MST3K: Episode 609 - The Skydivers

I'm watching all of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes in order. More about that here and here.

Episode 609: The Skydivers

First aired: Comedy Central on 27 August 1994
Availability: Amazon DVD (Volume 1), Rhino (Volume 1/out of print)

It's a bad, bad film!

Now that we're fully into the Mike Era of MST3K, I expected there'd be more shows that I'd seen. However, I'm finding that I didn't see nearly as many as I thought.

This one, for instance. I own the DVD, as well as the VHS tapes, but never watched it all the way through until I watched it as part of this "watch 'em all" project. I don't know why. I actually liked the episode.

When I finally got around to watching it, that is. Took me long enough.

The episode has a short film, "Why Study the Industrial Arts?" Why, indeed.

The short film was inspirational.

Crow has a shop class mishap.

The short inspired a Host Segment with Tom and Crow having a bad day in shop class. Tom didn't accomplish a lot because his arms don't work. Crow? He cut himself in half.

The riffing of the short was really, really funny.

The movie? Really, really bad.

The Skydivers featured skydiving. And not much else.

Anthony plays Harry and Kevin plays Beth, and that's not what it sounds like, and Harry and Beth run a skydiving service, but aren't faithful to each other, because Harry's seeing Suzy and Beth kinda likes Joe and then there's Frankie who's got the hots for Suzy, and he fights Harry over Suzy but Harry wins but promises to stop seeing Suzy, so Suzy wants revenge against Harry for agreeing to Frankie's demands and gets Frankie to help her sabotage Harry's parachute so he'll die and he does and Frankie and Suzy run away but the FAA guns them down, so Joe leaves and Beth leaves but they' don't leave together. The end.

I've never jumped out of a perfectly good airplane. I've never jumped out of broken airplane. I've never jumped out of an airplane.

Tom Servo suddenly has a craving for cupcakes.

It looks like fun, but it's not the kind of fun I want to do. Watch? Sure. Participate? No way.

While the shots from the skydiving are always fun to watch, only a few minutes of the 75 that make up the film are skydiving shots. The rest of the movie? Forgettable.

Actually, it's not forgettable. You want to forget it, but can't. But you try anyway.

Thankfully, the riffing is on target. Otherwise, it would be unbearable.

By the way, this is the first Coleman Francis film that MST3K took on. He wrote and directed three films. MST3K did all three. And this is probably the best of the lot. That tells you something. And it doesn't tell you anything good.

Oh, and this is the first of several consecutive commercial releases. Of the last 10 episodes we've looked at, eight have never been commercially released. My copies are fan copies. This episode is the first of eight straight commercial releases. Season Six is the last season where the majority of episodes have been releases, until we get to Season Ten.

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