed tragedy. The impression given to the audience is that, in a movie stuffed with so many competing egos and such bloated self-regard, the bigger stars were unwilling to even ‘act’ upset for the cinematic demise of such a faded name.

Poor Jenny. It’s hard to think of a more inelegant or ungraceful way for an actor to exit a film, or indeed a career. Jones never acted again. And Exploding Helicopter doesn’t blame her.

Exploding helicopter action

After a credulity-stretching amount of time, someone finally (finally!) has the idea using a helicopter to evacuate the partygoers from tower’s roof.

But in keeping with the plot’s many anti-escape contrivances (blocked stairwells, faulty alarm systems) a high wind conspires to make the air rescue a dangerous endeavour.

Sure enough, as the first helicopter comes into land, a couple of over-keen party guests run straight out onto the landing pad – literally where the chopper’s about to land – for reasons that remain unclear to this day. The pilots try to avoid crushing the people below, but the aircraft is caught in a gust of wind and crashes into the roof, exploding instantly.

Burn baby, burn. It’s a chopper inferno.

Artistic merit

Not a lot of this scene makes sense. Where have these gale force winds suddenly sprung from? What made the chopper explode instantly like that? Why were the idiot guests throwing themselves on to the landing pad in the first place?

Don’t waste any precious brain cells trying to work this lot out. Clearly, the scene’s only purpose is to put the helipad out of commission for the rest of the film.

Still, the explosion does produce a nice, juicy, fuselage-consuming fireball. But one qualm: we only get to glimpse it briefly before the action moves back inside the building.

This is strange. Given that The Towering Inferno is a big budget blockbuster – almost exclusively dedicated to blowing stuff up and burning things – shouldn’t the producers want to dwell a bit on such a magnificent sight as a flaming chopper?

Generally, yes. But in this case, perhaps the director understood just how creaky and convoluted the circumstances of the helicopter’s destruction were – and opted to whizz through the scene before anyone had time to realize how bonkers it all was.

Exploding helicopter innovation

There’s nothing new in the manner or execution of this chopper fireball, but the location is fairly distinct. The only other film where Exploding Helicopter has seen a helicopter destroyed at the top of a tower block is Die Hard (1988).

Favourite line

After sniffing some smoke one hopelessly optimistic tower worker asks: “Did you leave a cigarette burning?”

Interesting fact

Desperate to capture a truly surprised reaction from the cast, Irwin Allen actually fired a handgun into the ceiling without warning the actors, who were understandably ‘surprised’. The trick worked and he got his shot.

Review by: Jafo

Epicenter

Ever felt like you’ve seen a film before?

Usually that nagging sense of déjà vu is just a trick of the imagination. A product of inspiration-lite directors regurgitating the ideas of other, invariably better, movies.

But when Exploding Helicopter watched Epicenter (2000) that feeling of familiarity was no mental illusion. Most viewers really had seen this film before.

That’s because Epicenter is a bona fide Franken-movie. No joking, folks. It genuinely has been made from large chunks of other movies, which have then been clumsily stitched together with a few original scenes.

And like the mad doctor’s ghastly creation it’s ugly to look at, lumbers along slowly, and deserves to be put out of its misery.

The plot

Nick Constantine is the disgruntled employee of a Los Angeles technology company. But rather than do what the rest of us would – ie. skive around on Facebook all day and loiter in the staff kitchen moaning about Barry from Accounts – he instead steals their plans for a top secret weapon.

We know: it sounds fool proof. But just as Nasty Nick is about to flog the blueprints to a group of shady mafia types, he’s arrested by a saucy undercover FBI agent. D’oh.

It looks like our boy is heading straight for the slammer until another entirely believable development occurs: a devastating earthquake suddenly strikes LA, destroying buildings and roads, and knocking out all communications.

With the city in chaos, the cop and the criminal somehow find themselves being hunted by illegal arms dealers and rogue CIA agents who all want the super-weapon’s specs.

So: a secret weapon, FBI, mafia, massive earthquake, rogue CIA agents and arms dealers – and all this happens within the first 20 minutes. In case you were wondering, this is not a Ken Loach movie.

Who’s in this?

Traci Lords: used to going down for her work

In the role of the heroic FBI agent we have the *ahem* legendary Traci Lords. Now the name may not be immediately familiar, but she was once the highest paid, most in-demand actress in the film business.

Or, to be more exact, the pornographic film business.

It’s true. In the mid-Eighties Madame Lords was the lonely man’s masturbatory fantasy of choice, starring in such seedily titled fare as New Wave Hookers, Black Throat and the pun-tastic Beverly Hills Copulator.

Unfortunately, the Princess of Porn’s reign ended in infamy when her real age was discovered. Turns out our Traci was barely 18, meaning her entire oeuvre had been made whilst she was a minor.

The ensuing scandal threw the adult entertainment industry into crisis and saw Lords herself arrested – although by this point in her career our Traci was probably used to going down for her work.

Her co-star is martial arts nearly-man Gary Daniels. He plays the criminal computer nerd Lords must bring to justice.

The Brit-born kickboxer was a B-movie action star during the Nineties. But unlike messrs Seagal and Van Damme, he never made the jump to top tier fare.

The problem was that Daniels could only really do one thing: beat people up. His thespian abilities were as wooden as the bokken sticks he routinely used to batter opponents.

Gary Daniels: transformed from action star to computer
geek simply by wearing glasses

And let’s face it: when someone’s watching Big Steve’s movies and thinking ‘I just wish I had such range…’, you know they’re in trouble.

All of which makes his casting here rather puzzling. Gazza’s role as a nerdy techno boffin almost by definition requires him to not crack any heads together, so we’re left watching the acting chops of a man who can only do karate chops. It’s like casting Timothy Spall as the lead in a martial arts cage-fighting movie. What on earth were they thinking?

And be warned: while his fellow actors were no doubt relieved to not be getting kung fu kicked in the gonads, for the audience this is still a very painful experience indeed.

Déjà vu

Let’s cut to the chase (or more accurately, cut to someone else’s chase): Epicenter lifts entire scenes from other movies.

Some examples: early in the film, there’s a sequence where a car chases an out of control trolley car. You might enjoy it if you hadn’t previously watched Eddie Murphy’s risible action comedy Metro (1997), where it first appeared. You can even see Murphy’s gurning face inside the vehicle.

Once the earthquake hits, destruction is wrought upon Los Angeles in spectacular big-budget style. Unfortunately, Epicenter’s budget barely stretched to Traci’s upholstered bras, so what you see are clips from other movies.

Those three characters trapped inside a damaged building, where the elevator fails and crashes? Hello, Speed (1994). That impressive subway crash? Hmmm, looks like Money Train (1995) Even the footage of the earthquake ripping buildings apart is nicked from The Big One: The Great Los Angeles Earthquake (1990) (TV Movie).

Ironically for a film about an earthquake, the shakiest aspect is the actual veracity of what you’re seeing.

Exploding helicopter action

But here’s a surprise! The exploding helicopter action appears to actually be an original sequence.

Pursued by corrupt government agents who are aboard a helicopter, Lords and Daniels take shelter inside a quake-damaged building. While the gunmen on the whirlybird try to shoot down the doughty FBI agent (who, in fairness, presents two almost unmissable targets), Daniels sneaks onto the roof of the building.

Grabbing a piece of broken masonry, Daniels hauls if over the side of the roof. The rubble plunges downwards into the rotor blades of the chopper. The damaged aircraft flies into the side of the building and then falls to the ground, where it explodes.

Artistic merit

In keeping with the film’s shoddy tone, this is a lamentable chopper fireball. The explosion looks unrealistic and the fuselage doesn’t disintegrate nearly enough to satisfy ardent chopper fireball fans.

Exploding helicopter innovation

However, there is a refreshing simplicity to this whirlybird conflagration. We’ve seen helicopters destroyed in all sorts of convoluted ways, but never by someone just dropping a bloody big rock on it.

It’s unsophisticated, but oddly satisfying.

Tagline

‘Las Vegas is about to become beach front property.’ Ho, ho.

Review by: Jafo

The Siege Of Firebase Gloria

“No dumb bastard ever won a war by dying for his country,” said the notoriously blunt General George S Patton. “He won by making some other dumb bastard die for his.”

If ever a war movie embodied this famous remark, it’s The Siege Of Firebase Gloria (1989). During 99 blood-soaked minutes, we follow a small group of soldiers as they shoot, stab, garrotte and strangle a seemingly inexhaustible supply of enemy extras.

There are no stirring heroics. No rousing patriotic speeches. And certainly no examination of the conflict’s causes or consequences. Just the cold, efficient butchery skills of men killing other men. Watching it, General Patton would’ve been wiping a sentimental tear from his eye.

The plot

It’s the Vietnam War. Inevitably, a small patrol of marines are trapped behind enemy lines as the Vietcong launch a major offensive. So far, so Platoon, you might think. But if it’s jingoistic clichés and slo-mo heroics you’re after, look elsewhere. This movie ends up looking more like a military snuff tape.

The story is simplicity itself. With no other route of escape, the soldiers have to make for a remote, undermanned, and largely undefended Army outpost called Gloria.

The base is quickly surrounded by ‘Charlie’. Hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned, our heroic ‘band of brothers’ resolve to fight a desperate battle to the death. And that’s it, really. It’s not called The Siege Of Firebase Gloria for nothing.

Who’s in this?

Wings Hauser and R Lee Ermey

As veterans of the Vietnam War movie genre will know, marines in these films always have to be commanded by a tough-as-nails, take-no-shit, sergeant. (Think Sean Penn in Casualties of War or Tom Berenger in the aforementioned Platoon).

And in this hallowed gang of men, no actor has shown more nail-hardiness – nor more firmly refused ordure of any kind– than that grizzled, mean, king of ornery: R Lee Ermey. (Of course, it helps that Ermey actually was a bona fide sergeant back in ‘nam – he served in ‘the Corp’ for 11 years – before finding fame with a film-stealing turn in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket.)

And that’s the difference, really. Good as Sean Penn was in Casualties of War, you know that between scenes he was probably sat in a penthouse trailer holding conference calls about endangered pandas with the Dalai Lama and Bono, or screaming for an espresso with the sugar stirred anti-clockwise NOW!

But when Ermey delivered his memorably foul-mouthed turn as drill instructor Sergeant Hartman in Kubrick’s Eighties classic, he wasn’t even really acting. He merely reprised the parade ground bollockings he’d dished out to thousands of raw recruits. (Trivia fact: Ermey actually wrote or improvised his own dialogue in the film).

Since then old R. Lee has, with military discipline, reprised his trademark boggle-eyed shouting and swearing shtick in more than 100 films (much like Al Pacino, only without the Oscars and critical plaudits). And true to form, in Firebase Gloria the perma-enraged sergeant regularly unleashes an ungodly amount of guttural insults at decibel-shattering volume.

But it gets even better. Also in the cast is Wings Hauser, the cult star of such straight-to-video classics as The Art Of Dying, Reason To Die and L.A Bounty, as Ermey’s gung-ho – and ever so slightly unhinged – second in command.

Throughout the film, Wings displays a worrying enthusiasm for machine-gunning ‘dinks’ (as they’re charmingly referred to) at every opportunity. It’s meant to portray patriotic fervour, but more readily suggests an urgent need for psychiatric care.

Cometh the hour, cometh R Lee Ermey

With thousands of kill-crazy gooks launching relentless assaults, the situation for Ermey and his dwindling group of troops couldn’t be grimmer. Morale and ammunition are in equally short supply.

Recognising this moment of crisis, Ermey realises that a rousing pep talk is needed. An inspirational cri de Coeur that will stiffen the resolve of his wavering men. Perhaps something akin to the stirring poetry of the ‘Once more unto the breach’ speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V.

Or of course, he could just scream and bawl about how shit they all are while holding on to the severed heads of two of their fallen comrades, dangling from his fingers like some ghastly giant’s testicles.

“Anyone know who these belong to?” asks the puce-faced sergeant, swinging the freshly hewn noggins of the two now very much ex-marines.

“This is Corporal Miller,” he continues. “He’s dead. I don’t have any respect for Corporal Miller anymore, because he allowed his troops to relax. They let their guard down for five fucking minutes, and Charlie took advantage. Look at ‘em, goddamnit. Stay alert, stay alive. It’s as simple as that.”

Now, Exploding Helicopter is no expert on such matters but it’s a fair guess the above probably wasn’t delivered in iambic pentameter. But then again, when did Shakespeare’s plays ever serve up a flame-challenged whirlybird? Speaking of which…

Exploding helicopter action

So, the exploding helicopter. Early in the film, the good sergeant’s squad are being flown in a chopper towards the Gloria firebase. As they approach to land, they come under machinegun fire from hidden VC soldiers. The pilot is killed forcing Ermey, ever the take-charge guy, to land the damaged whirlybird.

The prospect of imminent chopper conflagration satisfaction is signalled when someone yells: “I can smell fuel.” Everyone is ordered out, and as they jump clear the helicopter explodes. Kaboom.

Artistic merit

This is a glorious helicopter explosion. It doesn’t look like any expense was spared on the pyrotechnics. The fireball is truly huge and features the kind of rich, orangey hues that only come from burning a considerable amount of gasoline.

Clearly impressed by his own special effect, the director treats us to multiple replays of the explosion. It’s a fireball feast for the eyes.

Favourite line

R Lee Ermey obviously gets the choicest bits of dialogue in this movie, and gets to deliver this particular gem in his own inimitable way: “It’s time to sprinkle some shit on Charlie’s rice.”

Review by: Jafo