micknascar There were a LOT of shows that reused footage. It was inexpensive to do so. Airwolf used some post production animation for some shots as well (the orange highlighted missiles for example. Airwolf was border line Sci-fi in the sense that, a rotary wing aircraft, in theory could NEVER achieve mach 1 or anywhere near it as it would shear off the rotor. According to the pilot ep (sometimes referred to as "Airwolf: the Movie", they figured out how to disengage the rotor to create less drag which would prevent that. There was even an episode where Airwolf sort of crashed. But they were able to fix it enough so it could fly, but not under the turbo power that allowed them to break the speed of sound. String even ordered up the 'turbos' but Dom admonished him, "NO String. The disengage isn't working." Technically, Airwolf shouldn't' have been able to fly or shoot missiles or chain guns or really ANYTHING that it could supposedly do. But the acknowledged some of it and it's Sci-fi (sort of) AND it's TV. Just roll with it.

bull-frog I remember loving this show when I was a kid. I thought the helicopter was the coolest thing I've seen. It was ultra high-tech for it's time. It could repel enemy fire, do all sorts of acrobatics in the air, and take down nearly anything in it's way. Now I go back and watch it today and am surprised how lousy this show really is. The casts members are hardly compelling, there are a lot of cheesy moments, and the fight scenes are incredibly fake looking. And nearly every ending has the same helicopter fighting crap with the obvious reuse of grainy low quality stock footage. Lot of the footages appear to date from the Vietnam War era.Airwolf has basically the same theme as Knight Rider, except the crime-fighting vehicle of choice is a helicopter instead of a car. After watching a few episodes, I found myself utterly bored. I do, however, love the theme music.

rogerbleep Airwolf The Movie, A variation on the original 2 part pilot, Yet the movie although shorter, does contain extra footage Unseen in the 2 hour pilot The pilot is much more of a pilot than the movie Where as a pilot movie is normally the same (2 parter combined) But the movie is actually a different edit with extras here and cuts there.Worth a look, even if you have the season 1 DVD set, I'd still pick up a copy of the "movie" It's still in some shops like virgin, Woolworths and the likes of mixed media stores, although it generally needs ordering, But it saves needing to buy online (as many of us still don't do or trust online shopping) but if you look around airwolfs in storesAirwolf was truly 1 of the 80's most under rated shows.A full size Airwolf is currently being re-built for a Helicopter Museum :) Info and work in progress pictures are over at http://Airwolf.org Also with Airwolf Mods for Flashpoint and Flight Sim Games It seams she's finally here to stay :)

Shawn Watson In the early 80's, cool vehicle shows seemed to become really popular. After the success of the Blue Thunder movie, producer Donald Bellisario nicked the idea and made a show of a big, black helicopter that could do loads of things like fly about the desert shooting and well...that's it. Come on! At least K.I.T.T. could talk.In the pilot episode, a brilliant scientist who designed the Airwolf chopper is flying around in circles on the Airwolf open day, showing off the chopper's limited skills to a bizarrely over-impressed audience of Government officials. But he does a 1-80 and guns them all down before nicking the chopper and flying off to Lybia to sell it to deranged Arabs who use each other for target practice.The man in charge of the Airwolf project, the cycloptic and simply named Michael 'Archangel' Coldsmith Briggs III, survives the attack and calls upon renegade chopper pilot Stringfellow Hawke (no relation to the London nite-club owner sex symbol) to nip over to Lybia and steal the chopper back. Sound like Iron Eagle I-VII? Hawke agrees, but only if they promise to find his brother who is still MIA in the 'Nam or something. This plot device is an obvious hook to churn out more seasons.And Airwolf did exactly that for a few years. Every week baddies would get together in a bit of desert outside of LA to do their evil deeds only to be thwarted by a cumbersome chopper filled with ludicrously dated equipment that in real life would fall out of the sky like a bus instead of buzzing around at a zillion miles per hour.Despite being one of the most low-concept shows to ever be a hit, I just find it boring. I like Ernest Borgnine but I can only assume he signed on for this show to pay off his loan-shark. I'm not too keen on Jan-Michael Vincent either, the man who (to quote Biff Tannen) took his life and flushed it completely down the toilet. He's not much of a hero and his character is too brooding to ever really connect with. Where are the fun characters like Face, Murdock and Sam Beckett? Those are characters you can root for.Universal studios did some cool shows in this part of TV history. But in regards to military antics and blowing stuff up, Airwolf is to The A-Team what Street Hawk was to Knight Rider. Donald Bellisario scored much bigger, more dynamic hits with shows like Quantum Leap and Murder, She Wrote. This one is too simple and too derivative.Even the music was dull. Sylvester Levay, the man who did droning scores to Cobra and Navy SEALS, made a totally crap theme for this show that has nothing on the classic A-Team tune. But I seem to be in the minority here as a limited edition score CD that was released a few years ago goes for absolutely ridiculous amounts of money on auction sites. It's just too synth for me, which dates it badly.I'm sorry to say that Airwolf just don't do nuthin' for me. Give me a crack commando unit or David Hasselhoff's Knight Rider afro any day.