612-The Starfighters

Film Year:  1964
Genre:  Drama
Director:  Will Zens
Starring:  Robert Dornan, Richard Jordahl, Richard Masters
MST Season:  6

The Movie

In all my years of film-watching I’ve reached a point in my life were I find that I have to roll my eyes at anybody who watches the latest blockbuster and complains “That movie had NO plot!”  Internally I just think to myself, “Brother, you haven’t seen a movie without a plot.  And if you did, you would know it would look exactly like The Starfighters.”

Undoubtedly one of the worst movies ever featured on the show, The Starfighters is genuinely a movie about nothing.  Seinfeld has nothing on this movie, because that show “about nothing” at least has characteristics driving it.  The Starfighters shows jets refueling, refueling, flying, then refueling some more.  The characters, lead by future congressman Robert Dornan, do little to nothing in its runtime.  There are a few jetfighters on dates with little importance, one having a disagreement with his father about staying in the Air Force, and lot’s of technical talk.

It’s somewhat clear that the movie is meant to sell itself on the excitement of military flying, without actual combat.  It might even be taking advantage of interest in fighter planes by showing them off ad nauseam.  But even still, the movie serves no purpose.  There’s nothing exciting or artful about the film, except the fetishism of the Starfighter jet.  I can’t tell you what exactly the movie is supposed to be, because there’s little to no information on it.  Some theorize that it’s a military training film of some kind, while others state that it could have possibly been made to sell the featured aircraft.  Or it’s just a bad movie.

I can tell you one thing, if this film was meant to be instructional or some sort of advertisement, it would have been better off being fifteen minutes long.  Imagine if any of the educational shorts on the show ran ninety minutes, because that’s the feeling of The Starfighters in a nutshell.

The Episode

I’ve watched this episode several times in the past, and for the most part I have a hard time getting into it.  The movie is like watching paint dry (“like watching jets refuel” should be the new metaphor for boredom), and it hurts.  A lot.  Despite watching bad movies on a regular basis through this show, very few movies I’ve seen actually feel like they’re trying to attack my sanity such as this one.  To an extent I feel Mystery Science Theater did the world a disservice bringing this thing back into the spotlight.  I argue the importance of film preservation every chance I get, but The Starfighters can just sit in a garbage can and rot for all eternity for all I care.

Normally while watching an episode I do my best to follow both the movie and the riffing, but I am so tired of trying with this one that I just zoned out and concentrated on Mike, Servo, and Crow.  The movie is killing me, but how are THEY doing?  They’re surprisingly upbeat, to be honest.  They take this movie on with an earnest enthusiasm for it, almost as if they know if they let it get to them, they will fail.  I’m a bit pleasantly surprised that they don’t play this movie’s boredom up, which is something that Mike and Kevin do a lot of on Rifftrax with far less boring movies, to lame result.  They ride on (double entendre not intended) sexual innuendo for the extended refueling scenes, some of which work but get mostly tiresome by the end.  Unfortunate scenes of non-actors trying to sell what little story this movie has the guys entertained enough and they take aim on the amateurish production.  And of course, there is “poopie suit,” the lovable costume that fuels potty humor for pretty much the last ten minutes.

The host segments are good, featuring a run-on gag of Crow logging on to the “Information Superhighway” and having to call support.  One of the segments devoted to this is a rather disturbing “refueling” sequence in which Crow and Servo imitate the planes in the movie by having Crow shove his beak up Servo’s hoverskirt.  Also featured is a lovely Servo chorus song and Mike’s all-too-literal “debriefing” (“GET ‘IM!”), while the Mads have invented a mind reading device.  There’s really not a loser in the bunch.

The question I’m left lingering by the end of the episode is “Who wins?”  Is it the movie or the riffing?  The answer is “I don’t know.”  This episode is subjective, both parts painful and funny and it’s something of an all-out war.  Here’s the thing though, as the movie grows more monotonous, the riffing can get just as stale.  The sexual innuendo and “poopie suit” jokes are funny at first, but grow wearisome the deeper we get into them.  And even if I found the episode to have bright moments this time, it’s hard to tell just how much I’ll enjoy it down the road.  There have been quite a few episodes that I’ve watched thinking they were better than I remember only to have my opinion switch back upon the next viewing.  My gut tells me The Starfighters is one of those episodes.

Average

The DVD

The Starfighters jet to us in Rhino’s Volume 12 set, featuring solid video and audio.  The only bonuses are songs from the series in a Video Jukebox.