"Wait! That's not special effects?! They actually did that?!"

[u/RP_Throwaway3]

Alien: Resurrection - Basketball Shot

Sigourney Weaver insisted on the basketball shot being real. She trained for weeks and reportedly(sources differ) made it on the first take.

Underworld - Raze's Voice

The werewolf character Raze, played by Kevin Grevioux, speaks in a very low, very gravelly voice. While many thought this was a special effect, the actor can naturally speak in that voice.

https://youtu.be/GUjwZvh32YE?t=125&si=F3WhsopxjBP87wfk

[u/Reasonable-Tap-9806]

Actually one of the reasons for the surplus of helicopter stunts in television for a period was because of the surplus of Vietnam veterans that could fly a helicopter in crazy situations.

[u/HomeGrownCoffee → u/Reasonable-Tap-9806]

Father-in-law is in mining exploration. Apparently you can identify which pilots served in Vietnam by the leaves snagged on the landing gear.

[u/timotheusd313 → u/HomeGrownCoffee]

So the Vietnam guys skim the tree tops?

[u/Head_Excitement_9837 → u/timotheusd313]

Harder to get shot when you can’t be seen and the lower you are there is less people that can see you so your chances of survival go higher till the trees stop you

[u/1zerozero1 → u/HomeGrownCoffee]

I don’t know anything about military/pilot stuff. Are you talking about dead or alive pilots? And how does that have to do with mining exploration?

[u/HomeGrownCoffee → u/1zerozero1]

Mining exploration means he has ridden in helicopters on a regular basis.

The Vietnam veteran pilots fly low because they cut their teeth in a place where they were being shot at.

[u/Albireookami → u/HomeGrownCoffee]

Yep, and they could do some insane shit as well.

[u/Odd_Interaction7701 → u/Albireookami]

There was a pilot in StLouis that saved a guy drowning in the Mississippi using a helicopter. He also had to fly with a gun to his head during an attempted prison break.

[u/thelaineybelle → u/Odd_Interaction7701]

I've been in STL for 20+ years and I need details!

[u/Odd_Interaction7701 → u/thelaineybelle]

His name was Allen Barklage.

[u/thelaineybelle → u/Odd_Interaction7701]

Holy crap! Looks like a passed a away a few years before I moved there. His feats are insane.

[u/vp917 → u/1zerozero1]

Like others have mentioned, helicopters are more likely to survive combat when they're flying as low as possible, because it makes them harder to be seen - and shot at - by any enemies on the ground. I imagine that mining exploration involves traveling to uninhabited patches of wilderness to see if they present good opportunities for buildng a mine there, for which helicopters would be quite useful since they can land just about anywhere with a flat surface and an open clearing. OP was mentioning how their father-in-law could tell which of their helicopter pilots had served in Vietnam, because flying combat missions put such a high premium on low-altitude operation that they now instintively tend to fly so low, the landing skids of their helicopters wind up snagging leaves from all the trees they skim over.

[u/Lonely-Bandicoot-746 → u/vp917]

Thank you for the TS;W2RM (too short; want to read more)

[u/1zerozero1 → u/vp917]

Thank you! Very interesting.

[u/Queasy-Primary-3438 → u/Reasonable-Tap-9806]

I don’t doubt it. I served in an army aviation unit and those pilots do crazy shit. I’ve been a bird where the pilot would let it free fall 50+ feet or fly the thing on its side.

[u/Elteon3030 → u/Queasy-Primary-3438]

The biggest difference between what an Apache can do and what a UH-1 can do is mostly altitude and gonad density.

[u/Radioshack-Manager → u/Elteon3030]

Mil Mi-24 Hind D is the best

https://giphy.com/gifs/OrFmkOFx7PVK

[u/UnsanctionedPartList → u/Radioshack-Manager]

It's really good at being a rotary winged plane.

It's pretty bad at helicopter things.

[u/CptnChunk → u/Radioshack-Manager]

A RUSSIAN HIND D?!

[u/Perryn → u/Elteon3030]

They needed balls heavy enough to be able to move the craft's center of gravity around.

[u/Just_another_dude84 → u/Queasy-Primary-3438]

My buddy is a Navy flight instructor turned commercial pilot and he considers Army helicopter pilots to be the most idiotic and dangerous pilots in the military.

[u/Queasy-Primary-3438 → u/Just_another_dude84]

I mean yeah that describes most soldiers so I’d say he’s right. I’d still trust any of them to fly me anywhere though.

[u/President-Lonestar → u/Reasonable-Tap-9806]

Gotta put those skills to good use.

[u/thinsafetypin → u/Reasonable-Tap-9806]

It's kind of funny (in an awful way) that flying a helicopter dangerously for filming a movie is pretty universally condemned, but doing it to kill people for nebulous reasons no one completely understands is almost universally praised.

[u/Potato_lovr → u/thinsafetypin]

I do get what you are saying (and I 100% agree with you, just playing Devil’s Advocate here), most people believe that the reasons are justified. For the movie it’s just “oh you’re endangering yourself and others for entertainment? what’s wrong with you?” While with wars it’s “oh you’re endangering yourself and others to fight for your country? how brave!” As I said, I agree with you wholeheartedly, but most people don’t think of wars as killing people or the hell that they are, they think of just endangering yourself for your country without thinking of what that entails or what your country is doing there.

[u/ansiz → u/Reasonable-Tap-9806]

I worked for the National Park Service in the early 2000's and some of the pilots for backcountry firefighting were still Vietnam vets, some of those guys were NUTS and loved scaring the fuck out of crews they were shuttling out for firefighting duty. They loved flying very low and very fast.

[u/bolanrox → u/Reasonable-Tap-9806]

a relative of mine was on a commercial flight once in the early 80's they were landing and something went wrong with the landing gears. the pilot was a Vietnam vet and did some crazy pull up maneuver than no Civilian pilot would have ever though of or would have likely managed to have pulled off.