The Skydivers

Little could directors like Coleman Francis, Roger Corman, and Hal Warren imagine that their catastrophic pieces of celluloid excrement would, one day, bring so much joy to future generations. With the help of Mike, Joel, and a couple of robots, of course. Make no mistake, "Skydivers", along with "Plan 9 From Outer Space", "Manos, the Hands of Fate", etc... represents film-making at its lowest level. Lousy directing, flimsy storyline, complete lack of character development, crappy lighting, botched sound, laughable continuity, and, what might be the worst acting I've ever seen all make for a uniquely surreal experience.

While on the subject of acting, I, and other reviewers, are not kidding when we say that every actor seems to be reading from cue cards. After enduring "Skydivers", I immediately watched another MST3K masterpiece, "Sidehackers". As bad as "Sidehackers" was, Ross Hagen (Rommel, "I read your book, you magnificent S.O.B.!") was Laurence Olivier compared to Anthony Cardoza. So, in its raw form, I would highly recommend avoiding this hack job at all costs. However, if you're a fan of MST3K, this is actually one of the best episodes I've seen.

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?

Joke...Joke....Joke!!!!!

Coleman Franchise was a bad film maker. This is more -- then ever -- apparent in Red Zone Cuba. Wow this movie was slow and out-of-order.

But back to this movie....

It is called The Skydivers, and this is no clever name either. It is about skydivers and almost every scene is filled with, and here is the fun surprise, SKYDIVING!!!! What fun to see people skydiving repeatedly.

Though the idea of seeing skydivers is fun at first, Coleman Franchis quickly flips the idea into overkill! One scene was enough. But to have so many scenes of the same thing?

Like everyone else has said, the actors look like they're reading off of cue cards. And it shows BIG time. There are no real emotions shown by any of the actors, though the emotion shown for the guy who hits the ground(I think that the guy would have made more of an impression in the ground, not just land so neat and organized) is hilarious.

The story is about what the title suggests...SKYDIVERS. Nothing really interesting. We get something about a guy's ex-lover wanting to kill him for breaking up with her. But this is quickly pushed aside for as much skydiving as can be put in one movie.

The only way this movie is decent is when it is being slammed by Mike Nelson, Crow T. Robot, and Tom Servo. Please do not view this movie in it's normal platform, unless you want to see lots of People Skydiving.

You can find the MST3K version on Mystery Science Theater 3000 volume 1.

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.

It isn't fair to call "Skydivers" a train-wreck of a film, when the motif revolves around skydiving...so I'll have to call it a "plane crash" of a movie.

Technically speaking, this is actually the "best" of the Coleman Francis trilogy. "Beast Of Yucca Flats" has a plot that makes even less sense than this and has even more non-sequiteurs. "Red Zone Cuba" features far too much of Francis himself to be even remotely watchable. So if you HAD to watch a Coleman Francis movie, you should choose "Skydivers". Which is like saying that if you had to jump off a building, you should jump off the top floor of The "Stratosphere" tower instead of the Sears Tower or the Empire State building because the weather in Las Vegas is better.

Where "Beast" was a failed science fiction/horror film and "Red Zone Cuba" was a Bizarro World combination of a "Road" flick and a "Buddy" flick, the central concern of "Skydivers" seems to be sexual politics. I think. I can't really explain why else the two morons who want the airstrip owner dead put acid on his chute, so I'm pretty sure that sexual politics was involved. Highlights of "Skydivers" include...oh wait, don't tell me...um...uhhh, well parts of "Skydivers" that don't actually shut your cerebral cortex down include: the skydiving footage (because no one has to act), the impromptu party that breaks out on the airstrip for no apparent reason, (it brings the movie to a screeching halt, and that's a good thing), the guitar driven songs contributed by Dwane Eddy tribute band "the Night Jumpers", and the scene where everyone hunts down the killers and shoots them dead without benefit of a trial. (After all, they were fleeing the scene, so they HAD to be the killers, right???) Oh, and the scene where the jilted lover "Suzy" trades sex for the acid to put on the chute. And the long fistfight scene that tries to go "The Quiet Man" one better. And the repeated references to drinking coffee. ("Coffee?? Gee, that's better than SEX!!!")

Wait, those aren't highlights (well, the Dwayne Eddy songs are good). So this movie doesn't actually have anything to recommend it. Except for the fact that it is so unintentionally hilarious in its ineptness that it makes a fascinating example of what happens when people without talent insist on trying to make movies.

The MST coverage of "Skydivers" is one of their best episodes - it is just so ripe for the picking (and the kicking) that Mike and the Bots have a field day with it. So if you have some morbid urge to see this film, seek out the MST3000 version.