This mother here is through walls, fires 4,000 rounds a minute, and peaks down dresses at 1,000 feet. Jesus Christ. There's more than that.

This terminal here is hooked into every data bank that there is.

There's a lot of these copters, and you can run the whole damn country.

Wow.

What a clip to hear on, especially today when the National Guard is in Los Angeles, under the false impression that there's an insurrection happening in the city. This is terrifying to me, Paul. Are you as terrified as I am?

I'm unsettled even as I'm about a thousand miles away in relative safety in the Republic of Texas, but that comes with its own entanglements.

I believe you're very well protected from our liberalism, Paul. You have nothing to fear from us, all of our comedies here in LA.

Yeah, no, it's just a swarm of tech-brollegarx and cybertrucks that have invaded our fair city of Austin. We try to keep this show relatively evergreen and temporally nonspecific, but in an uncanny bit of cosmic timing, it just so happened we found ourselves watching Blue Thunder amidst...

A movie that is amidst our own issues here with surveillance and urban pacification.

Yes, and blurring the lines between military and the police and urban pacification and all sorts of issues that resonate.

Yeah, let's just say that today I wish I had an ED-209, but that's a different movie. And on that note, I am Javier Grillo-Marxuach, and I'm Paul Alvarado-Dykstra, and this is...

Multiplex Overthruster Summer of 83.

Paul, as you mentioned, we are watching the film Blue Thunder.

Yes.

Or as Wags used to call it in the day, True Blunder.

Oh, harsh.

Oh, ow, ow, that hurt. Let me recap the movie since I'm the plot guy today. Okay, so today-

Congratulations.

This film is the stand up and cheer story of a Vietnam War veteran turned helicopter pilot for the LAPD, who is played by Roy Scheider. He and his rookie partner, played by Daniel Stern, are conscripted into a military industrial urban project in which they are going to be the test pilots for a brand new helicopter called Blue Thunder. The helicopter has stealth capacity. It's got a big gun, any number of things. They also stumble on a conspiracy to stir up trouble in the barrio in order to convince the government to bring a fleet of Blue Thunders in to pacify this insurrection because the Olympics are coming to Los Angeles. Roy Scheider and Daniel Stern wind up overhearing a conversation about all of these nefarious plans. Roy Scheider hijacks the Blue Thunder helicopter in order to get the tape of this conversation to a reporter because, as we all know, when wrongdoing is exposed in the media, that's the end of wrongdoing. And then he does that and he has a big, big dogfight over downtown Los Angeles with his former military buddy from Vietnam, played by Malcolm McDowell, who just wasn't that nice a guy. And there's a lot of explosions. And then Roy Scheider shoots down Malcolm McDowell. There's a great deal of civilian carnage that is we're made to believe like it's not, but it's happening. And then Roy Scheider, in a fit of libertarian pique, lets the helicopter be destroyed by a freight train. Does that vaguely tell the story here?

Yeah, you covered a lot of ground. There's a lot happening in this movie.

Yes, there is. And yet so little. But you know what, Paul, just before we get into just talking about the movie, before we ring the bell, did you see this movie in the theater? What was your experience of this film?

I have vague memories of seeing this, but I did not see it in the theater. And at first, I was puzzled as to why until very quickly we witnessed the film assertively earning its R rating. And so I was too young to see this in the theater when it came out, so I caught up on it later, either on cable or home video, but I had not seen it in decades because I'm just gonna plant this flag firmly now.

Because it sucks?

I'm an air wolf guy.

Whoa!

I mean, it's just... So in my world, who cares about Blue Thunder? I'm an air wolf guy. But I was curious to look at it with fresh eyes and an open mind.

You were one of the acolytes of Stringfellow Hawk, huh?

Uh, sure.

Yes.

That was the name of the lead guy in Air Wolf. That was Michael. What's his name?

It was one of the guys, Alex Cord. That was his boss. Jan Michael Vincent was Stringfellow Hawk.

And already more interesting than anything that happened in Blue Thunder.

Yes.

Brad, producer Brad, what was your experience of this film?

Well, I did not see it in the theater either because it was rated R. But while watching it last night, I realized that I've seen it a lot, and I must have seen it on the movie channel. But I knew every line of dialogue, every music cue, every beat of the film. It was like a song you haven't heard in decades, and you knew every lyric to.

Wow, what a burden to carry that in your psyche for so long, Bradley.

In stark, I was just going to say, in stark contrast, I had vast chasms of complete forgetfulness of this film. That surprised me.

Well, I think that means I'm Team Blue Thunder. I did not watch Airwolf Gun. The helicopter was not as cool as Blue Thunder.

I mean, that's just... Oh, I'm sorry for your soul.

I actually don't think I ever saw this movie all in a row. I think I saw it in bits on like TNT or something over the course of my life. I don't remember ever sitting through it and certainly didn't see it in the theater for the R rating. So, yeah, now you can ring the bell, producer Brad. Thank you.

Ding, ding.

Guys, let's just get on on it. Is this helicopter cool? Do we like the helicopter?

So the helicopter is a modified French gazelle.

It's an air special gazelle, yes, gazelle.

That has a grand total of one weapon. A front mounted, a 20 millimeter cannon turret on a kind of cyber controlled.

It swivels, it swivels to the pilot's head, yes, exactly.

Yes. Think. That is it. That is, I'm sorry, pathetic. That is just fucking pathetic.

Hey, the helicopter is a one vehicle internet, like the entire internet is inside of the vehicle.

Yeah, so is my phone.

Well, yeah, but this was 1983, dude.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But still, I mean, we've seen Tron, we've seen Blade Runner. I mean, we've seen some great visionary sci-fi at this point. Blue Thunder.

This is not one of them. No, this is not one of them.

Is so shallow minded in its thinking and in its vision. It's really startling and disappointing. And it's almost as confounding as why they thought it was a good idea to go for an R rating for no reason, thereby limiting its audience. And I'm just, I'm so completely.

Well, let's talk about the helicopter.

Okay.

Now, I saw, I read an interview in Starlog magazine with Dan O'Bannon, who famously wrote Alien, you know, and Dark Star. He's one of the great sort of paranoid minds of our science fiction.

Return of the Living Dead.

Yes. Yes.

A pillar of genre who has a proud legacy of contributions.

But very much somebody, you know, and I think he wrote this movie out of paranoia.

Yes.

He wanted it to be like a 1970s thriller, more like in the Parallax View vein. And the quote I remember from this interview more than anything else, is that he said that he believed Blue Thunder should have been a fast black wasp, compact and deadly, but that instead John Badam saw as this big ponderous thing with crap hanging off of it. And I gotta say, I don't think that for a piece of technology that we're supposed to be excited about, I don't think I can think of a more graceless and just sort of like loaded up. I mean, to me, this looks like a Tonka truck that's had other Tonka trucks welded to it. It's a horrible design. And I don't want to play with it. Like, first of all, it's got an R rating, so I never would have gotten the toy anyway. But I don't want to play with this helicopter. It's ugly, right?

So I don't want a virtue signal, but I, but you're gonna, I went to the Fine Engineering Institution of Texas A&M on scholarship to study aerospace engineering. Blue Thunder is crap. It is.

The helicopter and the movie or just the helicopter?

We're talking about the helicopter now. We're getting to the movie. But yes, it is, it is this, I mean, there's some intriguing angles and stuff, but there's like no function that follows the form. As you said, there's this hodgepodge of attachments and things jutting out of it that don't do anything, that don't serve or bring any function. And it's, yeah.

It reminds me of something Rob Liefeld once said, which is that, you know, when he creates a character, he just puts a lot of pouches on them, you know? And this looks to be like a Rob Liefeld helicopter. He's got a bunch of weapons. It just looks like a 90s, it looks like Cable or Deathstroke. All those characters, it just has crap all over them.

I don't know if he said that. And that's not somebody I ever imagined we would be quoting on this fine podcast. So Les has just manifested that as an artistic approach. But yeah, it's a choice. But I feel like if you're going to make those design decisions, and again, it's the contrast unavoidable with Airwolf.

Yeah, a sleek, jet-powered chopper. It's an amazing looking chopper, yeah.

It is a holistic, cohesive, coherent design aesthetic that has an internally consistent design language. And that the modifications to the Bell original helicopter were all thoughtfully crafted and vaguely plausible within the elasticity of genre fiction.

But more importantly.

And it had multiple weapons.

Yeah, more importantly, Airwolf had a really great theme song. And I can't, again, Arthur Rubinstein, who also did War Games. Oh my God. This score, I mean, I'm sorry, Arthur. I'm sure that you've done great stuff. But wow, the one, two punch of War Games and Blue Thunder as a score. Holy Toledo.

I do have a note right off the top.

Are you going to ring the bell? You got to get us into the movie, producer Brad. We're not even talking about it.

We rang the bell.

Yeah, we rang, yeah.

No, you need to ring the bell that controls us. That gets us back on point.

I'm just going to step in real quick and say.

Did we ring the bell?

Yeah, you guys talked over. Well, we did. I'm just going to stay my side of the line, my corner here. I like Blue Thunder. I like the angles.

You like the helicopter?

I like the red stripes on the windows.

The little Batman-esque red pinstriping is a nice touch. What was I going to say? Yeah, I do have a note that Arthur Rubenstein, and I'm so sorry to be picking on him. I'm hoping that he's long gone and dead and not ever going to hear any of this. Very talented, fine composer of a lot of credits that I can't remember. But this is a less bad score than War Games. War Games score, I think, is aggressively bad. This score is intermittently functional, but scattershot. But again, it's all relative.

It's also spot, but it's also spotted weird.

It is. Very weird.

There's a lot of it. Let's get into it.

By the way, Rubenstein died in 2018.

Well, so the movie starts with a warning.

Yes.

I believe, like Isabella Rossellini once said, and death becomes her. And now, a warning.

Yes.

And the warning is that all the technology of this film exists in the real world. So you should be afraid, because there may be stealth helicopters eavesdropping on your love.

Not only is real, but all hardware, weaponry and surveillance systems depicting the film are real and in use in the United States today. Yes.

You know how Margaret Atwood only, like literally picked stuff from all sorts of different places and put them all in the handmade still and everything that in the handmade still is real? It's like that, except it's not good. So anyway, so then we go to the to the LAPD helicopter headquarters of command.

Yes.

Where, you know, people are being this movie has a lot of tough ombre saying tough ombre bullshit. It was a lot of like sort of tough ombre quotes here.

But we're beginning with first meet a very untough ombre.

Who? Jaffa.

Daniel Stern. Yes, Jaffa. Daniel Stern playing the part of he has a really it's like it's like Linden Goodwood would or something like that. He's playing Officer Lyman Good, Lyman Good. And he's Jaffa, which we don't know what Jaffa means. He's the rookie and he has been assigned to, he's been assigned to Officer Frank Murphy as his, as his mentor. And as you know, this triggers the Frank factor.

The Frank factor.

All right, so Frank is meditating, because he's a Vietnam War vet with PTSD, so he's looking at his watch, and he uses the watch to keep time and do a meditation in order to know that he's sane. And we know this guy's cool, because when he's going out to his helicopter, somebody says, well, let's go ahead and hear quote number four, producer Brad.

Oh, Murph, feel any pressure?

Yeah, about 15 pounds per square inch at sea level.

Oh, what a character, that guy with the... Okay, anyway, and so we're just going to call him Officer Roy Scheider. Roy Scheider meets Daniel Stern. They have a little bit of a meet-cute. They get in the helicopter, they start their night patrol. And during the night patrol...

And we should note, this is just in a normal, off-the-shelf police helicopter.

Yes, no, they're not in Blue Thunder.

We have not heard anything about the mysterious Blue Thunder yet. It's going to be a while before we do.

It's going to be a really long while. And we're learning about the police here. We're learning about these tough hombres.

We're getting the nuts and bolts, exposition, groundwork of just how things work, who these characters are, what their jobs are.

It's just ongoing.

And also a very ham-fisted reflection of racial divide in 1983.

The other thing I would say is, we do meet... For me, the only real highlight in this character in this movie is you get to see Warren Oates say a lot of Warren Oates-ish things, you know? Like, I have a feeling that they brought in the guy who wrote the dialogue for The Colonel in War Games to just polish up Warren Oates. So, we'll quote him. He's a really fun actor. He's somebody from, like... He feels like he's from a bygone era. And it's just nice to see him in this role.

I don't presume you made it till the end of the credits, but he earns a dedication at the end of the credits because...

He died.

I believe he passed away, and I think this was his last film.

He died in April of 82.

Oh, this movie killed him.

And so, the film is dedicated for Warren Oates with love for all the joy you gave us. And he does give us joy in this film.

I think the most joy in this that we get in this film. So, our two characters are in a helicopter, and they're doing their patrol, and they stop by the Circus Liquor, which is also known from Clueless. It's where Alicia Silverstone is stranded. And it's also like five blocks from where I live. So, yeah, I think really close. So, they're over that, and of course, there's some ethnics, you know, doing some ethnic... Every criminal in this movie is, shall we say, brown, right, Paul?

So, let me just recap my notes on this, because it's startling. So, at the outset of the film, everybody we meet, LAPD, they're all white. We get in the air, they start their surveillance patrol at night in, you know, the scary expanse that is Burbank. And first Jaffo spots a black man who he thinks is doing a drug deal, and then Murphy Roy Shetter stops him and says, no, no, no, he's one of ours. It's an undercover job. So, it's like, okay, check. Then there's the robbery, an armed robbery, not at the circus, the convenience store, where we hear over the radio, police radio. It is a Negro.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

Now, to the film's marginal credit, but also complex problematicism.

So complex, so problematic.

They then have him arrested by a black cop.

Uh, it's it's, you know, this is one of the things where like they're supposed this is like the first case. So you know what the helicopters can do and all of that, right?

Yeah.

So so, you know, this is the part where they they put the spotlight on the on the robbers so the cops can find him. The cops come out and they're carrying like shotgun. They have all the ordinance in the world. I mean, I'm shocked. I'm carrying a minigun.

They respond with remarkable, instantaneously remarkable.

So yeah, so so quickly.

Yeah, it's like magic. It's like crime happens and they just magically appear.

Yeah. And also, yeah, because that's what LA is like. And also at one point, there's another guy who's coming in to get the cops. The cops don't see him. So we dust them, which means we get the helicopter really low over this over this ethnic person's warm and there's dust all over the storm. And then they get and then they get caught. And the very nice cop who comes and goes, stay down, son. I don't fucking know what I'm talking about. Anyway, so then after we've seen kind of how helicopter policing works in Los Angeles, Roy Scheider decides that our character of Daniel Stern Jaffa should have his initiation.

Yes, real quick.

Oh, God, no, no, this is important.

They do spot a apparently abandoned vehicle.

Oh, yes.

A Chevy, which will, you know, pay off later. And after they fly by, we reveal one of the creepiest actors known to man who's who's in that vehicle on some kind of stakeout. That's Anthony James, who's playing a character. I don't think we ever hear his name, but he's credited as Grundelius, which I, I.

Grundelius?

I guess. What? Yes.

And I.

Does that does that does that does that trigger the Grundelius factor?

Is that I don't know what it is and I'll play it.

I don't know another but in another humongously problematic moment in this film. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So Jaffa is his first night up. So Roy Scheider. So he insists on the. Let's go to Encino. They go to Encino and they literally hover the chopper in front of the house of this woman who does naked yoga, thus earning the film. It's R rating. It is a kind of really explicit nude yoga scene and they're eavesdropping on her. And they're and they're like, you think she knows we're here? And he's like, well, I think that, you know, they're trying to give themselves a fig leaf of morality. And it is just repugnant, isn't it, Paul?

I'm so angry at this movie at this point.

It's awful.

It is so obscenely gratuitous, not titillating, just purely exploitative. And it just seems like, just like, oh, we need a justification for an R rating. This is the big puzzle of the film to me. Why on earth did they think this film should be an R?

Yes.

As opposed to-

When they really want us for a bunch of dads to take their kids there and buy the toy. That's what this movie, to me, is about, right? Yeah. And yet it's an R and it's got this gratuitous-

It doesn't need to be. Yeah, there's some violence here and there, but the violence is pretty tame. But we get real Cinemax R-rated nude yoga here. This is Blue Thunder. We're not coming to Blue Thunder.

No, for nude yoga, we're coming to Thunder.

We want to see cool helicopter action.

Cool helicopters, yeah. I don't really want to see our characters commit what could be termed a sexual assault by eavesdropping on a naked woman also.

Yes. It's just like-

It makes them kind of- I hate them. I hate them for this.

They're kind of pervs. It's horrible. It's just-

And it's not the only time they do this in the movie. It's another part of the movie.

It's horrible.

Okay. So, okay.

We hate this. Okay. So then- Oh, and my note here is I'm getting SeaQuest flashbacks. So I just want to say two things. One of them is, this is a movie that's what- The only thing that's interesting to me in this movie, to be honest with you, is that it is a movie with a split personality. It is a movie released in 83 that wants to be a movie made in 1976. It wants to be the parallax view of helicopters. Part of it does.

Part of it does.

It's a war with itself, like Jekyll and Hyde or Frick and Frack, Peanut Butter and Jelly. Well, maybe not Peanut Butter and Jelly because they go so well together. But it's like part of this movie wants to be like a paranoid thriller and then part of it wants to be like a popcorn action movie and none of it works.

No.

None of it.

It is a failure of committing to a particular tone, with the ability to execute it. And because there is a plausibly great version of Blue Thunder. I think not dissimilar.

It's called Airwolf.

It is. Well, I mean, there are some other fundamental differences.

Yes, I know.

But I look at this. Blue Thunder is to Summer of 83 as Firefox is to Summer of 82. Right.

That's exactly what I thought. And I'm worried because I want the podcast to be funny and entertaining, but the movie is not like we're going to have fun talking about. Have you had any fun discussing this?

It has spasms of entertainment that I'm excited to get to. But the missed opportunities are painful to me because this could be really cool. The other end of the spectrum, as you're describing, if we're doing 70s Parallax View, I feel like there are little hints of this film forecasting reaching into the future toward RoboCop.

Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Except RoboCop had a real conscience and a message.

And a vision and an artist behind it and really committed. This film, its brain has not evolved to the grandeur of Paul Verhoeven's Madness in Full Bloom.

But I think the reason why we're having this conversation is that a lead, not lead, but a very heavily featured character in this film is Los Angeles anchorman Mario Machado, who also plays the anchorman in RoboCop. And it's really weird because in RoboCop he plays this obviously corrupt apparatchik of the ideological state apparatus. But in this movie, if you get the tape to Mario Machado, you're going to be okay. There will be justice, you know? And that's the part that I find so fascinating is like how these newscasters are already sort of... Anyway, it's sort of...

He's like Edward R. Murrow in this, treated with this reverence of authority of truth.

Oh, get this tape to Machado. He'll get...

In the room, in the control room when they're shooting the new scene in the beginning, John Badham is doing Camaro as the director in the far right of the scene. But the guy punching the buttons is a man named Bob Bowen. And I worked with him for almost 20 years in Judge Judy and Judge Joe. He is a technical director doing that same thing. And we always called him Gentleman Bob because he always wore a jacket and a tie. He has this low, soothing voice. And that's exactly what he did in this film.

Well, that's really interesting, producer Brad, because I love that you brought that up because when you and I first moved to Los Angeles in what?

90?

91.

91. You got a couple of PA jobs and then you went to work on Judge Judy and then you met this person, right? And I was working, in 93 I got my job at NBC and then I was working on Sequest and like.

I wanted to circle us back to Sequest because the audience deserves this anecdote.

Well, it's interesting. It's like, you know, like we're now finally getting to the point where people in these movies might be people we met in our adult lives, you know? And it's so weird to see Roy. For me, it's weird to see Roy Scheider. Sequest is my first writing credits, the first job I had. And I met Roy Scheider on the set and, you know, he was not very nice. He was actually really grumpy all the time. So I think for me, part of I think for me, part of the reason why I couldn't identify so much with this movie is that I have this memory of, you know, and look, I'm not saying Roy Scheider was wrong to be grumpy because Sequest was a shit show, you know, and I think that he felt that he, like, he was sort of going like, dude, I was in All That Jazz, what am I doing here, you know?

And freaking Jaws.

Well, yes, there's that too. You know, but it then became, it sort of gets hard for me to identify with him and like him as a character. Also because I feel like Roy Scheider, he's a very good actor, you know, like if you see like All That Jazz, obviously incredible performance, but he's also very much Roy Scheider. You know, he doesn't disappear into a role. He is Roy Scheider, you know, and I think that sort of limited his Marquis value to some point, you know, but it also made him a very specific presence and I just, I found him difficult to empathize with. And I don't know if it was because he was mean to me personally.

Yeah. So two things come to mind that may or may not be worth sharing. One is I definitely feel like when Roy Scheider is cool, he is really fricking cool. It is hard to be cooler than Roy Scheider cool. The other thing is...

In Marathon Man and All That Jazz, in Jaws, obviously.

He has a commanding presence and also just this easy way about him of just kind of not giving a fuck. And being dismissive with just a mix of charm and disdain.

As we just heard him say, about 15 pounds per square inch of sea level. He just throws that line... And I think that's the thing Roy Scheider does so well, is literally that, is he throws a lot... And not in a bad way. He'll just throw the line away. He'll just kind of... Like he's just weary, too weary to give it a... And that actually really works in his favor, and I think that is what ultimately makes him cool, right?

Yeah, he has this kind of intellectual arrogance, but it's self-assured. It's not aggressive, it's sort of charming and relaxed. Like he's... Yeah, he's kind of light on his feet when it comes to deploying it, which I appreciate. And when he finds his groove, like I think it's really compelling. Yeah. The other thing that I feel obliged to share is that to this day, as it has been for many years now, Javi's ringtone on my phone is still the Sequest theme.

Can you hum it? I don't remember it. The first, the John Devney one from the first season of the Russell and Dufferin series. Of course, it's great. It's great.

It's great.

John Devney is awesome. It's funny, you can tell what we think about Blue Thunder because we haven't spoken about it.

Because we're digressing about Sequest.

I don't even want to know.

While our characters are looking at Naked Yoga Woman.

But then there's a crime.

Yes, there's a crime. What's interesting is this woman is getting out of her car. These two guys set on her.

They're attacking her at her gated home. It is a black woman, it bears mentioning. She's carrying a briefcase.

It's where that Chevy was that they saw from above.

Exactly.

But the interesting thing here is that the... Not interesting, it's stupid and weird and awful. But the call they get is, there's a rape in progress. I'm like, how do you know that?

What's happening?

The helicopter goes over there. Do they capture the people?

They shoot them. They kill them, they shoot them both. And then she gets shot as well. But then during this shootout, and as one of the assailants is trying to make an escape, we get, a la Firefox, a PTSD flashback moment of our lead hero pilot character Roy Scheider to a Vietnam moment. And we will get this recurringly.

And the Vietnam moment, and it is one moment where he's piloting a chopper and an unseen soldier is throwing a Vietnamese civilian out the door.

Yes, to his death.

And that really upsets Roy Scheider, and that's bad. Our characters are in trouble.

Yes, back at police headquarters.

Yeah, but because they were too busy looking at the naked yoga woman, and they didn't make it to the raping process in time, and it resulted in a bloodbath. And of course, this is the part where Warren Oates does one of many, many of what I call, the commissioner's been on my ass all day, kind of monologues, right? It's the usual, you know, a police captain in the Ugly Blazer, and he says the following, please.

Father, sir, when I'm talking to you, live and good, I'll be looking at you.

Well, I just wanted to say, sir, that that was my fault. I talked Murphy into taking us there.

You're supposed to be stupid, son. Don't abuse the privilege. You think I haven't heard about that silly twit out there and has seen all that? Christ sakes. I had 20 years in this outfit when your idea of a big time was sitting in front of the TV tube, watching Bugs Bunny and knowing on your fudgesicle.

All right.

Ladies and gentlemen, Warren Oates.

Delivering the most stock monologue ever for a police commissioner, except for the one he does later in the movie.

He has another one in mere moments. That's great. That we may get to.

You know what? Let's just play because honestly, this is the only entertainment in this film is hearing Warren Oates deliver stock monologues. This is Joy.

Yes, because then after he choose out Jaffo, sends him away, he tells Murphy to stay back because it turns out that a new psych reevaluation has been ordered on Murphy for what we know as PTSD. Murphy's not too pleased, but this is what Braddock says.

But there's a bright side to this and a moral. I think morals are good for you. I love morals and the moral of the story is, if you're walking on eggs, don't hop.

This is just like all the Barry Corbin dialogue they cut from War Games just wound up in this movie.

I want to see a movie, either like a road trip movie or something with Barry Corbin and Warren Oates in their respective characters, like on vacation and going fishing.

You need to throw in the angry commissioner from Dirty Harry and the angry commissioner from Lethal Weapon. The kind of guys who say things like, this kind of shit ain't gonna get you a hero jacket.

Yeah, but I think these two in particular are underappreciated in the sort of sub-genre specificity of their particular roles that they serve and serve so wonderfully well that I just want to keep going back to that well and drink. Because what a fountain of delight.

I would love to have watched this movie with Warren Oates doing a mystery science theater commentary on it. Or, I would love to have sat at a restaurant and have Warren Oates tell me the story of this movie rather than watching this film. From this moment, there follows a lengthy... Okay, so Roy Scheider has been grounded. He gets in his Camaro and he drives it really fast. Oh God, Paul, please, please. Okay, what?

A critical piece of exposition that we are given, which is that the victim of the crime was a city commissioner who was head of a task force on violent crime. So, the plot...

The plot thins.

Yes. And she's in critical condition and... Yeah, not looking good. But yes, Murphy throws off... What car does he drive, Javi?

A bitch in Camaro.

No, God damn it.

No, what does he drive?

A fucking Trans Am. How do you mix up a Camaro for a Trans Am, you heathen? You philistine.

Behold the field where I grow my fucks.

It's a goddamn Pontiac Trans Am!

Well, no, but MacDowell drives a Camaro, right?

No, no, no. He drives a Corvette, a fucking Corvette.

What happened, Javi?

Is it GM versus GM? I don't know.

Oh my God. I thought you were my friend.

What happened is, this movie happened, yes, producing red.

Not only could you not recognize it by sight, but in the movie, they described both cars.

Yes.

You didn't like this film, did you?

I hated this movie so much. And the experience of it was so tedious because it was like, literally you're just watching, like, like again, and he gets in his car, he's been grounded, and he drives his car really fast in the parking structure.

And he slaloms through the parking garage. Oh, for god's sake.

Oh, for shit's sake, okay, yes, yes, yes.

Through orange-like cones.

Yeah, it's, yeah, it's-

To his time here on his stopwatch, it's like his former self-care.

He has a tough ombre. Yeah, no, he's a tough ombre having tough ombre, a tough ombre moment. And then he goes through his messy house where there's a hundred messages from his girlfriend, who's his ex-girlfriend but not, Candy Clark from, she was an American Graffiti, right?

I believe so, yes, yes.

Who plays Kate?

Yeah, who plays, yeah. His girlfriend comes in and then she finally comes in with her kid but he like pulls a gun on her because it's three in the morning.

Yes.

And because she's here to get her blender at three in the morning. But it's just supposed to establish that he's difficult but he still loves her, she loves him, she's got a kid, he's good with the kid, whatever. I don't fucking, but the highlight-

I find this scene kind of charming. It is unnecessarily confusing for too much of it.

And so long, and so long.

It is longer than it needs to be. But yes, apparently he is not replying to her messages.

Yeah.

And she is trying to be proactive, but clearly this is someone who makes questionable choices by showing up with her kid at 3 AM. And then, yeah, with the excuse of the blender. And then she also discovers, tell me this did not touch your heart in some small way. She finds this hidden forgotten-

Oh, he caught her in the cupboard. She's looking for the blender in the cupboard. There's this tablecloth that he bought for her.

The lace tablecloth that she wants to borrow. And she says, no, he says, you can't borrow it because it was a gift I got for you.

It's already yours. I bought it before they broke up. But because I'm a troubled, tough ombre with man pain, he goes, I thought I gave it to you already because he's tough ombre, man pain.

Yes, and to win, they kiss under the lace tablecloth. It's kind of lovely. And she's like, Frank, we got to get serious. And then she ticks off. The scene is mixed, but it's kind of good.

I think there's it's the same director as War Games. We talked about how in War Games, you know, the scenes are a little longer and you get to live with the characters and all that. And this is an example of it not working so well, I think. But there are highlights. I will agree with you. The tablecloth is a nice highlight of the scene. And Candy Clark is so winning and adorable and so just normal looking in this movie, you know, like she looks like a human being.

She's not the typical sort of movie girlfriend, which is pretty great because I feel like her character is in another movie that has somehow collided or intersected with this movie and she's kind of jumped movies and found herself in this movie. But she just kind of wants to be in her own movie, which is a relationship rom-com with Roy Scheider and her kid and but this all this other crap keeps like and that movie ends with Roy Scheider stealing Blue Thunder and they head off to Mexico together with the kids to get married.

Yeah, they got all my god. Anyway, I don't know what happens next, but all I know is then there's another. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, please. No, no, don't take me back. I don't want to. OK, what?

We get your favorite newscaster who reports that Mario Machado shows up to tell us that McNeeley has died.

Yes. And also there's unrest going because of illegals. Blaming the illegals for the unrest is because they have to plant that civil unrest is happening in the Browner parts of LA.

Yes.

And it's because of illegal.

And also Murphy goes back to the crime scene because he's puzzled. Something doesn't seem right to him and he finds a little scrap of torn paper he can't make out that has some mysteriously exotic writing on it.

Like weirdly this attack was called in and they said it was a rape in progress. And Warren Oates says it's a rape in progress. And they're like, don't call it a murder. It's a rape. Shut up. Don't investigate. Case closed. But he finds his piece of paper and then his beeper goes off.

Yes. Beepers.

Yeah. He's got to get back. And then we get their feds there. What are the feds doing there, Javi?

Well, here's the thing. When War Notes refers to us, we got a hot mince pie under each arm.

What the fuck that means.

So you've got your... So again, just like in War Games, two feds, two white men in suits show up and they want to... They're recruiting Roy Scheider to be a pilot in a special program that's coming up. And they drive to what I assume is the Mojave Desert, where there's a whole sort of stands.

To Pinkville. The Weapons Evaluation Center at Pinkville. And yeah, there is a special detail because they're preparing for the impending Los Angeles Olympics in 1984.

By the way, are we preparing for the impending Los Angeles Olympics in 2026 or something like that? 28.

Right.

28. Okay, so we're literally living this movie right now. There's civil unrest as we prepare for the Olympics. So it's just insane. And the government's blaming brown people. So it's really we're living in this film without the fun hardware.

And we're told in a moment that feels to me, and I don't mean to hijack the plot, but at this point, I just I don't want to miss. We're told in what feels like a too soon moment, we don't want any Munich massacres here.

Oh, my God. Yeah.

It's very portes.

Yeah, very portes. There's a lot in this movie that's not again, because it's trying to be a serious 70s thriller with serious 70s early references, but it doesn't come together. I think I'm going to bet that all of that stuff is Dan O'Bannon in his Paranoid. The first draft of the movie is just a dark Paranoid movie, and wherever the other guy came in, unlike War Games where John Badham came in and said, where's the fun? And they put the fun in it into what was a Paranoid thriller. He went into this Paranoid thriller, put the fun in it, and the fun don't belong in this thriller, I think.

Yeah, some of it is just feels unintentionally silly.

It's a deeply confused movie.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, so now we get the big demo showcase.

Blue Thunder shows up, like literally they talk about it, and Blue Thunder, first we see it etched against a rising sun in this wonderful shot, you know, as it's coming toward us.

Arguably the best shot of the film. It's an iconic shot.

And then we get quote number five, the first description we hear of this helicopter.

We'll ship storm in anybody's life.

Okay, so this is the thing, right? This movie wants us to be afraid of Blue Thunder as a piece of equipment that will violate our civil rights, but it also wants us to love the helicopter as a boy toy. So we're literally looking at this helicopter, and it's got the Vulcan gun, shoots 40,000 rounds of minutes, all that. To me, that's all terrifying. But the movie is playing it to us like, go buy this toy, right?

You know, you've struck upon a very critical flaw in the architecture of this film from a conceptual level. That I don't think occurred to anybody as this inherent dichotomy. Which is, you have this movie called Blue Thunder, like, it's, oh, and you're showing this thing like it's super cool. It's a nightmare of doom.

Yes, yes.

It's a fascist super weapon.

And it's not really something that, in any context, as we see in our, as I think Roy Scheider's character determines by the end, can really be trusted in anyone's hands to do anything good. That there's no good that can come from Blue Thunder.

I would not give the LAPD a Vulcan gun that can fire 4,000 pounds a minute, no.

He even comments early in the scene that he says, I thought it was illegal to arm police helicopters. Yeah, yeah, yes, that's, yeah, this is insane. This is completely insane.

And then we get, that leads me to, yeah, go ahead.

Well, I was just going to say, and it is a sci-fi trope, and it again foreshadows Robocop later, where we get the technology demonstration of the superior solution to all of our problems that's flawless and can identify hostiles from civilians.

Yeah, it's shooting the red dummies instead of the white dummies.

Perfect accuracy, and it is just a rampage of indiscriminate carnage.

This is the part where the movie is trying to convince us that this helicopter is a good thing because it can, well, let's say, clip number six, producer Brad, if you please.

You see, in a riot situation, we just want to get the bad guys and protect the innocents.

So the helicopter proceeds to only shoot the bad guys and protect the innocent, right?

Yeah, but there was another quote that I think is maybe more resonant right now.

Which one, the Insurrection one?

Yes, yes. About, so what is this thing for?

Of course, with that kind of firepower, it wouldn't be used unless our worst-case scenario came to pass like armed insurrection.

Huh.

Wow, that hurts.

Wow, that hurts.

On June 9th, 2025, this is in Los Angeles. I don't want to hear this shit. Because we literally are being told that peaceful protests are armed insurrection and this is insane.

Yeah. At this point, I had to jump in my time machine and I don't presume that producer Brad colored outside the lines to pull this quote for me because I can read it.

I have it.

It called to mind a timeless, priceless quote from the great commander Adama from Battlestar Galactica.

There's a reason why you separate military and the police. One fights the enemy of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.

Mm-hmm. Yep.

And here we are.

And here we are. So, thank you for playing that, Paul. That actually, it explains everything I'm feeling right now in an extraordinary way. Anyway, look, we have a big chopper demonstration, and then we meet our villain, who is Malcolm McDowell.

Well, this is an important point. So, the demonstration is not going quite according to plan, but one of the feds says, Oh, one civilian dead for every ten terrorists. That's an acceptable ratio.

To which Roshada replies, unless you're the civilian.

Yes.

Yes, it's insane. But then, yes, we get the great reveal, because who in all of creation could possibly emerge as the appropriately iconic pilot of this dragon of destruction that is Blue Thunder, but...

But, Malcolm McDowell.

And he's blonde and he's pissed.

By the way, he looks so young.

He looks real young.

He looks so... I mean, Roy Scheider looks like Roy... Roy Scheider was basically 47 for 50 years, you know? But like, Malcolm McDowell looks like a boy. It's kind of amazing. And he's chewing the scenery, you know? And he's playing, weirdly, a British colonel for an American army. I don't know. And... But it turns out that he and Roy Scheider were numb.

They have a past.

Yes. And Roy Scheider says, I was going to get him court-martialed. And then Malcolm McDowell says, I was going to get him court-martialed, right? So this is when they meet each other. Can we hear clip number eight just so we can hear the... Just their delightful villain banter. Let's hear it.

Finally made colonel, eh?

You're a nice guy. Nice things happen to you.

I'll try to remember that.

Again, a great Roy Scheider. I'll try to remember that, you know. So they're old enemies. And it turns out they got to work together in this program. And, but meanwhile, Roy Scheider takes the piece of paper he fished off of a tree from the Rape in Progress and gives it to his friend, Montoya. Montoya, yes.

Played by the great Joe Santos.

I don't know Joe Santos well enough.

He's a wonderful character actor who's been in a lot of things that you've seen. Look him up. But I was so happy to see him emerge.

I'm gonna guess he played a lot of friendly Latino sidekicks who got stuff for the white guy. He probably got stuff for the white guy there, yeah.

Yes, yes. But I'm in a reliable, trusty Latino buddy.

And what does Scheider call him?

Tequila breath.

Tequila breath.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm, yeah, mm-hmm.

Yeah, and he needs Montoya because the clue he found at the crime scene is this scrap tattered paper that has some scribblings on it that are far too exotic and mysterious for him, so they must be Spanish. So he only Montoya can decipher these mysterious scribblings of the unknown.

Yes. So then, so then, yeah, my Lord.

So Montoya takes it and he kind of humors him and is like, yeah, I'll get back to you.

I'll get back to you in this. Yeah.

I'll get back to you when the-

Wait, this is going to take a lot of work, a lot of time.

I'll get back to you when the plot kicks in. Don't worry. So then Colonel Cochran is going to check out Roy Scheider's piloting ability. So Cochran is going to fly Blue Thunder, Scheider and Jaffa are going to fly a Bell.

Yes. Meanwhile, Jaffa still does not know what Jaffa means and is still asking, what is this Jaffa ship? Yes.

It's almost like a running gag. So well-executed too.

Only it had a better payoff.

Oh my God. Well, you know what? It actually will get to it. Anyway, so Cochrane is going to check out Roy Scheider's aviation skills. They put Roy Scheider in a bell. Cochrane is going to fly Blue Thunder. They're going to fly around town, but Cochrane sabotages Roy Scheider's helicopter to get him off the program.

This is very devious. He looks like Lucian's a nut or something in Cowling. I may be forgetting or misplacing my memory here. Is this where we get the foreshadowing of him claiming or calling Murphy a liar in Murphy's claim that he once did a 180 loop in a helicopter that Jaffo is like incredulous about and Cochrane is like, oh, that's impossible to do in a helicopter.

This is where we plant the idea that Roy Scheider's mutant ability is that he once looped the loop the helicopter. Helicopters cannot go upside down. It's against the laws of aerodynamics. Scheider says he did it and Cochrane is like, no helicopter can do that. We're like, wow, what could this possibly mean for the later? Yeah.

That couldn't possibly be planting a seed.

Yeah. No, not at all. Anyway, the flight with Cochrane goes horribly wrong. Because of the sabotage, Roy Scheider crashes the helicopter into a construction site.

Somewhere in the Watts area, we're told.

So the construction workers run to the helicopter, like they're going to tear it apart like a gazelle that's been felled in the middle of the jungle, and all the lions are coming at it, and they're ripping the helicopter apart. You don't know if they're trying to rescue them or help them. It's a little both. They rescue them, but then they yell at them about ruining the construction site. It's fucked up. I don't even know what's happening there. And yeah, so anyway.

Then we see the Corvette. Then we're back at HQ and Cochrane. Then Tauntz Roy Scheider, Malcolm Dowd, Tauntz Roy Scheider in the Corvette. And Scheider tells them to back off. And we get yet another.

And then we go back to Mario Machado.

Well, we get yet another of one of McDowell's, I would say too many see you laters.

Yes, his catchphrase. His catchphrase is he does finger guns and goes, catch you later. Catch you later.

How can I mess that up?

So Cochran starts kind of taunting Roy Scheider. Roy Scheider tells him to back off. Cochran's, are you threatening me? And Roy Scheider's, no, I'm telling you to back off. Very manly. And then Cochran writes his corvette and he does a whole fucking, you know, this is how I slal him in the garage when I have man pain, Roy Scheider. I don't fucking know. Anyway, we find out that from Mario Machado, who apparently, he should be called Mario the Plot Man, because basically inside this movie he's plot, they just cut to Mario Machado. He explains that there's a funeral for the dead congresswoman or councilwoman or whatever the fuck she was.

Who was a vocal critic of the police. Yes.

And then, but because of it, there are riots in brown places in Los Angeles. The brown people are getting restless. So, you know, we just, this is under this undergoing subtle background current of, you know, the brown people. Yes. There's something, some of these, somebody staring up the brown people. We need to, we got a problem here.

Javi, I hate to do this to you. You have skipped over two of the most critical moments of the film.

Oh, please go on.

We get a little mini side quest adventure with Murphy and Kate and the kid going for a train ride in a park, but it demonstrates Kate's ability, dare I say, inclination, to U-turn into one way traffic and drive against traffic in a feat of dexterous daring-do that he comments on.

Could there possibly be a payoff to him telling her she drives dangerously and she goes into a one way street expertly?

And just when we think that, oh, maybe Murphy is taking the time to reinvest in this and repair this relationship with Kate, who seems lovely and charming, if not, let's say reckless as a driver, especially with a kid in her car. It turns out he's also scheduled a rendezvous at the park with Montoya, who has deciphered parts of the clue.

Just parts, because Spanish is hard, and he's a Spanish person.

And there are two critical bits that he's gleaned from the mysterious Spanish What I love about this is that the word, he goes, well, the only word that's not in Spanish is this one, T-H-O-R, Thor, do you know what that is?

And Shider's like, no. I'm like, who didn't know Thor? Like, this is the part, okay, anyway, please go on.

But the other one, the phrase, which I think has been underused, there's untappable potential in this as a title for an album, a show, a movie, any number of things.

A better movie than this one, something like that?

Strangers in the Barrio.

Wow.

Strangers in the Barrio. Yeah.

Yes.

So, wow. I mean, it's just amazing. I can't even get into it. Okay. So anyway. And then, so then, Frank goes back with Candy Clark to her house. She thinks he's run off. She finds out he's, in fact, read her boy to sleep. But as he's dreaming, he's also having a Vietnam flashback. We cut back to an unseen helicopter guy in Vietnam with Roy Scheider. We never see him, but he's the guy throwing the innocent civilian out the helicopter window. Paul, what a mystery. Imagine the mystery contained. Who could possibly be that mysterious helicopter officer who's doing a horrible war crime?

If only the depths of Murphy's psyche were not so horribly shattered. If only there was a missing shard, like of The Dark Crystal, that we could find and restore to his memory to unlock this puzzle that taunts us and torments him and he can't even get a good night's sleep.

It's horrible.

It's horrible. Anyway, back at HQ now, they are getting their briefing, another briefing about Blue Thunder showing us and them how things work. I geek out at this. I like it's techy geeky stuff. So it's like, but a little goes a long way.

Now we do get the great Pat McNamara, who's another one of these awesome character actors doing the tech briefing, you know, and showing us how the helmet works. And so Blue Thunder is tricked out with a triple-eumatic tape machine.

Yes.

Which is literally like this old VHS. Three quarter inch.

Three quarter inch. Three quarter inch.

So it's just it's just insane.

But it's important critical foreshadowing. Yes, it is. No matter how clumsy it is, as all the foreshadowing in this film tends to be, on how complicated it is to erase the tapes, which no matter what the film is telling us, it's not complicated. You just put a big fucking electromagnet on the tape and you'll erase it. It doesn't care. Magnets don't care. Tape doesn't care.

But these tapes are in special cases that you can, for some reason, take it out of the case.

It doesn't matter. It doesn't make sense. This pisses me off. It's just dumb.

It's basically a McGuffin so that when they have the tape, they're sort of a clock on the tape that they can anyway.

Yes.

You know, so and then they also shows how the helmet moves with its head. So anyway, so that all happens.

I don't think we have this quote, but I just, you know, because Little Blossoms of Joy or Few and Far Between, we do get another lovely Braddockism from Warren Oates when on his way out of the briefing and scene, Braddock has heard Murphy threaten Cochran and he's like, no, that's some kind of bullshit.

I just told him to back off.

Yes, but Braddock then tells him, if you want my opinion, the feds are after your ass. Right. And he delivers it in ways far beyond my abilities. But it's just another little grace note.

So Roy Scheider and Daniel Stern get their first flight on Blue Thunder. And what do they do? Of course, they use the high-tech surveillance equipment to look down a woman's cleavage who is organizing a hooker. She's trying to get a John. They're negotiating. They use the microphone to listen to it. And Daniel Stern is delighted by being able to literally zoom onto her cleavage. And that's just another thing that makes us love our heroes.

I don't want to dwell on this longer than it deserves, and it doesn't deserve any attention at all. It is, as producer Brad capably foreshadowed for us, remarkably similar in parallel to the Bond Q scene. Yes. But also, I'm reminded that unlike Octopussy, despite its provocative name, we're watching an R-rated movie here.

Yes.

And we've already established that the film is willing to go all the way R. It inexplicably, in the scene, dials down to PG, puerile adolescence.

Yes.

Yeah. For no re— It's just so dumb. But you know what? It's so dumb.

And the characters are so— Yes, producer Brad.

It actually makes Octopussy look worse because Daniel Stern, though he's 23, he looks 18. He's like— Yes. His cheeks are very, you know, chubby and young. And he's like an adolescent looking at boobs. Cut to Octopussy, it's a 55-year-old man doing the same thing.

And yet— Wait, Roger Moore is my age in Octopussy?

Yeah.

Oh, that's— I'm not 55.

Well, that's another conversation.

Yeah, it's another conversation. Keep going.

But and yet, we are informed previously that Jaffo is a Navy veteran. He has served in the military. The other thing that I found myself having a strange Mandela effect when watching this film and even remembering the film prior, I have moments where I'm just like, why isn't Judge Reinhold Jaffo?

Well, it's funny. When you said— Am I the only one thinking that? No, no. When you said Judge Reinhold did the cameo in War Games?

Yeah.

In my head, it was because he did this movie.

Yeah.

But he did it. He didn't do it.

No, it's Daniel Stern. But it feels like it could be and maybe should be Judge Reinhold. No offense to Daniel Stern, who's fine in the role. But it feels like— I don't know. It kind of feels like— Anyway, maybe I'm crazy, but this movie is doing things to my brain. But yes, the other thing that's highly questionable here, and again, this movie shows— throws sense out the window any chance it gets. This is the first time these civilians who are no longer in the military, former military, but still civilian police pilots, have been entrusted with this high-tech singular prototype military helicopter, and they take their first test flight at night.

That is wildly irresponsible and risky.

How did they explain it, Producer Brad?

Cochran says to Roy Scheider, think you can fly it? And Scheider says, you can.

That does not explain why any of the principles in positions of authority would approve this from happening. There's no way they would, it doesn't matter. But it just, it's just like, it's just, I feel like at this point, the film is looking for opportunities to vex me in the most just tedious of ways.

Well, my big note in the sequence was, tedium. But here's what happened because what do Frank and Jaffo do after this? They go and eavesdrop on another sex act. Yes. There's a highway patrol guy that Frank knows who's parked outside of a house, and he's getting a quickie from this woman. Not only do they eavesdrop on it, they put it on the loudspeaker, they put it on the helicopter PA to humiliate the guy. What is this movie? Why is this happening? It's like in the middle of Firefox, and Eastwood did not stop to bust some KGB guy having sex. It's weird.

And yet again, we're watching an R-rated movie, and the most titillating thing we get are these moans of audio and a highly pixelated thermograph. I'm like, are you kidding me? Why are you even bothering to be an R-rated? This film is at war with itself.

Give us the goods.

I don't want the goods. I'm just like, commit to what movie you're making. Oh, this just makes me mad.

But it's not an interesting war with itself. Anyway, however, here's what happens. Here's what happens.

We get an important breakthrough.

Then the plot kicks in. Shia is flying the helicopter back to base, but he notices Malcolm McDowell and some of the other suspicious feds leaving the base. So what?

No. That is important, but there's something else before there that happens that seems like a really important revelation.

Oh, does it? What is it?

And then amounts to absolutely nothing. So we are told that this is not just a flying death machine.

Oh, it has the Internet in it.

But it is a flying supercomputer with access to every database on Earth. And so it occurs to them, why don't we look ourselves up? And it turns out Murphy's file is mysteriously under repair.

Yeah, Frank has no file.

This is a set up with no payoff.

No payoff. The payoff should be Frank is secretly CIA, Frank is a mole, Frank's identity has been erased.

They're going to do something. Dare I say, this scene, it opens up this chasm that demands to be filled with entertainment. Such as, let's say, some certain Frank factor.

The Frank factor.

His name is Frank, and his spouse is missing.

You guys are really stretching.

I'm trying, I'm trying.

As we said, this movie fills a much needed void.

So, again, another beat of wild plot implausibility. So, they're returning to base. They've done their demo lap and prurient.

They've sexually assaulted enough people with their helicopters.

They're breaking the law with this technology repeatedly. As before they've even landed and returned Blue Thunder to the care of the feds, in inexplicable arrogance, Malcolm McDowell's character takes off in his Corvette.

In the middle of the night, he's got some sort of very important...

Very conspicuously raising the suspicion of Murphy, who says, we're not going to go back to HQ just yet. We're going to tail him.

Let's tail him. So they tail him to a federal building where all of the bad guys have gathered to explain Thor. They basically explain that they... Well, what happened?

What happened? What happened?

What happened? What did I do?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

And what happens in root?

I don't know.

They... This is actually kind of almost good. They look up another file, but it's Cochrane's file. But they have to like... It's hard to get in and they have to try, like, with his rank and different things and different ways to puzzle their way in to get his file. And what does it say about Cochrane? I don't know.

I can't remember. I watched this movie an hour ago and I'm already like...

Cochrane is revealed to currently be on special assignment with Project Thor, which stands for Tactical, Helicopter, Offensive, Response, to quell disorder.

Yes, to murder brown people from the skies.

And this, but then accessing the file then raises alarms that of course there's no... Doesn't seem to be prepared for. But yes, this is all happening as they're tailing Cochrane to this federal building.

And Roy Scheider is pretending that he can't hear the call back to base.

Yeah, because they're trying to call him back.

The helicopter goes into whisper mode and they're using their thermal camera where every bigwig in the city is in the federal building to discuss the botched murder of the councilwoman.

Yes, which was an assassination plot.

She knew about Thor and she knew about our plan to stir up the brown people so we can bring in helicopters to kill them.

Again, this meeting is full of evil white guys.

Evil white guys. And of course, they talk about how the helicot was. Basically, the plot of the movie is this congresswoman was assassinated in order to stop her from revealing that this group of federal officers and fanatics from the military want to stir up shit in Los Angeles before the Olympics so that there's a big riot like the Watts riots and they can bring in a fleet of blue thunders to kill everyone.

Now, here's my follow-up question to that.

Do go on.

To what end?

Exactly. Exactly. I think they want to use the money to buy Fabergé eggs. I don't know.

I don't know. Again, there seems to be a crucial detail missing here, which is, okay, is it some kind of real estate, swindle deal, throw back to Chinatown, where it's like, oh, we're gonna clean out Watts and all these in a fever dream worthy of an Uber Robert Moses, and we're gonna clear out these communities of color for white redevelopment under the shadow of the Olympics? Defense? Who knows? There's a defense contract angle there to justify, oh, we want to deploy these all over and make a lot of money.

Maybe they're just fascists. Maybe they're just fascists.

Maybe they're just white nationalists. Yeah, fascists. But it's painfully unclear and it's hard to care.

Yes, it is. As you can tell from my already having forgotten key details of this film. So anyway, so Blue Thunder, so the only cool moment in the movie that happens. So Blue Thunder is on whisper mode, right? And Malcolm McDowell with this, Malcolm McDowell like understanding of avionics or whatever, realizes there's someone at the window. And you see his thermograph go toward the window and he opens the curtain. And then there's, he sees Blue Thunder and him and Roy Scheider lock eyes like, like, like, like it like shit's about to go down, you know? And Blue Thunder goes away. Now Malcolm McDowell knows Roy Scheider is onto him. They also know that the helicopter has these tapes. Roy Scheider and Daniel Stern hightail it back to headquarters. Daniel Stern gets the tape out of, gets the large, eumatic tape out of Blue Thunder while Roy Scheider is getting his, his ass chewed out by a... Oh, here, I think this is quote 11, right? Producer Brad, can you give us quote 11 so we know what's happened while we've hijacked the helicopter to go track the bad guys and accidentally hear the entirety of their plan?

Well, Frank, did you have a nice flight?

I enjoyed it. Just wish you could have been there.

Well, I hope so, because it's going to be your last one for a while. No, you listen, Frank, that's the way it's got to be from now on. Me captain, you cop, me talk, you listen. If you notice, I don't have an ass when I get up out of this chair. It's because the old man just shoot it off just like that.

I mean, that's great.

Can I just say, again, I perpetually have too many things to do. I know neither of you can relate to this at all. But in my brief moments of reverie, before I slip into unconsciousness in bed at night.

Or while watching this movie.

My imagination sometimes waxes rhapsodic of if I had more time, and maybe at some point I will or will enlist somebody to assist. I feel like almost every other thing that Warren Oates says in this film could and should be an official Multiplex Overthruster bumper sticker. Agreed. They're so great and quote worthy. If you know, you know.

I don't even know what quote number nine is attached to, but I want to hear it. Brad, producer Brad, could you give a quote number? Because I think this fits in what you just said, Paul. Let's hear it.

Captain Raddick, I'm going to hold you personally responsible for that man's behavior. Dr. Haycock strongly recommended you be grounded.

For your information, Mr. Eisman, there are no paranoid schizophrenics on active duty here.

You know, he checks his sanity with his wristwatch.

What do you check yours with? A dipstick?

I think that's because Roy Scheider flew off or because he took off or something. I don't even know. Anyway, the point being...

I want to put a pin on this for the second annual Maltese, Warren Oates, front runner for best slash most, I don't know what you would call it, most quotable character of the summer.

Most quotable, harried authority figure. But I mean, he's gonna have Barry Corbin on his ass for that, you know? He might not have an ass, because Barry Corbin might shoot off for him.

This is true. So, but here's the thing, here's the thing that's confusing, unnecessarily confusing, except that then the plot demands it be confusing for the reveal later, which really frustrates me. But so they would turn to base. And now the plot just goes into high gear. The plot goes into high gear. Immediately, as we've heard in this clip, Murphy has gone to Braddock's office to basically tell him what he's just seen, but there's a Fed there who's in cahoots with all this, so he knows he can't speak openly about it. We have no idea where Jaffa is until we then cut to, he went home? And he has the top secret tape.

He went grocery shopping, then home.

Yes, he went grocery shopping home, but what he has, this bombshell evidence.

Why is he not going to Mario Machado, Paladin of Journalistic Integrity Mario Machado?

Well, it makes no sense except that the plot demands he goes home because that's where creepy Balduci or whatever his name is, is on stakeout. Galdonius, Maximus, or Gladiator, I don't fucking know.

Grandelius.

Grandelius.

Grandiloquent. We need to get that on a shirt or a bumper sticker. And then there are more bad guys waiting in his apartment to beat the shit out of him and torture him and say, we don't want it to hurt you, we want the tape. And then to prove how serious they are, they break one of his fingers. And I'm like, Jaffa, like, well, I don't know. And I'm still thinking it's Judge Rydell they're hurting.

Yeah, this is, well, yeah, this is the sacrificial lamb scene where you find out where the sidekick gets killed in order to show that the bad guy means business. The only nice thing about the scene is that Jaffa is not Hispanic, because in any other movie, Jaffa would be the lovable Hispanic sidekick.

He would get killed.

This is 83, so he probably wouldn't be black yet. They probably wouldn't have him be black because the black men in this movie have been promoted to military commanders and stuff like that. So I'm just happy that it's a white sidekick getting killed. Not because I hate white people, but just because it's just a relief.

Yeah. But that is a dilemma. It's like, do you want more Latino representation, but then if it costs at a tropy problematic representation of the Latino sidekick who dies? This is a real problem.

Lest we forget, later on in this movie, Roy Scheider shoots his own Latino sidekick.

We're going to get to that. But Jafo does not die in his apartment by torture. No, he actually outwits his captors, escapes, and we think he has a chance. He's on the run, but then is pursued by irony of ironies. The abandoned Chevy that they overlooked, which was the stakeout and the staking out him is the, what's his name again? Grandiolosa?

Grandelius, which is a Swedish name. It's a real name.

Okay. Sure. Sure.

Because what's wider than a Swedish person, right?

Okay, hold on. He chases him, and I see him passing a 7-Eleven. I'm like, just go in the 7-Eleven. It is an internationally recognized refuge of sanctuary. But no, he does not go in the 7-Eleven. To his doom, he goes to the parking lot, he collides with this woman on this bicycle, kind of sort of tries to save her. Runs his ass over, he runs him over with the non-abandoned Chevy.

It's horrible. Yeah, it's horrible because-

And I'm just like, you can't kill Jaffo, he can't be dead.

It's also just the idea that somehow Jaffo, having missed this car, pre-saged this death, perhaps foreshadowing-

He sealed his fate, he sealed his fate, unknowingly.

If only they'd shot that car.

But it all comes down, as we will soon learn, to what Jaffo stands for, that helps seal his fate, as he tried to break free of that title. But Murphy arrives on the scene and sees Jaffo zipped into the body bag. Which is just like, oh god, this sucks.

It made me care about this movie in no way.

I might be breaking up Judge Reinhold here.

Jaffo is kind of the most fun character in the movie, though he's pure RL in all of that.

He should have been more fun and he should have been less of a pervy peeping Tom. Yes. That aside-

Would Judge Reinhold have sold the perviness more palatably, do you think?

That's an interesting question. I think, going back to Fast Times, we saw that he could be an endearing perv. So I would take that bet. I think he could avail himself admirably in that regard. But then we learn and Murphy learns he has been framed. There is an APB that's put out on him.

Somehow Murphy is believed to have killed Jaffo. It makes no goddamn sense.

So then he is on the run.

And the APB says it's 79 Pontiac Trans Am.

Yes, exactly, exactly. So he can't, he has to abandon, he has to love it.

Producer Brad, how can I atone for this horrible thing?

I'm just like, you can't confuse.

It's okay.

Oh God, it's just, Burt Reynolds is rolling over in his grave right now, Hobbes.

And with the firebird on the hood.

Yes.

I don't, I just, this movie, I mean, it's like literally iconic, like iconic car, but this movie, this movie is so boring and just misbegotten that it just sort of like, I don't know, like I got it on and then suddenly there's like, there's like a piece of paper here on my desk. And I'm like, oh, look at that. It's nice. I mean, I don't know. I like my, oh, my pen.

Does the piece of paper, does the piece of paper say strangers in the barrio?

Yes, actually it does.

Did you see that?

Like, I literally started taking apart fountain pens while watching this movie. This is how interesting this movie is to me.

Are you-

How bond of you.

Yes, are you turning them into-

I'm putting hydrochloric acid in them so I can melt through the bars of the prison that is this film.

Are you preparing to perform a Thoracotomy?

On myself because of what this film has done to me, yes.

There you go, there you go. Here's the other thing, arguably the most egregious leap, and you haven't even gotten to it in the plot, but I'm just screaming about this in my mind.

There's a plot? What are you talking about?

Screaming about this in the mind. If you thought the other episode I was like Madeline Kahn at the end of Clue- Yeah. Murphy just walks in-

Wanted for murder.

To the hangar.

Wanted for murder.

APB out to the completely unguarded, unsecured-

Military prototype, a stealth military prototype helicopter says literally the only guy there is the muscular-

Some mechanic.

The angry muscular mechanic who didn't like Jaffa, and for that reason when Roy Scheider pulls a gun on him we're supposed to be, find that satisfying. Ron Howard goes, they didn't.

They're no words, they're no words for how insultingly stupid that is. But again, it's like the plot demands he's got to get back to Blue Thunder and hear Jaffa's-

Jaffa left his endearing final message-

For us beyond the grave.

Where he explains-

Paul. I was going to ask an aviation question. He starts the rotors in the hangar. How does he- Can you do that? Can you start a helicopter in a hangar and then drive out with the wheels?

You can, but you don't because that's insane.

I think this is like Han Solo in Forced Awakening. I never asked that question until after I've done it. No. Except in that movie, that's kind of cool and here it's just ass. Ass. Okay.

Anyway. Yeah. We aren't even seen because there's no way to do it. We aren't seen how he gets- I was going to say airwolf. Blue Thunder out of wherever it is because it's in a garage. It's not even really a hangar. They've got some set that they've stuck it in. It makes me so mad. But we get the last will and testament of Jaffo.

Of Jaffo. And it's Jaffo saying I stashed- Instead of going to the press like you're about to figure out to do, Murphy, which since that is such a big plan, maybe you should have asked me to take it to the station and then I wouldn't be dead. But he says he stashed it in the back of a dumpster at a drive-in movie theater.

The Pickwick.

It's actually close to my house, too. It's like on Burbank and Oxnard or something like that.

I was going to ask you guys if it's still there.

It's no longer there. It's the same drive-in that was used for Grease. It's by the ice rink. So I've been there many times. It's now the land where the drive-in is. It's now the Pavilions.

It's with the bowling alleys, right? What's it? Oh, the Pavilions.

All right.

But Pickwick is still there as a bowling alley, right? And that's in Burbank.

No, Pickwick is still in ice rink at the moment. But next to it, where they had the convention area, that's been torn down and new apartments are going up as we speak.

As we speak.

So anyway, so Murphy calls his girlfriend and tells her to go get the tape from the dumpster and take it to Mario Machado. No, well, he calls Mario Machado. Go ahead. What am I doing? Paul, Paul, hit me. Two things.

First, Jaffo gives Murphy this mission, if he should decide to accept it.

Oh, that's right. Yes.

Mission Impossible reference.

Yes.

Decade, way before.

Foreshadowing a much better film to come.

A franchise also reveals kind of heartbreakingly.

That he's found out what Jaffo means. Yes.

He did finally find out what Jaffo means, which is what everyone has been calling him. Just another fucking observer.

Yes.

Wow.

We waited so long to get that. That's just great.

And appropriate given he's a peeping tom.

Like he was a peeping tom.

And he kind of paid for his life because he was just an observer and not an... I don't know. I'm trying too hard to make this president.

No, it's just like, yeah, producer Brad, please.

Did you ever use the term Jaffa with friends back in the early 80s?

Did we?

I did.

You did? Really? Did you use it with me?

Hey Jaffa, yeah.

Did you call me Jaffa?

I don't know if you, I just remember saying it.

It became, I believe, more broadly popularized by the short-lived Blue Thunder TV series.

Oh yes, starring like...

James Ferentino.

James Ferentino and Dana Carby as Jaffa, yes, yes.

11 episodes.

I get Ferentino mixed up with James Franciscus and I get that one mixed up, but what if I get them all mixed up? Anyway, so friends, Roy Scheider steals Airwolf and he sends his girlfriend from American Graffiti to go get the tape from the dumpster in the drive-in movie theater.

He calls the news producer.

He calls, he calls, he says, he calls the news, like, because every time you and I want to go public with State Secrets, we go like, give me Mario Machado. And they're like, oh, well, he's busy. Okay, well, tell Mario Machado that Lieutenant Murphy's coming in with a tape. And they're like, okay, why? How does that even work? Nobody calls the state, hey, I'm a cop. I'm coming in with a tape. Let the anchorman know.

Also, I believe of the fictitious KBLA, because no real local LA news station would probably have cleared their name for this nonsense. But he calls Kate. I don't know that we need to recap everything we know about Kate at this point, but what we do know about Kate is specific and significant. He now calls Kate, who again, has a young child, is known to be a reckless driver, also known to be somebody devoted to him and who he cares about, enlists her, because apparently he knows no other people in the world.

No one. But he's got Mario Machado's direct dial.

Yes, but he asks her to go to the Pickwick drive-thru, rummage through the dumpster, find the tape that Jaffa left, and then go deliver it to the station, knowing that if the ABB has been put out on him, that they're on to him and this whole thing, he is putting her in mortal danger.

Mortal danger, yes.

Does he tell her this?

No.

Does he warn her?

No.

No.

No.

No. No.

Nope.

Anyway, meanwhile, there is panic at HQ.

Because a mad sniper has taken the ultimate weapon.

No. Yes. They want to, first of all, he does that. But they've traced his call, so they know he's called the TV station and they've called Kate. And like, how does he not know that they would know that?

I don't know.

I don't know. This just makes me mad. Then we...

At this point, this movie is just like, it's like, it's sort of collapsed, like, like on its own architecture that I, it's like watching a house burn, you know? Anyway, do go on. Too soon?

What?

Did a house burn?

No, no, no, no, no.

Are you not supposed to say house burn? Did I offend someone?

No, no, no.

Okay, does this look like I said house burn and you just look stricken?

I, I...

I said something entertaining in this movie and that rescued you from this film?

I am entertained by our collective...

Apathy?

Despair in futility of the rush to the endgame that we're now in. I don't know if you were handing me the reins of the plot out of just sheer...

No, I'm ready to keep going.

Okay, okay. I wasn't sure if that's what you were doing.

No, I want to move faster this plot because I'm... Yes.

Okay.

So he has his girlfriend dumpster diving.

Yeah.

While he is generating a windstorm that is clearly making that task...

Incredibly difficult...

.exponentially more difficult.

Because he's hovering over her, arguably to protect her from the police who are coming for her.

Who are not there yet.

Yeah, I don't know.

Did I miss this or is he laughing at her? Like, is he just fucking with her at this point?

I don't think so.

I got my girlfriend to dumpster dive for me. I could have just made this thing up. And now look at me. I'm making it even harder for her.

Oh, by the way, Mike, what an asshole.

Where's her kid right now? I'm like, where's her kid?

Well, he's sleeping. The only time you see the kid, he's asleep. I just assume he was asleep in the back seat of the car. And a better director would have just kept cutting back to the back seat of the car with the kid sleeping through all this mayhem.

I pray he's safely at school.

Candy Clark gets the tape. She's being chased by the feds.

She's suddenly becomes a crew. It's chase, chase, chase, chase, chase. And so she's pursued by cops.

But meanwhile, Panic! at HQ.

And more police, including police helicopters.

Yes, they're coming up to Air Cup, yes.

One of whom is Tequila Breach.

Is Montoya.

Is led by Montoya.

And Montoya is on the horn going, Come on, friend, you gotta come in, you can't do this, I gotta take you in, that kind of shit.

He's like Styles in Star Trek III.

Oh my god, that's right, Kirk, you do this, you'll never see the Captain again.

Yeah, like they were once allies and friends, and now they're antagonists, and now they're adversaries.

And this begins the most annoyingly, it's so annoyingly stupid. So Roy Scheider is the hero of the film, right? But he's being chased by his own brethren. So every time that he uses the lethal power of Blue Thunder during the following sequence, weirdly no one dies. He shoots down Montoya's helicopter by crippling it with a what?

Because it has been established he has PTSD from letting someone die in Vietnam by falling to their death out of their helicopter. So he is now possessed with this tunnel vision focus to make sure that whenever he takes out an adversary, they have to live, they have to survive.

You know the psychology of this film so much better than I ever cared to. I just figured the filmmakers didn't want him killing anybody so you wouldn't hate him. Anymore than you already do.

So he somehow expertly targets, again, having never fired Blue Thunder's weapons before.

Well, but the thing is he can move his head so well that he can literally, literally micro focus on.

But still, but still to to to consider for for relative velocity, for wind, for distance, he has never tested, he's never tested this weapon. He expertly disables Montoya's chopper, sending it to a safe-ish landing.

But you see the cops running out of it and all that.

But but but safe-landing. But there's another helicopter. And then we get a chase through, of course, the LA. River, LA. River.

Yeah. But I think that would be much better shot in Terminator 2. Yeah, I think so. Much better shot by anybody who ever shot this chase, which is everybody who's ever shot in LA.

Yes. And scored. And meanwhile, you would think that he would be concerned with Kate's safety. But she is getting repursued on her own, gets pulled over by celebrated television actor James Reid, who's a familiar face for many things. And then there's this great reveal of Blue Thunder rising up.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

The cop pulls her over. He's holding the gun. But then the Thunder goes, it is a nice shot.

Yeah.

And then he carves their police car cruiser.

Then he cleaves their cruiser in Twain as they try to pursue him. And he also causes a helicopter to crash into part of the LA. River. But all the cops scramble out of it safely.

Yes.

Because he doesn't kill his brother and because of his PTSD. Because. OK. And then. But then then at KBLA, Candy Clark gets there with the tape. She's asking for Mario Machado. But the Fed, the Fed that is there waiting for her pretends to be the producer and is going to take the tape from her until the real producer shows up. And the real producer is like, I don't know who this guy is. And then like and then like the the the the bad guy, the Fed pulls out a gun and tells the producer to blow his head off. And then the security guard from the TV station pulls out a sap, you know, like like he's some Irish cop in New York from a 1930s drama. And he just saps the FBI guy in the back of the Fed in the back of the head.

He shoots him.

What? No. No, he sounds like he's in the back. He whacks him in the back.

In my head he shoots him.

Yeah, like he's one of those one of those Irish cops from the time in America, you know. Nice. And so the Nice Guy producer takes Candy Clark to see Mario Machado and they take the tape out of the magic cradle before it can be erased.

Yes. Two things, forgive me. So everyone is in their dog has converged at KBLA because we know they know Murphy called KBLA. Yes. So the mayor is there.

His good friend Mario Machado.

The Air Force is there. Like LAPD, everybody is there lying in wait, but apparently have not really set up a lot, any plan to intercept him or whatever down where he might actually come in. Yeah. Also, in route, we do get a moment where Kate does turn into one way traffic yet again.

Yes.

Don't drive in.

Then we, as now Murphy is escorting her with Blue Thunder and says, you really ride with the Angel, sweetheart, as she inexplicably survives that. But anyway, yes. So then-

What an asshole. What an asshole.

The situation-

Roy is starting to ascend to Ace Hunter levels of Jackassery here.

Do go on. They're kindred spirits in many ways. The Air Force scrambles to F-16s in Los Angeles.

Yes. And now the mayor is in the control room for this shit. And somehow the mayor knows- the mayor played by a wonderful character actor named Jason Bernard, who famously was the boss in Herman's head. He was Mr. Bracken. And everywhere I see Jason Bernard, it just makes me happy. This is one of those guys who showed up in everything. He probably at some point wore a tweed jacket and told somebody that the commissioner had been on their ass all day and he could only give them 12 hours and here's the file. That guy probably played that role a billion times. But I used to watch Herman's head when I was in grad school because I had a TV. I got a TV out of a dumpster and that was the only TV I had. And it only got the Fox channel. So I had to watch Herman's head all the time and I love that show. So I got a soft spot for Jason Bernard.

Jason Bernard is the only actor I could find who also appeared in Airwolf from this film.

Wow, yes, wow.

So the F-16s have orders, even though they're huge military ordinance. You know, the possibility for destruction. So they can only shoot heat-seeking missiles at Airwolf, and which they do. And the first one, Asshole Roy Scheider uses a Chinese barbecue joint downtown as camouflage. And that blows up, but all of the nice barbecuing men run out of it before they can die. Oh, you want to stop me, Paul? Go ahead.

And then what happens in foreshadowing Magnolia many years later? It rains.

It rains chickens.

Roasted chicken.

It rains roasted chickens, yes.

As opposed to frogs. But yes, yes.

Like a biblical plague on all the people who chose to see this film.

Exactly. There are two funny things about this. One, it is very racially problematic. No shit.

It's actually not a Chinese chicken roasting joint, but it is only crude only by Chinese people, right?

It looks like and it seems to be a Chinese barbecue that he hovers over because they're generating heat to take out the missile. And again, the F-16 is firing very conveniently one heat seeking missile at a time for Blue Thunder. Then, we reveal, we cut back to KBLA and the mayor, that this occurred in Little Tokyo.

It's a barbecue joint that's not code of tradition and it's Chinese people in it and it's in Little Tokyo.

So it's like, I don't know if this was just them not committing or not paying attention or who knows what. But then, there's a funny bit where the mayor says, set up a call, who reps that district, set up a call to the council member before that. We get a call from them. That is a funny little bit.

And it's Jason Bernard, so we forgive it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then a second missile fires at Blue Thunder that's just hovering.

How does he get rid of this? I don't remember how he can do that.

I don't really know.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

This is actually a true fact.

Disney Hall famously is a building with aluminum cladding on the outside, right? And the sun would reflect off of Disney Hall so much that the heat in the building next door would go up like 20 degrees. And they had to actually take Disney Hall and sand it down so that it wouldn't be shining anymore. So Roy Scheider goes to a building that is being hit by the hot LA sun and uses the reflection of the heat from the sun and reflecting off the building. He's trying to confuse the heat-seeking missile, and then the heat-seeking missile hits the building.

That is bullshit.

I saw it with my own eyes.

First of all, it's not Disney Hall.

Sorry, I've become the joker and the killing joke.

I'm like, okay, fuck it.

Yes, if you don't know the story about Disney Hall, which is a remarkable design achievement and almost-

It's the most beautiful building in Los Angeles.

It was a heat-ray death weapon that put untold pedestrians at risk of death by incineration before this was discovered and it was sanded down, but it's very particular in the curvatures of its polished metallic surfaces.

Oh yeah, it's like a Greek fire. Yeah, it's absolutely-

Yeah, it's a devious, almost Bond villain expression of-

Frank Gary is my life coach. I love that building so much.

He's a madman, clearly. But a normal freaking skyscraper with normal freaking windows-

And by the way, how many people are in this skyscraper?

Does not reflect and concentrate, because we're talking about concentrating from the sun. Window reflection disperses heat, it radiates, it does not concentrate in a way that is going to attract a fucking heat-seeking- It doesn't.

Paul-

Your camera is shaking, Paul.

Paul has gone. This is Paul Holcomb.

You're like, both of us are bright red. We're like Harrison Ford in Brave New World.

I mean, literally.

Meanwhile, I'm enjoying the film at this point.

So the only thing that I can maybe say is that if it were Airwolf, it would be more plausible. But Airwolf also has countermeasures that it could have used, which I don't know why Blue Thunder doesn't. So again, huge design, flawed oversight. But Blue Thunder is positioned close enough to the skyscraper that if, and I'm just going to say, maybe he did. I hope he did. I hope the filmmakers had the sense to have him engage the turbine, like the super turbine.

The turbine booster.

The turbine boost thing. So that just at the last moment, because we know that Roy Scheider has this, this OCD-like ability of being able to mentally mark time, that just at the last possible microsecond, he hits the turbine boost to thrust Blue Thunder out of the way from the impact of the missile so then the missile does not have time to change course and redirect. Yeah, that's not what happened. That's the only plausible explanation. The film doesn't, and that would actually be kind of cool. The film does not lay that out or sell that.

Paul, also as you know, the turbo boost is not going to come in until the big reveal in the movie.

Yes.

So, okay, so anyway, so now Malcolm McDowell is pissed, and he has his henchmen bring him an equally unattractive helicopter.

One more thing.

Oh, God, really? One more thing? Okay, Columbo, what?

Blue Thunder takes out an F-16.

Does it?

With the cannon. Yes.

He uses his Vulcan gun to fire it.

From an implausibly vast distance, far out of range of this type of weapon, he takes out an F-16. Like, what?

And the guy bails out of it, he survives.

But again, because of Roy Scheider Murphy's PTSD, he has to stay on target to make sure the pilot who jettisons parachutes safely so that he doesn't have that pilot's blood on his hands, like he heals, like he shoots someone.

Unlike the blood of all the people in the building that got hit by the hits.

Well, that's the thing. Or the poor people who didn't make it out of the Chinese slash Japanese barbecue place in time.

What an asshole.

Or the people in the skyscraper who just got blown up. He's insane. He's clearly insane. He's a madman. So then, yeah, McDowell is then fucked the Air Force. I'm going to take these in my hands.

So he gets his own heavily armed helicopter that he's got on standby.

Suddenly, where has this been? He has the standby other attack helicopter of his own. The mayor is called off the Air Force. Cochran ignores this because he can only seize whatever.

Cochran is actually able to sucker Blue Thunder and disable the Vulcan guns. So now Roy cannot fire as he turns his head. Roy can only face you to fire.

Yes, because Murphy was waiting to make sure the pilot of the F-16 landed safely. Wow. So when doing so left himself vulnerable, I'm going to say that.

I think that's kind of emotional too.

And so yeah, so Cochran comes in, sucker punches him with his cannons. Yeah, disables the front mounted cannon just enough so that he can still shoot, but it cannot rotate, so it cannot aim.

Yeah. So now we've got Roy Scheider in a shitty ugly, in an ugly ponders helicopter and not make that less interesting.

He hits Scheider through the window. So he's wounded now, but he should be dead if he takes a hit from that kind of thing.

That's the thing, if you literally shoot somebody with a cannon from a helicopter, right? How does Roy Scheider not bleed out for the rest of the scene?

Also we've seen Blue Thunder take a lot of firepower aimed at it. And suddenly this one nondescript helicopter, yeah, it's like suddenly with this again. Bust through the bulletproof cockpit.

The way this should have been is that, of course, there's a second Blue Thunder prototype that's white, you know, and they haven't gotten it ready. That's a better, that's Firefox, but it's a better movie, you know. It's like, they bring in this attack helicopter and you're like.

It's also an episode of Airwolf.

I'm sure it is, yeah. Even between, Lead Wolf?

Red Wolf.

Red Wolf, yeah.

Yes.

Anyway, so Malcolm McDowell's in this dinky helicopter going after the now crippled Airwolf. And then there's just the fucking tedium for like, how long is this helicopter chased for?

But we finally get the full reveal.

Yes. Oh, yes. Now you finally find out who dropped the civilian from the helicopter in Nam. Who could it have possibly been? Could it have been Jason Bernard, the mayor of Los Angeles? No. Could it have been Mario Machado? No. Could it have been Warren Oates? No. Could it have been Tequila Breath Montoya? No.

It could have been Kate's kid.

It could have been, but he's sleeping in the helicopter during Vietnam. He slept through the whole Vietnam War.

It's Kate.

No, it's Malcolm McDowell.

No, it's Malcolm McDowell. I say that, I sell that with all respect that I have in the world. I worship Malcolm McDowell.

Do you remember his character's first name and they only give initials? It's FE. Cochran, and Jaffa says, What does FE stand for? And Chyder goes, Fuck everyone, Cochran.

There you go. Wow, that's kind of almost good.

The producer is finally reviewing the tape and is like, Holy shit, they're all like, this is bad.

And then he turns toward the newsroom where Mario Machado is giving a news report about brown people getting uppity, right? And he goes, and you better tell Mario to ease up on the barrio shit or some shit like that, right?

Oh God, it's so bad.

It turns out it's a white people conspiracy. Tell him to ease up on the propaganda. It's insane. It's insane.

And it is. And then we get the tedious chase duel of helicopters.

Oh my God, Becky, it goes on for fucking ever.

Of Malcolm and Roy Scheider. And Blue Thunder is wounded and its pilot are both wounded and Scheider is bleeding. And so is Blue Thunder and bleeding in the form of black smoke.

Gasoline's pouring out of it.

Because there's no Pope yet. And it's this tedious chase of random urban destruction that takes place with kind of no consequences until in a last desperate move, we finally get the last remaining payoff we've been waiting for other than the whole thing about his file being under repair that's never paid off.

That's never paid off, yeah.

Javi, what does he do? What button does he push?

He pushes the turbo boost and he flips the helicopter over Malcolm McDowell's helicopter so that he can get behind him and fire his gun that only fires forward now. And he says, catch you later.

And suddenly, it is sunset, like, instantaneously. As soon as he takes out Cochran, it's sunset.

And then it's nighttime for some reason and the news report is out and the bad guys have been exposed and as we all know.

We don't know that yet, we don't know that yet. That hasn't happened yet. But what does happen is Murphy, wounded, sees a train. He clocks it and he's studying, he's getting up against it, like clocking its speed. Like he's thinking his wheels are turning as are the digital wheels of his Seiko. And he takes the Blue Thunder out ahead of the train, lands it on the tracks and we see that the train implode onto Blue Thunder, destroying it.

Yeah, destroying Blue Thunder, yeah.

As Roy Scheider walks away having leapt to safety at the last second.

Using his watch. He was using his watch.

Using his trusty watch and his mental sense of command of time. And yes, walks away with the explosion in the background.

And then they just roll the credits.

Then we get the TV news narration. Mario Machado wraps everything up in voiceover.

Because the bad guys have been exposed on video, so clearly they're going to go to jail. That's what happens in our modern era. And because justice, just getting the bad guys on tape, you get justice, you know?

Murphy's name is cleared. He's vindicated. There's also this weird tease of a Japanese bullet train possibly coming to Southland.

What the fuck was that? Because is that the next movie with the... Was that the idea for the sequel where, like, you know, Frank is now driving the bullet train?

Have you guys ridden the Southland bullet train?

No.

Have you?

No.

No, it didn't come.

And like, was this a seed planting for, like, a sequel?

Well, that's what I'm saying. It's a bullet train sequel where Frank is driving the bullet train. You know, Frank winds up in the bullet train and, like, you know, I don't know, Malcolm McDowell...

Do you know?

Malcolm McDowell's son built the train and...

Javi, do you know what fuels a bullet train that's necessary to make it achieve its high speed?

Unobtainium. What?

The Frank factor.

All right, is he saying bullshit, or is it push it? The Frank Factor.

Push it.

It sounds to me like bullshit, which is even better.

Okay.

The song is called Pushin.

Okay. Producer Brad, did anybody watch, did this movie open, did this movie release, did anyone watch it, what happened?

Well, we watched it in June, it had been open for a couple of weeks, and the week we watched it, it was number eight at the box office. It was behind Superman 3, which was the top film that opened, Return of the Jedi, Trading Places, Octopus, You Were Game, Psycho 2 and Flashback, or Flashdance, sorry, not Flashback.

Do either of you, are you both still secure in the choice that we made to watch this instead of Superman 3?

Yes.

I mean, honestly, I think it's six of one, half a dozen of the other. I mean, how do you feel, Paul?

I don't know, and I don't know that I want to know.

No, let's not find out, because we don't want to end up watching Superman 3 next week. So that could be a thing.

I feel it's necessary to honor the Superman legacy by ignoring it.

Ignoring Superman 3. So, producer Brad, so the movie opened at eight.

Yes, sorry.

Not a hit film.

It made 1.6 million the weekend we watched it at number eight. It's six week of release for the year. It was the 18th highest grossing film. To date, it's grossed 42 million and it ranks 2002-44 behind Mortal Kombat from 2021 and once thought ahead of Steve McQueen's Bullet.

You know, I hate that in renting this film on Apple, I added $3.99 to those $42 million.

And as we discussed, it became a TV show just six months later in January of 84. It aired for 11 episodes and the same month Air Wolf premiered and that had four seasons.

Yes, Air Wolf reigned supreme.

Indeed.

Except not in its later season.

No, much better show, much better theme. So, producer Brad. Here we go. Oh, God. Oh, God.

Here's what opens the week of June 24th. Up first is Porky's 2 the next day.

Wow.

That is a hard pass.

So, you know, there's four movies that are new this.

Yeah, but this was, I don't care. This was a hard pass for me.

I understand.

By the way, Porky's 2 from the director of A Christmas Story.

Yes. Yes.

And one of his first films was a zombie movie in the early 70s.

Oh, really?

Strangely, yes. Also, the survivors, Walter Mathau and Robin Williams.

Oh, my God. Wow. This summer is not turning out great.

Directed by Michael Richie. Yes, I believe. Yes. Intriguing.

Twilight Zone, the movie.

Oh, intriguing, but problematic.

And Yellowbeard. Those are the four new ones.

Oh, dear Lord.

Anything palatable?

I think it's going to have to be Twilight Zone, because, look, Twilight Zone, we can talk about Spielberg, we can talk about, we get to see Nightmare at 20,000 feet with John Lithgow again. Yes, we have to address the awful John Landis-ness of it, but I think we get over that quickly and do this, you know, or maybe we just skip the Landis segment altogether. I don't know, or we just trash the Landis segment and, I don't know.

Paul, what do you think?

Yeah, I'm guessing that the rules of Uno demand that I cannot call a pass two weekends in a row and ask to go back to Trading Places.

Trading Places is still in the theater, so, yes, you can watch it.

Would you like to do Trading Places?

Well, but that's the thing, it's like, do I want to save that to rescue me from some even worse options in the weekends to come?

The problem now is that now we're picking from two John Landis movies.

Yeah.

So, all right, you know what, Paul? I think that we should watch, we should have a palate cleanser and we should watch Trading Places. It's a comedy, it might, we might even find parts of it funny as much as we'll find other parts completely problematic.

I am ready for joy.

All right, let's do it.

Two big comedic actors in their prime.

Yep, yep, I think we'll get some laughs out of this. And Denholm Elliot and Jamie Lee Curtis, so we're good.

Of course.

And Jamie Lee Curtis.

An unassailably fun and funny good time.

All righty.

That we deserve as do our listeners.

All right, no, we do, honestly, after sitting through true blunder, holy crap. Paul, as bad as The Soldier, I think weirdly less entertaining than The Soldier, not as fun to trash as The Soldier.

I, boy, I don't, I, they just are in different universes. I can't, I, again, the closest analog I can make is that it does feel like the spiritual cousin to Firefox.

I feel like The Soldier was such an operatic grand grignole of like, of, of incompetence.

You know, it, it almost, almost, and I say this in the most generous definition of almost, the most broad interpretation of the expanse that I'm almost can encompass, almost makes me want to see Soldier again.

Okay. And on that, on that, that's not, that's not a joke. That's a threat. So folks, we're going to watch Trading Places next week. Please subscribe to our podcast. Please leave us a review. Please, please hit the, the, the, the, the subscribe button.

Find an episode to share with a friend.

Please do. And until then, we will see you in line at the Multiplex.

Catch you later.

I agree with everything you said about the film, but I loved this movie as a kid. I loved it.