THE PLAYERS: Director: John Badham (Saturday Night Fever, WarGames, Bird on a Wire, Stakeout). Writers: Dan O’Bannon (Alien, Total Recall), Don Jakoby (The Philadelphia Experiment, Vampires). Starring: Roy Scheider, Malcolm McDowell, Candy Clark, Daniel Stern, & Warren Oates. Score by Arthur B. Rubinstein.
THE HISTORY: During the early eighties, the comic book-style techno-thriller was in-vogue. Usually, these thrillers revolved around lone-wolf cops or military men given access to highly sophisticated weaponized vehicles they used to do battle with the forces of evil (or – in the case of many eighties action movies – communism). On TV, there was Knight Rider, on the big screen, there was the infamous flop MegaForce. Super-helicopters/planes were especially popular, with Clint Eastwood’s bizarre spy/sci-fi thriller Firefox featuring him stealing a Russian Jet run by telepathy (???), while on TV there was “Airwolf”. Many believe the latter was actually a rip-off of this week’s subject, Blue Thunder.
Nevertheless, Blue Thunder has sunk into a modest kind of obscurity. It’s well-known enough that Sony has reissued it a few times on DVD/Blu-ray, but it’s rarely talked about alongside other popular action movies of the era, maybe due to the lack of a marquee star in the lead. There’s also been some talk of remaking it with drones (not a bad idea as far as these things go), but nothing has come to fruition yet.
“The story supposes that some right thing or conservative group in the government decides that it will be a great idea for crowd control in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, to use these helicopters for surveillance, and to arm them, which is a pretty frightening idea…
Unfortunately, the other equipment they want to put aboard is equipment that can look through into your house, see anything that’s alive and be able to record any conversation from five, six, hundred feet up in the air. The ship then becomes a representation of total invasion of privacy, a flying big brother…
In the film, the character I play, Murphy, a Los Angeles helicopter pilot, knows that this is a very evil and unnecessary thing. So he does something about it.” – Roy Scheider – Blue Thunder Online
As Murphy, Roy Scheider plays one of the last of the 80’s everyman heroes, with he-men like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone taking over action flicks within a year or two. Scheider is more of a seventies-style lead, in that he uses his brains and wit rather than brawn and doesn’t trust “the man.” Scheider was the king of this type of hero during this time, with this not too far from his part as Chief Brody in Jaws & Jaws 2. Already in his fifties, Scheider brought a rugged, world-weariness to the part that really made Frank Murphy an interesting guy, with a terrific introduction showing him using his high-tech (for the time) digital watch to count backwards as he tries to calm himself enough to climb into the pilot’s seat of his helicopter. For much of the running time, you’re never really sure if Murphy’s up to the task of taking on the government plot behind Blue Thunder, and by the time the credits roll he’s just about eked-out a victory, but at a heavy cost.
Similarly, the villain is atypical of the time, with Malcolm McDowell fairly low-key as Murphy’s rival, F.E Cochran, a government agent who tries to frame Murphy for murder once he starts asking too many questions and later faces off with him in a spectacular dog-fight in the L.A skies. McDowell’s lower-key performance may have to do with the fact that he’s terrified of flying, with his grimaces during the final battle being real, as he was so freaked out about being in a helicopter.
“I was terrified. We started out filming it on the gimbel thing (a rig designed for the purpose) with the crew moving it around. Then, it was easy to look macho and all that, but it’s all very different when you’re really up there in the air! They had to retake my stuff several times because I was so scared. It gave them a good laugh.” “Going under those bridges in the helicopter was simply terrifying. I didn’t think we were going to make it. I asked the pilot, ‘We are not going to go under it, are we? We don’t have enough room under the bridge. I don’t know how wide this thing is, and there is just not enough – oh my god! He scraped the paint!’ I still get the old pollywoggles in my stomach when I watch that scene. In fact, I’ll tell you, I still can’t even look at some parts of this movie.” Malcolm McDowell – Blue Thunder Online
The supporting cast is good too, with Daniel Stern as JAFO (“Just Another F**king Observer”) Lymangoode, the young, family man partner who – if you know your eighties action movies – won’t be around long past the second act. Candy Clark makes for a spunky love interest for Scheider (it’s interesting that when the movie starts they’re already in a relationship rather than falling in love as it goes on), while Warren Oates owns every scene as the typical pissed-off Police Captain, although he’s more sympathetic than usual given the trope.
“I would get rid of that Arco Tower scene,” he notes. “It seems out of character for Murphy to draw missile fire to it. To my way of thinking, they should have picked a place which was obviously abandoned, where innocent people wouldn’t be endangered. – Roy Scheider – Blue Thunder Online
That aside, Blue Thunder is pretty damn exciting, with Scheider’s performance grounding the film in a big way, and Badham’s straightforward (some might say workmanlike) direction a far-cry from today’s action directors, who bombard you with carnage. I also really like the super-synthy electronic score by Arthur B. Rubinstein, with Murphy having a cool heroic theme that I’m humming to myself as I write this.
SEE IT: Blue Thunder is widely available on DVD/Blu-ray, iTunes, Amazon and Netflix depending on your region. No 4K yet though, which is a shame.