Blue Thunder

Blue Thunder came out in 1983. It stars Roy Scheider as police helicopter pilot Frank Murphy and Warren Oates as his superior. It must have been the last movie of Warren Oates as he died in 1982 after suffering a heart attack. Malcolm McDowell plays the bad guy. Of course the real star of the movie is Blue Thunder, a hight tech fully armoured and armed helicopter the government wants to use during the upcoming olympics as a countermeasure against riots or terrorists. Of course the government has secret plans for the helicopter which Frank stumbles upon by accident. The first half of the movie introduces the main characters and demonstrates the helicopters advanced surveillance technology and firepower. Then, once the conspiracy is uncovered it turns into a manhunt of corrupt and evil government officials agains the lone hero. I saw the movie as a kid in the theatre so it has some nostalgic feelings attached to it for me personally. Watching it again it does stand the test of time quite well since the story is quite simple and there are no clumsy visual effects to rely on. Some of the atmosphere about tech getting out of control and the visual language with computer terminal style letters in the titles etc. are quite similar to The Terminator which came out in 1985. Even the music seems to be quite similar in my memory. I will have to go and watch The Terminator again to be able to really compare the two. Of course the Terminator movies have made a lot bigger impact that Blue Thunder. I doubt many youngsters have ever heard of it. But it did result in a series although that only ran for 11 episodes so it was probably not a big success. Shortly after came Airwolf, featuring an even more advanced helicopter. This was a bigger success and it ran for 3 seasons. After that the hype with high tech helicopters disappeared. In the same period there was also the Knight Rider tv series featuring another high tech computer powered machine. In a sense you could say that the Terminator is the ultimate computer powered machine, having become self aware and having turned against its creator. The stories you can invent about robots is endless and a big pioneer in this area was Isaac Asimov. But I am getting sidetracked here. Blue Thunder is a forgotten movie but it is still quite enjoyable and as a bonus it has a nice cast with real actors and with Warren Oates and Malcolm McDowell even two iconic ones. Well worth the view if you like the genre.