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The Starfighters

The Starfighters (1964): 1 out of 10: The Starfighters is an infomercial about the Lockheed F-104 “Starfighter.” A fighter jet that, according to the infomercial, only keeps crashing so much because of pilot error. Seriously, the entire movie is stock footage of the plane, usually being refueled, with snippets of pilot “drama” consisting mostly of the future congressman Robert Dornan being told by his dad that he is a candyass cause he flies fighter jets instead of bombers. His father (who confusingly is a congressman in the movie) calls the base commander to complain his son is stuck in this dead-end top gun school instead of flying a bomber like a real man. I am at a complete loss how any of this improved the public’s view of the Lockheed F-104 “Starfighter.” I can tell you if I don’t see one more scene of an inflight refueling in my life I can die a happy man.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 Episode #612

You try to think of 120 minutes of stock footage riffs.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 Season 6 Episode 11: The Starfighters: 7 out of 10: Look, Mike and the robots do the best they can do with this. The skits are above average as is the riffing. But there is only so much you can do with an hour and a half of stock footage of a jet being refueled. They run out of jokes. Heck, they run out of jokes about running out of jokes.

The Starfighters is one of the more painful MST3K episodes, but this is not the fault of Mike, The Bots, or the writers. They stepped up to the plate and did better than one could expect. With such a boring movie, it just wasn’t enough.