Red Scorpion

Dolph Lundgren plays a Russian special forces soldier sent to an African country to help stop an anti-Communist rebellion.

Lundgren is tasked with killing the rebel leader, Sundata. However, upon witnessing the brutality of the pro-Soviet forces, Dolph decides to fight with the rebels and help their rebellion succeed.

The film opens with some dark, backlit, photographs of Dolph looking mean and moody, while a narrator tells us what a bad-ass the Big Swede is. We then cut to the Russian army HQ in Moscow where Dolph is brought into a room of top Generals for an incredibly long and dull scene of exposition.

In order to carry out his orders, Dolph has to find a way to get close enough to the rebel leader to assassinate him. He arranges for himself to be put in jail with Kallunda (Al White) the right hand man of the rebel leader who the Soviet forces have captured.

Dolph helps Kallunda escape along with Dewey Ferguson (M Emmet Walsh) an American journalist who's covering the conflict. The trio elude the pursuing Soviet troops and make for Sundata's camp. Having tricked his way into the rebel stronghold Lundgren attempts to kill Sundata. But his bid fails and he is left for the Soviet forces to find.

Dolph's failure isn't well received by his masters who decide to reward him with a spot of light torture with a set of knitting needles. Dolph escapes again - this time for real - from jail.

He wanders the desert until he's found by an old bushman. The old bushman makes Dolph a pair of sandals. Dolph is so humbled by this display of friendship that he renounces his Commie masters by tearing off his dog tags. The bushman then drugs Dolph and gives him a scorpion tattoo.

Dolph seeks out Kallunda again. He tells him he really is a deserter this time. Seeing the sandals and the tattoo Kallunda believes him. They team up and head off to kick some Commie butt.

The film climaxes with Lundgren leading an assault against his own Soviet forces and trying to hunt down their leader General Vortek. The General tries to make good an escape by taking to a Hind helicopter. However, it's only a few feet above the ground before Lundgren blows out the cockpit with a machine gun forcing the craft back down.

With his battle seemingly won Lundgren turns to leave, however, Vortek rallies briefly and is set to shoot Dolph in the back until some sixth sense warns the big Swede. He spins round and looses off with his machine gun blowing the Hind to smithereens.

Artistic merit

It's hard to find fault with a film which builds its conclusion around the explosion of a helicopter.

Made in the pre-CGI era there is a wonderful rich, blood orange explosion. The explosion has a richness and natural quality which is sadly often missing from many computer generated special effects.

There's also a double bang for your buck as the initial explosion which takes out the cockpit is superbly executed. When the helicopter is then ultimately blown to pieces the rotor blades continue to turn with the classic balletic beauty exploding helicopter fans have come to know and love.

Number of helicopters

1

Relevance to plot

Helicopters have a pleasingly prominent presence in the film.

Exploding helicopter innovation

Very little. Lundgren uses a conventional machine gun to bring down the chopper. The already crippled helicopter is then blown up on a landing pad with a well executed explosion.

Positives

There are lots of positives to this film. Not the least of which is Dolph's hair. It's shaved to the scalp at the sides, leaving a blonde strip on the top with a nice little cow lick at the front.

The film co-stars the great character actor M Emmet Walsh. He gives a typically garrulous performance as a rabidly anti-Communist American journalist. Walsh's character isn't big on journalistic impartiality as he has no hesitation in grabbing a gun and shooting Reds at every opportunity.

There's a also a small role for Brion James as a Soviet Army Sergeant. He seemed to specialise in playing sweaty, unshaven, henchmen and has had roles in Blade Runner, Tango & Cash, Red Heat and Bruce Willis's 'Die Hard on a Speedboat' flick Striking Distance. James doesn't really get anything cool to do in this apart from attempt a weird part Russian, part Afrikans accent.

There's also a great scene where Dolph shoots off the arm of a soldier who's about to throw a grenade at him. The soldier then crawls across the ground to try and get to his severed limb which is still holding the explosive. It won't surprise you to learn he doesn't make it in time.

Negatives

Director Joseph Zito [Missing In Action] seems at some points in the film to be striving for something more than a simple propaganda action film. The sequences with Dolph and the bushman take place in near silence. It's not that the scenes are poorly handled or uninteresting, but they feel a bit out of place.

Favourite quote

"You must be out of your mind!"

"No, just out of bullets."

Interesting fact

The film virulent anti-Communist politics may partly be explained by the fact it was allegedly financed by the South African Defence Force through the a right wing think-tank it financed called the International Freedom Foundation. Producer and scriptwriter Jack Abramoff helped run said foundation.

Review by: Jafo

Men Of Honor

Cuba Gooding Jr battles racism, prejudice, and a syrup saturated script to become the first Black Navy diver in this inspirational – or, depending on your tolerance for schmaltz, nauseatingly saccharine – biopic.

Thankfully, amid all the heart string tugging speeches and treacly hymns to the human spirit, there’s at least one moment of genuine interest: an exploding helicopter to jolt the film and audience awake.

Early on, Gooding is aboard ship when a helicopter arrives to deliver the mail – quite possibly the least glamorous task a chopper can perform. We watch it lower a postbag to the deck via winch. Gooding heads below… and then, suddenly, a huge crash echoes through the ship.

He rushes back topside to find pieces of helicopter scattered across the ocean. Some unseen calamity has sent the poor thing plummeting into the drink.

Verdict

This is one of the worst exploding helicopter sequences ever committed to film, and director George Tillman Jr should be prosecuted for “crimes against chopper fireballs”.

Despite having a perfect opportunity to stage a glorious aerial inferno, Tillman stages the explosion off screen. It’s a technique some directors can use cleverly to heighten drama. Tillman, alas, is not one of those directors. His attempt is an appalling misjudgement.

Confronted with the challenge of blowing up a helicopter, Tillman simply bottles it. Such cinematic cowardice raises serious questions about whether he should be allowed near another film – certainly not one featuring rotor blades.

Number of helicopters

One.

Relevance to plot

As the film is based on true events, the helicopter’s presence is presumably historically accurate – even if the explosion isn’t.

Artistic merit

Rather than complicate his shooting schedule, Tillman lets the helicopter explode somewhere out of sight. Pathetic.

Exploding helicopter innovation

None.

Positives

The only bright spot is that this otherwise relentlessly earnest Navy diver drama briefly provides something for exploding helicopter enthusiasts to stay awake for.

Negatives

The first rule of exploding helicopters: show the helicopter exploding.

Review by: Jafo

Still want more? Then check out the Exploding Helicopter podcast episode on Men Of Honor. Listen to the show on iTunes, Podomatic, Stitcher, YourListen or Acast. 

Firefox

Clint Eastwood plays a top fighter pilot, called out of retirement to steal an experimental Russian plane - the Firefox. 

In order to sneak into the Soviet Union, Clint disguises himself as a lingerie salesman. So convincing is Eastwood as a purveyor of ladies smalls, he sails through the Russkies border controls.

Later, he infiltrates the airbase - though sadly not disguised as a lingerie salesman - and steals the fighter. Eastwood then flies the plane out of Soviet airspace - whilst avoiding the Russian airforce and the might of its air defences.

The film climaxes with Old Squint engaged in a dogfight with the only other Firefox fighter - flown by the Soviet's top pilot.

Exploding Helicopter action

Whilst making his airborne escape, Eastwood has to get past a Soviet naval destroyer which has scrambled two helicopters to destroy the Firefox.

Using the futuristic fighter jet's thought controlled weapons systems Eastwood growls in Russian to deploy a couple of rockets to take out the choppers. The first is a crisp, quick, frontal detonation.

Eastwood, also the film’s director, allows the action to linger a little longer on the second helicopter. This one has just taken off the deck of the ship when its blown-up. It crashes back into the deck of the ship and is consumed by flames. The rotor blades continue to turn in time honoured exploding helicopter fashion.

The whole sequence is handled in a rather depressingly brusque way. The helicopters are destroyed in a perfunctory manner as if they were small flies being simply swatted away.

Given that Firefox is centred around a revolutionary fighter plane, Eastwood probably felt that it would undermine the aim of the film to portray the helicopters in a more commanding manner.

Viewers are left in no doubt about the helicopters inferior position in the air force hierarchy.

Number of helicopters

Two.

Artistic merit

Frankly disappointing. Clint doesn’t let the action dwell for long on the exploding helicopters. There’s little imagination in the method or style of destruction.

However, Clint brings his own ineffable cool to the scene by blowing up both helicopters by muttering taciturnly in Russian. Very stylish.

Exploding helicopter innovation

First known destruction of a helicopter with a thought controlled weapons system.

Positives

The helicopter explosions liven up a film which has otherwise chosen foolishly to base its plot on a fighter plane.

Negatives

The helicopters are displayed as inept opponents in the face of the Firefox’s aerial supremacy.

Best line

"Think in Russian."

Review by: Jafo

The Other Guys

Gamble (William Ferrell) and Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg) are two desk bound cops who seem doomed to a career of pencil pushing and office mockery. Or at least until they get caught up in the investigation of an elaborate Ponzi scheme.

The financial chicanery has been perpetrated by David Ershon (Steve Coogan), a slimy banker whose tentacles seem to stretch into the most unexpected of places.

Hilarity ensues as the cops solve the mystery and ultimately become heroes in traditional Hollywood fashion. Walhberg plays it relatively straight, proving a useful foil for Ferrell's usual wackiness.

Co-written by Adam McKay, this got middling reviews from critics, but found much more favour with audiences.

Exploding helicopter action

In the course of their investigation, our heroes are driving along in a car when they find themselves pursued by villains in a helicopter. Under heavy fire from a machinegun wielding henchmen on the chopper, Wahlberg and Ferrell try to evade the villains by seeking cover in a golf driving range. The helicopter is then pelted by golf balls and the pilot loses control and tailspins into a nearby bridge. 

Artistic merit

For a few seconds the viewer might think that the helicopter might just make it out unscathed. However it slowly spirals and as metal grinds into concrete we get the pay-off as the whirlybird bursts into a frame-filling fireball. 

Relevance to Plot

Pretty tenuous. There seems to be a shadowy organization that is backing Coogan’s financial impropriety but would they be able to fly helicopter gunship around a post 9-11 New York City without any comeback? This is a comedy so we will let them off.

Exploding Helicopter Innovation

A cinematic helicopter explosive first! Death by Titleist. Who thought they'd ever get to see a helicopter destroyed by golf balls?

In a mature niche genre it is nice to know that filmmakers are still taking the time to think of new ways to kill a helicopter. Where else are you going to see a helicopter being taken out by a 3 wood?

Review by: Neon Messiah

Shooter

Mark Wahlberg is a former Marine sharp shooter brought in by the Secret Service to prevent a Presidential assassination. But after finding himself framed for the hit he was hired to stop, he has to go on the run while trying to find those behind the conspiracy.

Wahlberg tracks down the assassin, only to end up trapped with an elite team of troops ready to take him out. Marky Mark retreats to a nearby ridge under heavy fire from the soldiers and a helicopter that is providing air cover.

Hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned, things look grim for Wahlberg until he spots a fuel tank placed directly below the low flying helicopter. One well placed shot later and the helicopter is out of commission. Permanently.

Verdict

A rather uninspired helicopter explosion. As soon as the fuel tank appears in Wahlberg's rifle sights you know how he's going to deal with the chopper.

That said, the explosion is nicely handled. The copter doesn't explode immediately, flying on, out of control, and consumed by flame, for several more seconds, before eventually crashing behind some trees. However, the first rule of exploding helicopters is you see them explode. Obscuring their detonation is anathema to the art of exploding helicopters.

Relevance to plot

Solid. There's every reason to believe that the soldiers would have air support.

Artistic merit

Some. The flying, fireball of helicopter is cool, however, failing to fully show it explode is a grave crime, and should be illegal in Hollywood. It is not known whether director Antoine Fuqua ever received censure from the Directors Guild for this grave error.

Exploding helicopter innovation

Nice piece of improvisation from Wahlberg to blow it up with the fuel tank.

Positives

We're teased briefly as the helicopter resists its ultimate destruction.

Negatives

Those damn trees.

Review by: Jafo

Stone Cold

Hollywood has a long and proud tradition of improbably turning American footballers into actors.

Perhaps only in the City of Dreams could someone watch a hulking NFL player lumber their way monosyllabically through a post-game interview and think: Hey, he’d be great in the movies!

But that’s what happens. The trend started way back in the Sixties with Jim Brown, often considered the NFL’s greatest player. Big Jim menaced his way through such gems as The Dirty Dozen, Ice Station Zebra and The Running Man after retiring from the game.

Tough tackling defender Fred ‘the Hammer’ Williamson (Black Caesar, From Dusk Til Dawn) and the Oakland Raiders’ Carl Weathers (Rocky, Predator) also made largely successful switches from mangling bodies to mangling lines.

More interesting is the case of OJ Simpson. For many years, the former running-back enjoyed a long and largely undistinguished screen career. Or at least until real life intervened. After his ex-wife and her friend were murdered, Simpson suddenly found himself the star of his own a televised legal drama.

Fortunately, The Juice had saved his most convincing performance in front of a camera for an LA courtroom. Most observers thought his role as an innocent man impossible to pull-off. Luckily for him the jury begged to differ.

All of which, by way of roundabout introduction, brings us to the big, brash, mullet-king: Brian Bosworth. When injury prematurely ended the career of this colourful Seattle Seahawks line-backer – equally beloved and loathed by a nation’s sports fans – Tinseltown naturally tapped him up for an ‘acting’ career.

So let’s head down to the line of scrimmage and get ready to tackle the Bozza’s big screen debut, Stone Cold (1991).

The plot

Brian Bosworth plays Joe Huff, a maverick cop who - in a stunning twist on genre conventions - plays by his own rules. Big Bri’s unassailable position on the maverick-ometer is quickly established by the fact he wears a leather jacket, rides a motorbike and has a komodo dragon as a pet. You get it, right? He’s like totally craaaazzzeeeee man!

He’s also the policeman with the most biker-related arrests in Alabama. (Apparently, law enforcement officials keep extensive statistics on these things.) This makes him the perfect man to go undercover with the Brotherhood, a bunch of white supremacist Hells Angels who are up to their necks in drugs, prostitution and murder.

After infiltrating the gang (a cunning ruse that involves our Bri just turning up at a bar dressed in his own clothes), Bosworth learns that they’re planning to assassinate a politician who has promised to crack down on the biker problem.

As plots go, tough-guy-goes-undercover-with-more-tough-guys is hardly epoch-breaking territory. ‘Acting’ is not a big priority here. But then, this is a movie starring a violent redneck who had literally spent the past decade listening to nothing more sophisticated than a quarterback shouting out random numbers on a scrimmage line before he punched people. What were you expecting: Sense and Sensibility?

Who’s in this?

Given no-one outside the US cares about American football, you’ve probably never heard of Brian Bosworth.

The Boz, as he liked to style himself, was a colourful and controversial gridiron star in the Eighties. Famous for outrageous hairstyles, trash-talking opponents, and countless run-ins with authority, the mullet-haired meathead was one of the game’s most recognisable faces.

So in many ways, Stone Cold was the perfect vehicle for him. Playing an insufferable attitude monster with a preposterous haircut wasn’t really a stretch even for Bri’s modest acting skills, which is just as well. As a bitchy English thesp might put it, he lacks ‘range’.

Still, he does an excellent job in this movie – assuming, of course, you define excellent as mouthing your words in broadly the right order and not tripping over the furniture. Remember: these were the early Nineties, when many of the era’s top action stars – Arnie, Dolph, Sly, et al – literally couldn’t manage a comprehensible sentence. (‘Hay-dree-ennnnnne!’ ‘Ah’ll bee beck!’ ‘Yu vill looze…’). Judged against that incredibly low bar, Bosworth comes across like Sir Laurence Olivier, though admittedly with Hulk Hogan’s haircut.

The biker gang’s leader is played by B-movie legend, Lance Henriksen (forever typecast as Sigourney Weaver’s creepy android pal from the Alien films). With his cadaverous, unconventionally handsome face, and cigar-smoke smooth voice, Lance is one of those rare actors who can effortlessly convey both menace and charm. And he can chew scenery with the best of them.

One minute he is cackling wildly with his biker buddies, the next he’s malevolently mangling a man’s hand in the spinning wheel of a motorcycle. If acting were a McDonald’s menu choice, Lance definitely chose to ‘go large’.

And if that isn’t enough overacting for you, further colour is provided by William Forsythe as Henriksen’s mentally unhinged right-hand man.

Along with Gary Busey, Bonkers Bill was one of the twin titans of Nineties ‘screen crazy’. When a film needed someone who could lose their shit in an entertaining way, they were the men casting agents called. (At least until Nicolas Cage cornered the market)

And Forsythe is in prime ordure-scattering form here, snorting, swearing and sneering his way through the film like a coked-up Tasmanian Devil. Indeed, such was Boardwalk Empire star’s commitment to authenticity he refused to wash his clothes during the film’s four month shoot. By the end, the King of Screw-loose’s trousers were as pungently over-ripe as his performance.

Is this any good?

By rights, Stone Cold should have been a disaster. After four weeks of production, original director Bruce Malmuth (Hard To Kill) was fired and everything filmed to that point was junked.

But cometh the hour, cometh, er, the stuntman. Into this chaos stepped veteran stunt coordinator and occasional director Craig R Baxley, the film’s true hero. Behind schedule and already way over budget, Baxley decided to take a radical, albeit simple, approach.

Turning up on set, he informed the cast and crew that they were going to “blow shit-up and kill people until all the money runs out”. (This was a strategy that may have lacked finesse, but certainly not clarity).

Judged against that mission statement, Stone Cold is an unqualified success – for this is one of the most conflagration-filled films Exploding Helicopter has ever witnessed.

No single opportunity to blow up a car, truck or motorcycle is missed. Even an innocuous looking fender-bender is enough to send the vehicles in this movie erupting into fiery piles of debris. And

even on the rare occasions when vehicles manage to avoid other traffic, there’s always a handy petrol station for it to crash into. (Some tropes never get old).

And that’s the point, really. Stone Cold may be just another derivative and clichéd cop movie, but it serves up the genre’s well-worn conventions with real gusto and a nitro-glycerine-soaked brio. The whole thing is best approached as a sort of action film cartoon. Just sit back, unplug your brain and enjoy.

Exploding Helicopter action

Exploding Helicopter feels it best to spare the reader the intricacies (and indeed inanities) of how we reach the film’s crucial scene. Suffice to say, we’re on the fifth floor of an office building and there’s a motorcycle speeding down a corridor towards a window. In case you haven’t guessed, outside that window is a helicopter and a regulation dim-witted pilot.

Before the viewer can ponder just how unlikely this set of circumstances is, the iron horse smashes through the glass into the whirlybird, which instantly explodes.

Evel Knievel, eat your heart out.

Artistic merit

If there is a finer sight in movie history than watching a helicopter being fierily brought-down by a flying motorcycle, then Exploding Helicopter would like to know about it.

The use of a motorcycle as a vehicular cannonball is truly inspired. Without question, one of the all-time great helicopter explosions.

Exploding helicopter innovation

First known use of a motorcycle to blow-up a helicopter.

The only other example Exploding Helicopter is aware of is in The Expendables 2 where Sylvester Stallone uses a dirt bike to shoot down a bothersome gunship.

A variation on the form can be seen in Die Hard 4.0, where Bruce Willis destroys a chopper using a police car as an improvised projectile.

Favourite quote

The one-liners in Stone Cold are distinctly hit and miss, but Bosworth gets this bona fide corker as he’s about to administer the last rites to Lance Henriksen: “Imagine the future, because you’re not in it.”

Review by: Jafo

Still want more? Then check out the Exploding Helicopter podcast on Stone Cold. Listen to it on iTunes, Stitcher, Acast, Podomatic, or YourListen.

Die Hard

When terrorists seize control of a tower block, an FBI team led by the great pock-marked villain Robert Davi, are brought in to free the hostages.

Davi’s plan involves cutting-off the buildings power and before giving them "helicopters up the ass". Exploding Helicopter is not sure if that's possible, but it sounds anatomically awkward. 

Regardless, Davi and his FBI colleague fly-in, ostensibly to evacuate the hostages, but really so they can shoot the terrorists. Unbeknownst to them, the villains have rigged the roof with explosives which are detonated, destroying the buildings upper floors and taking out the helicopter.

Number of exploding helicopters

1

Positives

There‘s a pleasing Vietnam reference when Robert Davi yells: “Just like fucking Saigon!” as they begin their low level chopper assault.

Negatives

Robert Davi never gets to deliver “helicopters up the ass” which surely would have been an anatomical first.

Exploding helicopter innovation

First known usage of a tower block to explode a helicopter.

Artistic merit

Disappointing. The helicopter’s explosion is overshadowed by the detonation of the tower block’s roof.

Favourite quote

"Hey, I read the papers, I watch 60 minutes, I say to myself, these guys are professionals, they’re motivated, they’re happening. They want something. Now, personally, I don’t care about your politics. Maybe you’re pissed at the camel Jockeys, maybe it’s the Hebes, Northern Ireland, that’s none of my business. I figure, you’re here to negotiate, am I right?"

Interesting fact

The film is based on a book by Roderick Thorpe - a sequel to a previous novel he had written called The Detective. A film of that novel was made in 1968 with Frank Sinatra. 

A clause in Old Blues Eyes contract, meant Sinatra had to be given first refusal on Die Hard - despite the fact he was 73 at the time. 

Review by: Jafo

Still want more? Then check out the Exploding Helicopter podcast episode on Die Hard. Available on Podomatic, iTunes, Stitcher or YourListen.