In 1984 the Cold War continued to dominate the headlines. Soviet-American relations remained tense and films such as Wargames and Red Dawn reflected the mood of the time. On television another war was raging, a war between two heavily armed helicopters. One was a top secret military experiment, the other a state of the art crime fighting police chopper.
Airwolf and Blue Thunder were so similar that only one could survive in the ratings war. Blue Thunder had an advantage; the brand had already been established the year before in director John Badhams feature film of the same name starring Roy Scheider and Malcolm McDowell. Scheider played police pilot Frank Murphy assigned to patrol the skies of LA in experimental helicopter, Blue Thunder. The film was a solid action thriller and fared well enough at the box office to warrant a spin-off television series of its own on the ABC network. Notable for an early pre-Saturday Night Live starring role for Dana Carvey, the series ran for just 11 episodes with a different airborne villain each week providing the catalyst for the action. Around the same time, television producer
Donald P. Bellisario, whose previous creation Magnum P.I. had proved a massive hit, came up with an idea for his own helicopter based show on CBS, Airwolf. Bellisarios major coup with his creation was in the expert casting of the two lead roles by choosing two already established stars thus enabling the series to hit the ground running.
Jan-Michael Vincent, probably best known for his roles in iconic surfer movie Big Wednesday and for starring alongside Burt Reynolds in the ode to Hollywoods stuntmen Hooper, took the lead role in the show as Vietnam vet Stringfellow Hawke. For the role of Dominic Santini, Hawkes business partner and fellow war veteran, Bellisario signed up former Dirty Dozen and Wild Bunch legend
Ernest Borgnine.
Airwolf: The Movie released on
Blu-ray and
DVD this week, is essentially the pilot episode from the first season of the show slightly re-edited and until now, previously unavailable in the UK in this form except for a VHS release in the mid-90s. The film begins with a demonstration of the helicopter at a top secret military installation in the desert. The helicopters pilot and co-creator Dr Charles Moffat, played by British actor
David Hemmings, steals the helicopter and defects to Libya. A government agency, known as The Firm, sends its deputy director Michael Colesmith Briggs, codename Archangel, to track down pilot Stringfellow Hawke to lead a mission into Libya to recover the stolen chopper and return it to the US. This pilot episode differs from the one previously available in the season one DVD box set. The main difference is that it is rated 18 due to some pointless overdubbing of bad language into the dialogue. There is really no need for this and just feels totally wrong if you have only ever seen the TV broadcast of the show. Other differences include re-edited and rearranged scenes as well as some footage being taken from later episodes in the first season. It is actually a full ten minutes shorter than the version presented in the season one DVD box set. As was the case with every episode of the show, the aerial photography is excellent throughout despite the majority of it being speeded up. The helicopter is the true star of the show in the same way that KITT became the star of Knight Rider. The sound design is also particularly noteworthy with a whole host of different effects blending together to give the chopper its iconic sound.
While this pilot is not the greatest episode of the show it works well as an introduction to the characters and concept. Airwolf was the overall winner of the ratings battle with Blue Thunder. Running for a total of 55 episodes over three seasons the show was finally killed off by a further 24 episodes filmed for a fourth season made on a much lower budget with a completely revamped cast and recycled action footage after the production crew were denied access to the original helicopter. As Airwolf: The Movie is essentially already available albeit in a slightly different form as the pilot episode in the season one DVD box set there is very little reason to recommend this new release. It really is just for completists and for those who want to upgrade to the Blu-ray version. There are no extras of any note so to be honest I would recommend just sticking with the complete season box sets available separately.
Quality
The Blu-ray presentation is extremely poor and I think it is probably the worst Blu-ray transfer I have seen so far. There has been little or no attempt to restore or upgrade the picture quality and certain scenes are blighted by faded colours and pixilation. I ran it alongside the DVD to compare the two and there was no real difference even without upscaling. Presented in the original TV ratio of 4:3 the picture is 1080i, not full HD 1080p and the soundtrack is the original 2 channel stereo mix. The menus are static and dont even use the theme tune for the music however the background artwork is at least in keeping with the box art.
Extras
The extras are also very poor. The only offering is a photo gallery of images from seasons one to three and to add insult to injury this is presented in a higher definition to the main feature, full HD 1080p. It is such a missed opportunity not to have a retrospective documentary or commentary for this release. Airwolf: The Movie was released on
Blu-ray this week.