The Skydivers

Never before in the annals of cinematic history has there risen a film so intensely stupid that it makes Jeff Foxworthy's "You Might Be A Redneck" monologues look staid and deeply philosophical.

This film stars a thin, joyless, gray man who runs a skydiving school with his large-haired, joyless, gray wife who, it seems, might be cheating on him. It's just as well, because I think he may have also been cheating on her. Really, I don't remember. I just finished watching it, and I cannot remember a single thing about it, other than the fact that a lot of it was gray.

A gray friend of the man is recently released from prison or something, and he comes to work at the school as the gray man's airplane mechanic. A romance of some kind may or may not have sparked between the gray friend and the gray man's gray wife - although my memory of it is a bit hazy - and gray woman and gray friend hatch a plot to kill the gray man (or something like that).

Stuff happens, including reels and reels of stock footage showing people jumping out of planes (gray), as well as a huge dance party inexplicably taking place on the tarmac where the gray man parks his gray plane, complete with various other gray people and music performed by, I would assume, gray musicians. (They were never shown.) The movie ends when somebody dies, but not before Coleman Francis, the evil demon behind this film, as well as the abysmal "Red Zone Cuba", makes his standard bland appearance, looking for all the world like an angry Curly Howard from the Three Stooges, and probably thinking himself pretty clever because of this ridiculous Hitchcockian tribute to himself.

As the title of this review states, I want to hit this movie, over and over again, to quell the feeling that Coleman Francis and his minions have consumed my soul, and I am left a dark, bitter husk of a man.

But maybe that's just me.

Very easily one of the most bungling and unskilled attempts at film making in history. Sound synch is solved by showing other people listening as one person speaks, or just doesn't synch at all. The plot is a real head-scratcher, leaving one wondering who this was supposed to be about, what was the point, who was the beatnik with a chicken under his arm? Everyone appears to be reading directly from cue cards, voices droning on and on, no emphasis or vocal-inflection for these people posing as actors. Skydiving scenes are just stock footage intercut with close-ups of the actors hanging in a soundstage. Coleman Francis has a knack for throwing something new at you, but in a good way. To think that he actually wasted paper on this is dumbfounding in itself. However, the entire film is so badly done, it's quite funny. Any version is funny and worth the watch just to see such a bad movie can actually be made, but I suggest the MST3K version, as it is absolutely priceless.

I was cruising IMDb and was checking out the Bottom 100 because I wanted to see if "Manos" was given a boost after the Entertainment Weekly story. What a pleasant surprise to see that "The Skydivers," the movie that I said was the worst I'd ever seen when I rubbernecked it twenty five years ago, has taken its rightful place at the top…I mean, the bottom.

For a while, I thought perhaps the WOAT tag should have gone to a woeful idea for a teen comedy called "Nice Girls Don't Explode," starring archetypal pretty-girl-trapped-by-a-nerd's-psyche Michelle Meyrink, but then I found my Beta cassette of "Skydivers" and came to my senses.

You've heard of "shoestring budgets" – this movie had a dental floss budget. Everything you need to know about the lack of cash Coleman Francis suffered is in an early scene in which a car – a junker with what looks like latex paint strokes across it – pulls up at the airport. As the car stops, the passenger door flies open. The driver gets out, there is dialogue I can't remember (but I'm sure it was as inane as the infamous coffee line), and the driver and another person get into the car. The driver gets in the driver's seat, the other person gets in the passenger's seat, closes the door, and sticks his arm out the open window to hold the door closed! Francis didn't have a friend who could lend him a car with properly operating doors?

Even the centerpiece of the movie – the skydiving footage – is ridiculously inept. And "Skydivers" has the most unconvincing love scene on celluloid – there's even less chemistry between those two than there was between Hayden Christiansen and Natalie Portman in "Revenge of the Sith." At least "Manos" made a lame attempt at titillation with the ladies wrestling in lingerie.

It's a shame I have to give "Skydivers" one star in order to vote (especially when there are apparent "Manos" anti-fans who are giving "Skydivers" 10 stars). When it comes to bad movies, "Skydivers" is back where it belongs: Number One with an ICBM.

Wow! Was this movie _action packed_ or what! You've got skydiving, mate swapping, skydiving, meaningful glances, skydiving, intrigue, skydiving, coffee (or broad hints thereof leading to an exciting scene where coffee actually is consumed), skydiving, sexual tension, skydiving, painful deaths, skydiving, curious onlookers, skydiving, a cool jazz guitarist playing his Rickenbacker archtop with Mel Bay-like aplomb, skydiving, butt shaking, and (of course) skydiving!

Among the cast of hundreds of thousands,the truly lovely Kevin Casey is a standout as Beth (she just gets prettier every day, doesn't she?).

After suffering through "Red Zone Cuba", I approached this Coleman Francis ouevre with some trepidation, but found myself genuinely entertained. Don't let my seemingly flippant tone fool you. I really did like this movie.

When I was a kid I used to watch the the parachuters do their thing from the back yard of my grandma's house in Lake Elsinore. I often thought that I would make a movie about skydivers. Who wouldn't want to see footage of skydivers floating gracefully through the air over and over again. It turns out that Coleman Francis beat me to it. I mean this is the definitive skydiver movie. No other movie gets into the heart and soul of what it means to be a skydiver. The triumph, the tragedy, the love triangles, the wild parties. My heart was pounding when Beth's plane had engine trouble while she was taxiing down the runway. Would she be able to simply not take off? Pure drama! Then there is the sinister plot of the acid in the parachute! This movie is a must see for all skydivers who own a small airport and are cheating on their wives. Only the drunken haze of Francis' vision could bring us all of this. Coleman Francis' bio says he died of heart disease. Why am I not surprised?