A former fighter pilot now working as a radio station traffic reporter witnesses a bank robbery. He chases down the bank robbers and a hostage in his helicopter.A former fighter pilot now working as a radio station traffic reporter witnesses a bank robbery. He chases down the bank robbers and a hostage in his helicopter.A former fighter pilot now working as a radio station traffic reporter witnesses a bank robbery. He chases down the bank robbers and a hostage in his helicopter.
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe Hughes 500C that "Walker" flew throughout the film is one of the few turbine-engine helicopters (worldwide) which is flown single-pilot from the left seat. Since people tend to scan visually from left to right... the same way they read a book... it was more effective to have Walker in a left-facing helicopter like the 500C, as opposed to say, a Bell JetRanger, or a Fairchild FH-1100 which are flown from the right seat. Director William A. Graham shot all of the close-ups from the left side of the ship, usually looking slightly upward, with a tight depth-of-field. This threw everything behind Walker's shoulders out of focus. However, this was a dual-control ship! Note particularly the take-off after Walker fueled-up from the tanker truck. If you look closely (despite the fuzzy focus) you can readily see that the right-seat position looks unusually lumpy. That's because the film pilot who was doing the actual flying, was crouched in there, under a black shroud.
- GoofsThe Hughes/MD 500 (369) helicopter has a jet turbine engine that uses Jet-A fuel. Filling up with auto gas from the tanker truck would not work well. The engine would be damaged and would not get very far.
- Quotes
Jim McAndrew: [after Walker saves him by ramming the robbers' helicopter] Damn it, Walker! Nobody asked you to do that!
- ConnectionsReferenced in Three's Company: Two Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1981)
Featured review
An early flight of World War II nostalgia
I've seen "Birds of Prey" only once, decades ago, but I remember it as great fun. It's also a piece of cultural history. It first aired on TV in January 1973, as the U.S. war in Vietnam was officially rushing to an end, and it's a cops-and-robbers adventure about helicopters, the chariots of choice of that conflict.
The setting is a big city in the American West. The villains are robbers -- Vietnam vets, perhaps? -- who make their getaway by chopper. The squabbling heroes are two middle-aged men who served together in World War II. One of them (played by Ralph Meeker) is now a successful bureaucrat, serving as the city's police chief. The other (played by David Janssen) is somewhere between a free spirit and a ne'er-do-well, a man who flies a traffic helicopter to earn a living but has never left behind the memories of the air war of his youth. When the robbers take to the skies, the battle of the generations is on.
They didn't call such men such as Meeker's and Janssen's characters "the greatest generation" in 1973. They called them "the establishment." This movie is nostalgia for the simplicities of World War II before such nostalgia was fashionable.
If the DVD version does indeed feature modern rock instead of the original movie's 1940s sound track, it's a shame. But maybe it's inevitable. Now that the World War II veterans have grown old and the Vietnam veterans have taken their place in the middle-aged zone, few viewers would recognize the great big band standards. Alas, time flies. Like a bird.
The setting is a big city in the American West. The villains are robbers -- Vietnam vets, perhaps? -- who make their getaway by chopper. The squabbling heroes are two middle-aged men who served together in World War II. One of them (played by Ralph Meeker) is now a successful bureaucrat, serving as the city's police chief. The other (played by David Janssen) is somewhere between a free spirit and a ne'er-do-well, a man who flies a traffic helicopter to earn a living but has never left behind the memories of the air war of his youth. When the robbers take to the skies, the battle of the generations is on.
They didn't call such men such as Meeker's and Janssen's characters "the greatest generation" in 1973. They called them "the establishment." This movie is nostalgia for the simplicities of World War II before such nostalgia was fashionable.
If the DVD version does indeed feature modern rock instead of the original movie's 1940s sound track, it's a shame. But maybe it's inevitable. Now that the World War II veterans have grown old and the Vietnam veterans have taken their place in the middle-aged zone, few viewers would recognize the great big band standards. Alas, time flies. Like a bird.
helpful•41
- gerdeen-1
- Aug 18, 2008
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Language
- Also known as
- Duell der Helikopter
- Filming locations
- Wendover Airport - 345 S. Airport Apron, Wendover, Utah, USA(helicopter chase)
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- $400,000 (estimated)
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