VIDEO ARCHIVES NOTES: This movie was discussed on the November 12, 2024 episode of the Video Archives podcast. 

Directed by William Graham (Change of Habit, Calendar Girl Murders) and written by Robert Boris (Steele Justice, Some Kind of Hero, Electra Glide in Blue, Doctor Detroit), Birds of Prey debuted on January 30, 1973 on CBS.

Harry Walker (David Janssen) is a war vet who is now flying a helicopter for the news, checking in on traffic. He finally gets the action he missed when he sees a bank robbery and learns from his former commander, McAndrew (Ralph Meeker), that the criminals — former Vietnam vets — have kidnapped teller Teresa Janice “T.J.” Shaw (Elayne Heilveil), who is due to be married in a few days.

Pilot Jim Gavin told Flying Magazine,  “Birds was a ground-breaking project. We took the helicopter out of its normal environment, put it in the city streets and did all the work with Janssen in flight for real. In fact, since he was a pilot Janssen did a lot of the flying, and I’d sit opposite him.”

If you watch this and wonder why Janssen is singing along to songs and his lyrics don’t match the songs, that’s because copyright issues caused the removal of the jazz standards that were originally in this movie.

As you can imagine, the IMDB trivia section for this movie is filled with deep cut helicopter facts.