Movie Review: Cat People (1982)

Genre: Fantasy Erotic Horror  

Director: Paul Schrader  
Starring: Nastassja Kinski, Malcolm McDowell, John Heard, Annette O'Toole, Ruby Dee, Ed Begley Jr.  

Running Time: 118 minutes  

Synopsis: In a prologue set in ancient times, tribals make human offerings to large black panthers. In the present, Irena Gallier (Nastassja Kinski) arrives in New Orleans to rejoin her brother Paul (Malcolm McDowell), many years after the siblings were separated upon their parents' death. When Paul mysteriously goes absent, Irena is attracted to the big cats at the zoo, where she meets curator Oliver (John Heard). Mauling deaths start to occur, and gradually Irena's worst fears are realized: she and Paul are descendants of people who turn to large cats and have to kill when sexually aroused.

What Works Well: A remake of Jacques Tourneur's 1942 low-budget original, the 1982 version enjoys glossy production values, a devotion to stylish visuals, and layers of mythology. Director Paul Schrader creates stunning dreamscape vistas in the prologue, and adds gore, nudity, and themes of incest and impossible love to the subsequent suspense underpinnings. An alluring Nastassja Kinski and a barely-contained Malcolm McDowell represent the two ends of innocence and decadence, and they are surrounded by a strong supporting cast and plenty of prowling cats. The New Orleans setting adds gothic aesthetics, and the brooding music score by Giorgio Moroder and David Bowie supplements the mood.

What Does Not Work As Well: The rules governing the lives of Irena and Paul are elusive enough to allow plenty of variations-on-a-theme, while some of the acidic transformations within the fantasy context are unexplained. A crime investigation sub-plot threatens to intrude on the narrative, but ultimately just gets in the way.

Key Quote:

Irena: I'm not like you.

Paul: Well, that's the lie that will kill your lover.

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Movie Review: Time After Time (1979)

A science fiction thriller, Time After Time is a clever mix of historical characters, romance, fantastical science, some humour and a murderous pursuit across time.

In London of 1893, Doctor John Leslie Stevenson (David Warner), who is secretly also the serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, is having dinner at the home of his friend, author and inventor Herbert George (H.G.) Wells (Malcolm McDowell). Investigating the latest killing, the police close in on the Ripper and Stevenson makes his escape by jumping into Wells' brand new time travel machine.

Wells, who has a utopian vision of the future, gives chase and lands in San Francisco of 1979. Finding Stevenson will not be easy, but Wells is helped by bank foreign exchange manager Amy Robbins (Mary Steenburgen), who finds the tweedy English gentleman charming. Sevenson is a good fit for the anarchy of modern society and is quickly back to his killing ways. Wells and Amy fall in love as they pursue him, but Amy herself becomes the killer's latest target.

While the time travel special effects are exceptionally cheesy even for the era, writer and director Nicholas Meyer gets almost everything else right. Well-constructed and benefitting from a good cast in top form, Time After Time is a neat chase thriller. The cerebral duel between a murderous doctor and idealistic inventor infuses a layer of smarts, and the premise of strangers navigating a strange future lands with elegance thanks to their sharp intellect.

The early scenes in London feature lush set designs, and the time machine is a handsome Victorian era contraption. The difference between Wells and Stevenson is underlined through their wardrobe, Stevenson quick to change into 1979 fashions and meld into a society glorifying violence, while the gentlemanly Wells hangs onto his 1890s suit. While the future proves to be far from Wells' ideal of peace, justice and equality for all, Amy personifies women's progress in society, perhaps an early but important step towards the desired state of global bliss.

Meyer extracts a rare restrained performance from Malcolm McDowell, the British actor settling down and maintaining control of the H.G. Wells character in both 1893 and 1979. David Warner also does more with less, breathing life into a maniacal but calculating killer. And in her own understated manner Mary Steenburgen sneakily serves the dual function of love interest and feminist inspiration.

The climactic chasing around slips away a bit from Meyer, the third act prolonged to include a badly timed flat tire and bumbling police work. But the final resolution is refined, the story tidying up both the Jack the Ripper mystery and Wells' visionary reputation. And it only took a quick 86 year jaunt to resolve two legends.



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Movie Review: The Passage (1979)

A World War Two escape thriller, The Passage features a stellar but poorly utilized cast struggling against a feeble script and the stench of a low budget production.

With France under Nazi occupation, hardy Basque sheep farmer (Anthony Quinn) is reluctantly recruited by the French resistance for a dangerous mission to smuggle American scientist Professor Bergson (James Mason) across the Pyrenees and into Spain.

Bergston is hiding in Toulouse, and the Basque is shocked to learn that the frail Mrs. Bergson (Patricia Neal) and the couple's two grown children (Kay Lenz and Paul Clemens) are accompanying their father. Meanwhile, sadistic SS Captain Von Berkow (Malcolm McDowell) is intent on hunting down the Professor. After receiving help from a gypsy leader (Christopher Lee), the escape party start their perilous journey across the snow-covered mountains, with Von Berkow in hot pursuit.

A British production directed by veteran J. Lee Thompson, The Passage collects an impressive cast and aims for an old-fashioned but smaller-scaled World War Two adventure in the vein of Thompson's The Guns Of Navarone from 1961. With a decent premise and impressive mountainous scenery supplementing the stars, the raw ingredients are promising.

But The Passage suffers from production values that appear cheap and hurried, and the script (by Bruce Nicolayson, adapting his own book) ignores everything related to backstories and personal dynamics. Most of the characters are hardly afforded a name, let alone rounded into individuals, with James Mason's Professor Bergson the primary victim. All of the dialogue is of the plastic variety, while Thompson's directing is muddled, his handling of the action scenes bordering on inept.

The void of quality is filled with shock value, and The Passage is notorious for all the wrong reasons. The main eye-popping excuse to watch the film is a misplaced Malcolm McDowell performance. His full-on British accent unexplained and unconstrained, McDowell mushes Alex DeLarge from A Clockwork Orange with Caligula and enters World War Two with ridiculous madness. His Captain Von Berkow is an all-time over-the-top experience, a star running amok with no guidance from his director.

And Von Berkow steers The Passage to a second claim to infamy as an exercise in excess violence and gore. The SS Captain perpetuates on-screen rape, torture, immolation and mass murder, and on a couple of occasions punctuates his atrocities with pantomime-level outfits. His articulated chef chop-chop scene is admittedly compelling as an indecorous horror-comedy routine.

The Passage is thankfully a mostly forgotten curiosity, a lost opportunity buried in the jagged mountains.

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Movie Review: Caligula (1979)

One of the more insane cinematic experiences to ever make it onto the screen, Caligula is a stylized historical epic with a stellar cast and a furtive sideline of hardcore pornography.

In the first century AD, Caligula (Malcolm McDowell) is a prince awaiting his destiny. He frolics with his sister Drusilla (Teresa Ann Savoy) and is aware that the head of the Praetorian Guard Macro (Guido Mannari) may be a rival for power. Caligula's great uncle, the half-crazed Emperor Tiberius (Peter O'Toole), is left without an ally when his closest confidant Nerva (John Gielgud) commits suicide. Macro soon helps Caligula dispose of the ailing Tiberius and the Prince ascends to Emperor.

Caligula moves quickly to eliminate perceived threats from Macro and his younger step brother Gemellus (Bruno Brive), elevating Chaerea (Paolo Bonacelli ) to the leadership of the Guard and installing Longinus (John Steiner) as his chief of staff. Prevented from marrying his true love Drusilla, Caligula instead selects Caesonia (Helen Mirren) as his bride-to-be provided she can provide him with an heir. Increasingly erratic in his behavior and then wracked by illness and personal loss, Caligula descends into a fog of madness fuelled by violence and debauchery.

An American-Italian co-production independently backed with a huge budget by Bob Guccione and his adult Penthouse magazine empire, Caligula is a grand-scale oddity. Undeniably compelling and gaudily artistic, the film presents a contorted tale of a young man's lust for power and subsequent implosion. Some of the narrative is inspired by history and most of it is imagination, and certainly the skimpy costumes and lavish sets are what a porn czar would want a godless empire to look like. Guccione's sheer audacity in going ahead and creating his vision is laudable.

The film went through a chaotic production cycle featuring multiple dueling visions, and was finally released without a recognized screenwriter, director or editor. It started life with celebrated writer Gore Vidal penning the script, but he clashed with director Tinto Brass and eventually disavowed the project. Brass himself then locked horns with Guccione, with Brass finally reduced to a Principal Photographer credit but only after delivering an initial partial cut. Guccione took control of the rest of the editing, a process credited to "the production".

Most controversially Guccione secretly recruited a few Penthouse pets and smuggled them onto the sets after hours. Along with Giancarlo Lui they filmed several scenes of explicit hardcore sex, and Guccione inserted that footage into the final cut (a hefty 156 minutes). He then proceeded to independently release the film by renting theatres and self-promoting the film, fanning the marketing machine by fighting high profile censorship battles wherever they materialized.

Given the background it is remarkable that the film works at any level. But while the barbaric violence, in-your-face nudity and unsimulated sex will offend many if not most, Caligula holds together enough to register as a controversial art piece. The themes of absolute power corrupting absolutely and the ruling elite of a pagan empire convulsing with conspiracies and corruption are hammered home with manic intensity.

Some of the scenes and visuals are unforgettable. The public wall of death machine is nightmare inducing, as is Caligula interfering in the post-wedding ceremony of an innocent couple. The full-scale indoor Roman vessel at over 50 metres long, 10 metres high and complete with 120 oars adds to the sense of lunacy, especially as a backdrop to a full fledged orgy.

Arriving as it did at the peak of the porno chic era, Caligula perhaps unsurprisingly attracted a cast of top talent. McDowell, O'Toole, Gielgud and Mirren were not aware that Guccione had plans to insert hardcore clips into his epic; they nevertheless signed up for a film produced by Penthouse and featuring full frontal nudity in almost every other scene. McDowell lets loose with a fearless performance that perfectly fits the psychosis milieu. O'Toole has just two early scenes, but they are substantive and pivotal in setting the context.

Sir John Gielgud infuses a sense of resignation to the inevitable before his character Nerva chooses his own departure time. Mirren, already a respected Shakespearean stage actress, manages to bring a quiet civility to the role of Caesonia while also participating in a softcore threesome with McDowell and Savoy.

A demented landmark, Caligula matches its subject matter in its abject insanity.

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Movie Review: How To Make Love Like An Englishman (2014)

An insipid romantic triangle, How To Make Love Like An Englishman (also known as Some Kind Of Beautiful and Lessons In Love) is a tonally deaf exercise in wasting talent.

In England, Richard Haig (Pierce Brosnan) has followed in the footsteps of his father Gordon (Malcolm McDowell) and also become a professor of romantic literature. Gordon's ethos is to defy authority, raise hell and live life to the full, and Richard teaches with the same passion while bedding a succession of much younger college girls for kicks. But when his latest nubile student partner Kate (Jessica Alba) announces that she is pregnant, Richard decides to move with her to Los Angeles and settle down, despite being more attracted to her more mature sister Olivia (Salma Hayek).

A few years after their son Jake is born, Kate announces that she is thoroughly bored with Richard and takes up with boyfriend Brian (Ben McKenzie), while Richard relocates to the pool house to stay close to Jake. Olivia's marriage falls apart, creating an opening for romance to blossom again with Richard, but with his immigration date approaching Richard has to maintain the pretense that he is happily married to Kate, while Gordon's continued erratic behaviour and caustic attitude disrupts his son's already chaotic life.

Directed by Tom Vaughan, co-produced by Brosnan and barely released, How To Make Love Like An Englishman is an embarrassment with more alternative titles than ideas. The Matthew Newman script does not come close to generating emotions of any type, and instead of love, laughs, chemistry or conflict, the film just goes into a lazy coma. Basic character motivations are repeatedly violated, Richard's sudden turn from philanderer to loyal husband and father just the first of many incredulous moments.

The low point arrives courtesy of Kate, who takes umbrage at Richard's affair with Olivia two years after she abandoned him and moved her toyboy lover under their roof.

With the love triangle taking on a pear shape, Malcolm McDowell appears at regular intervals with a caricaturish portrayal of a father whose entire set of conversational skills consists of acerbic and profanity-riddled commentary. His late conversion to a human being is equally outlandish.

The sub-plot about Richard trying to secure his permanent residency in the United States is tacked on with astounding carelessness, a well-educated and well-resourced applicant reduced to dealing with a bottom-of-the-barrel lawyer.

The cast is too talented for the material, with Brosnan, Alba, Hayek and McDowell giving it their all but unable to do anything meaningful or memorable with their roles. Hayek gets the one laugh in the film, and it's a straight lift-and-switch of the diner scene from When Harry Met Sally.... The only lesson learned from How To Make Love Like An Englishman is that when your script ideas are nonexistent, steal the moment of climax from a classic American comedy.

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Movie Review: If....(1968)

A school drama focusing on the emerging chasm between traditional values and counter-culture ethos, If.... is a potent celebration of the forces driving nihilism.

It's the start of a new year at an English public all-boys school. The "whips" are the senior students responsible for maintaining discipline, the "scum" are the sometimes bewildered young newcomers assigned to satisfy the whims of the seniors. The teachers and the Headmaster (Peter Jeffrey) get on with the job with pompous oblivion. Life at school consists of the usual mix of boring classes, sports, and rampant, often cruel high-jinx as the boys struggle with the painful process of evolving into men.

Mick (Malcolm McDowell), Wallace (Richard Warwick), and Johnny (David Wood) are three non-conforming students marching to the beat of their own drummer. They keep their hair long, engage in illicit drinking session, discuss social upheaval, and do their best to show the utmost disdain for Rowntree (Robert Swann), the Whip leader. As the year progresses a showdown looms between Mick and the authorities. Dramatic events are set in motion when Mick steals a motorcycle, enjoys a countryside wild ride, and meets The Girl (Christine Noonan), another advocate of anarchy.

Directed by Lindsay Anderson and featuring Malcolm McDowell's debut along with a cast of mostly unknowns, If... packs the turmoil of the 1960s into the self-contained setting of an isolated, traditional school in the English countryside. More about mood than plot, the film draws a sharp distinction between old and new, and presents archaic customs as fertile breeding grounds for revolution, with a young generation no longer impressed or interested in old hierarchical systems.

With student protests in Paris and youth-led anti-Vietnam War activism building to a peak, Anderson effortlessly taps into the disaffected-youth-as-hero premise, and finds in Mick, Wallace and Johnny three young men charting their own path and veering sharply away from the establishment. The two sides talk past each other, and the more rules and regulations are thrown at Mick's face, the more his level of discontent rises.

With a naturally snarling face, dangerous smile, and intense eyes, all barely hiding beneath a facade of civility, Malcolm McDowell emerges as a new talent with an intriguing screen persona.

Stylistically, most of the film depicts vignettes from life at the school, allowing the stiff formality, bullying, and whiffs of sexual exploitation to speak for themselves. Nothing needs to be said about what is specifically wrong with a system that entrenches whippings, classicism, and abuse of youngsters. While Anderson is careful to also show plenty of functional humanity and encouragement as part of the school's routine, there is enough unacknowledged rot to destroy the core, and Mick sees enough of it to want no part of this apple.

Several scenes unfold in black and white, apparently due to budget reasons, but the technique amplifies the film's creaking hinge between reality and fantasy. The Girl's introduction, including a brief but wild sex scene with Mick that earned the film an X-rating, marks an inflection point after which most of what happens could be construed as tumultuous wish fulfillment.

Boasting a sparse, almost rudimentary, and episodic format, If.... is a milestone on the road to more audacious filmmaking.

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The Movies Of Malcolm McDowell

All movies starring Malcolm McDowell and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

If....(1968)

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

The Passage (1979)

Caligula (1979)

Time After Time (1979)

Cat People (1982)



Blue Thunder (1983)

The Player (1992, cameo, as himself)

I Spy (2002)

In Good Company (2004, uncredited)

Easy A (2010)

The Book Of Eli (2010, uncredited)

The Artist (2011)

How To Make Love Like An Englishman (2014)

Bombshell (2019)

Father Stu (2022)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: I Spy (2002)

A real stinker of a buddy cop comedy, I Spy is about 20 years behind the times in both premise and execution.

US national security secret agent Alex Scott (Owen Wilson) is meek and hesitant, and resents the superstar status of his colleague Carlos (Gary Cole), who always seems to get the latest and best spy gizmos to play with. Alex's next mission is in Budapest, where he is to connect with beautiful Agent Rachel Wright (Famke Janssen) and recover a missing state of the art "switchblade" stealth military jet. International arms dealer Arnold Gundars (Malcolm McDowell) has stolen the jet and is about to auction it off to the highest bidder.

Meanwhile arrogant world boxing champion Kelly Robinson (Eddie Murphy) easily improves his record to 57-0 and sets up his next title defense in Budapest. Alex's plan is to infiltrate Arnold's swish party by pretending to be part of Kelly's glamourous entourage. The secret agent and the boxer immediately clash and have difficulty working together, but once in Budapest they are forced to cooperate to escape from a continuous stream of trouble.

Directed by Betty Thomas and with up to six different writers having a hand in cobbling together an atrocious script, it is difficult to believe just how lame I Spy is. This is the sort of film that went out of style in the mid-1980s, around the time of efforts such as Spies Like Us (1985). Somehow, the I Spy producers (including 1980s stalwarts Mario Kassar and Hungary's Andrew G. Vajna) believed that warming over stale elements from a bygone era when Murphy was at his prime would pass for entertainment. It does not.

The jokes are not funny, the characters are bland, and the premise is tired. The action scenes are nothing short of excruciating and primarily wallow in the muck of derivation. The relationship between the two men is an awful rehash of countless previous teamings between cop and civilian. The character of Alex Scott is a mix of juvenile and imbecilic, and his childish lusting after Rachel Wright is simply embarrassing. Murphy's motor mouth offers the few moments of relief, but the days when his fresh edge could save a movie are long gone. McDowell and Janssen mail in their performances with insufficient postage to arrive in Budapest.

I Spy with my little eye a pathetic turkey.

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Movie Review: A Clockwork Orange (1971)

A glossy journey into a warped future consumed by sex and violence, A Clockwork Orange explores the edges of societal sanity. Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of the Anthony Burgess novella is an often provoking and sometimes repulsive movie experience.

In a deranged London of the future, Alex (Malcolm McDowell) leads a gang of violent youth who call themselves the Droogs. Alex loves the music of Beethoven (whom he calls Ludwig Van), and fuels tendencies for ultra violence by downing "milk plus", a spiked beverage that triggers immense aggressiveness. In just one wild night, Alex and his buddies viciously beat a homeless old man, engage in a brawl with a rival gang, and break into the swanky house of writer Frank Alexander (Patrick Magee). Alex repeatedly kicks Frank, crippling him, then proceeds to rape his wife (Adrienne Cori) while Frank is forced to watch.

In the following days, Alex fends off a challenge to his leadership from his own gang members, ignores threats from a probation officer, and enjoys a threesome with two girls he picks up at a music store. The Droogs then invade the house of the wealthy cat-woman (Miriam Karlin). The burglary spirals out of control, and Alex is captured by the authorities. A stint in prison will be followed by an aggressive rehabilitation program using an unconventional and controversial new treatment.

A Clockwork Orange is a pessimistic portrait of a society that has reached a dead end. From the highest levels of government down to the local youth engaged in routine thuggery, there is nothing worth salvaging. Middle class people like Frank and the cat-woman are just too easy to victimize, while Alex's lower-class parents are clueless and useless as a bulwark against his behaviour. With the politicians looking for any advantage they can gain from uncontrolled crime, the prison system seems to work, but then sends Alex on a journey of attempted rehabilitation that proves to be psychologically and physically on par with the damage caused by his crimes.

Kubrick presents a future London dominated by sex and violence, humans reverting back to the basics of the animal kingdom. Sexual imagery in the form of explicit statues and paintings surround Alex's world, and either in the form of violent rape or consensual playfulness, Alex receives sex on demand. The regular threats, beatings and fights that occupy the rest of his time are a normal part of his existence. Fuelled by the latest “milk” substance to supercharge male aggression, Alex thrives on ultra-violence, and he describes it with gleeful anticipation.

The film's frank depictions of sex and violence generated controversy, bans, X-ratings, condemnations and withdrawals. The shocks are more pronounced as Kubrick contrasts the ugliness of the acts with a beautiful aesthetic, and depicts crimes as artistic performances, best exemplified by Alex's recital of Singin' in the Rain while raping Frank's wife. The gang-to-gang fight is choreographed like a ballet and seems to leave no physical marks on Alex, as he cruises through a cool life unperturbed by the carnage left in his wake.

The Droogs are nattily dressed, with alluring make-up and classy bowler hats. Many of the interior sets are dramatically imaginative, the modernistic art design of the future emphasizing bulbous shapes, vivid colours and a glossy white. The soundtrack of classical music and vigorous crunchy chords adds to the unsettling violence-as-art aura. It is a doubtlessly attractive depiction of crime, finally coming to a sudden halt when Alex is caught and incarcerated.

Then he is just a young lost youth swallowed by the prison system, and soon the state turns the tables and the violence starts to flow in reverse, under the guise of treatment. And here A Clockwork Orange asks difficult questions about the efficacy of a cure that strips away the spirit and denies free will, the acceptability of a treatment when it destroys a man's ability to act naturally when faced with external stimulus. Even for a monster child, it is unsettling when individual emotions are sacrificed in favour of societal rights to recast a personality.

Malcolm McDowell delivers one of the performances of his career, cat-like in his movements and alertness, the streak of brutality barely hiding behind smiling eyes full of malicious intent. Alex is the future of many men once unchained, personal anarchy as a product of a decaying society, an evolution both impressive and terrifying.

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Movie Review: Easy A (2010)

A high school comedy that cleverly tones down the raunchiness in favour of wit, Easy A has a lot going for it: a bright premise, a likable Emma Stone, an astute commentary on promiscuity, and lots of laughs.

Olive Penderghast  (Stone) is a generally anonymous high school student. Trying to impress her flashier friend Rhiannon (Alyson Michalka), Olive lies and pretends that she has slept with a college student. Immediately the news spreads throughout the school and she gains an unwanted reputation as a tramp. Among the horrified classmates is Marianne (Amanda Bynes), the leader of a small group of strictly religious students. Marianne condemns Olive's behaviour but takes on the mission of leading her back to the right path.

Instead of listening to anything that Marianne has to say, Olive decides to put her fake reputation to good use: at a house party she pretends to have energetic sex with the gay Brandon (Dan Byrd), to put a stop to the bullying directed his way. Her notoriety as a slut enhanced, Olive finds herself branded as an adulteress, and finds her life mimicking the classic novel The Scarlett Letter, that she happens to be studying in the English class of Mr. Griffith (Thomas Haden Church). Olive starts to dress the part, and to cash in: loser boys start paying her to spread rumours that she slept with them, to help overcome their geeky images.

Despite not actually having had sex with anyone, Olive's high school life spirals totally out of control, and she finds herself embroiled in a marital sex scandal between Mr. Griffith and his wife (Lisa Kudrow). She needs to find a way to put a stop to all the rumours and regain some normalcy.

Easy A has fun asking all sorts of questions: what's the difference between reputation and reality? Is a promiscuous reputation worth maintaining? How long can a chain of lies hold together, and what happens when one lie too many overwhelms the entire structure?

Director Will Gluck brings the script by Bert V. Royal to life with a light touch and an emphasis on humour rather than the more common over-the-top bawdiness that has come to define the genre. Easy A avoids the cliches and tones down the jokes about body fluids, and instead achieves an irreverent, self-dismissive and breezy vibe perfectly suited to the emotional chaos that often accompanies the high school experience. At times, the film tilts into choreographed operetta territory, with repeated shots of exaggerated emotions sweeping through the school and all the students stopping to stare at Olive. It's flashy technique, but not always necessary.

Emma Stone emerges from the turmoil of high school travails with a burgeoning reputation as an emerging star with a deft comic touch, capable of carrying a film through a winning combination of natural appeal and self-depreciation. With the secondary cast filled out by the likes of Malcolm McDowell as the school principal, Stanley Tucci as Olive's dad and Patricia Clarkson as her mom, Easy A has quirky performances hiding behind every corner.

By delivering a fresh and engaging course on navigating the sexual waters of high school life, Easy A is a solid B+.

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Movie Review: Blue Thunder (1983)

A movie that exists for the primary purpose of showcasing helicopter acrobatics, Blue Thunder provides only a bit of fun as it plunders through the usual macho-cliches and government conspiracy puddles.

In the skies of Los Angeles, a police unit uses helicopters to support ground officers and help keep the peace. Veteran pilot Frank Murphy (Roy Scheider) is the local maverick, capable of exceptional flying tricks but haunted by his combat experiences flying in Vietnam. A sinister new chopper is brought in for testing: unlike the regular police helicopters, Blue Thunder is tricked out with a massive amount of weapons, technology and armor.

Murphy's old adversary, the slimy Colonel Cochrane (Malcolm McDowell), seems keen to bring the military-style Blue Thunder into police service, and soon there are hints at a conspiracy to manufacture civil strife in order to justify pushing the heavy-handed chopper into service. After his partner (Daniel Stern) is killed, Murphy gets help from his girlfriend (Candy Clark) and takes matters into his own hands, stealing Blue Thunder to expose the evil plot. 

The storyline of Blue Thunder is crass and conspiratorial, with basic performances to match from cast members who are capable of better, including Warren Oates in one of his last roles as Murphy's long suffering Captain. Director John Badham chooses efficiency over style, and is a lot more interested in the machinery than the people. The agitation by technology is enabled by high-tech and futuristic gizmos packed into Blue Thunder, in a triumph of impressive hardware over good storytelling. 

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