Books by Sampo!

 

 

Support Us

Satellite News is not financially supported by Best Brains or any other entity. It is a labor of love, paid for out of our own pockets. If you value this site, we would be delighted if you showed it by making an occasional donation of any amount. Thanks.

Sampo & Erhardt

Sci-Fi Archives


Visit our archives of the MST3K pages previously hosted by the Sci-Fi Channel's SCIFI.COM.

Social Media


Episode guide: 612- The Starfighters

Movie: (1964) An air force pilot is eager to learn to fly the F-104 jet, and that means mid-air refueling.

First shown: 10/29/94
Opening: Crow tries to log onto the information super-highway
Intro: The Mads have cranial ports; but M&tB have Cowboy Mike’s barbecue sauce and it’s bold!
Host segment 1: While he and Tom reenact the refueling scene, Crow misses a call
Host segment 2: The bots “debrief” Mike
Host segment 3: The United Servo Academy Men’s Chorus performs
End: Crow finally logs onto the information super-highway, Mike reads a letter, the Mads are sharing their thoughts
Stinger: Lady elbows hubby
1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (243 votes, average: 4.43 out of 5)

Loading...

• This episode is especially near and dear to me. The movie is JUST. SO. BAD. The riffing is great, considering how little they had to work with, and the host segments are silly and endearing.
• This episode is included in The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection, Vol. 12
• Ah, 1994, the year that most people discovered the “online” world, and we began to hear a certain automotive metaphor. By the way, Al Gore didn’t invent the Internet, but he did coin the phrase “information superhighway.”
A personal story: In 1994 I was working for an electronics retailing trade magazine, and one of the big stories of that year was that some electronics retailers (anybody remember Circuit City?) were just starting to carry computers, though nobody (including my boss!) could really say why, exactly, a consumer would want one. And keep in mind that modems were often not standard equipment on many of the computers that were coming to market at that time. Having been online (mostly on Prodigy and AOL) for a couple of years at that point, I tried to explain that “going online” was going to be the killer app for these things. He had no idea what I was talking about and refused to let me do a story about it. He was fired a few months later.
• BTW — do NOT go to biteme.com. It appears to be doing nefarious things.
• In the comments, several experts explained the “looking for uart at fx1050” prompt–essentially it’s saying that there’s a hardware/software conflict, probably involving the modem.
• I love how Crow starts dancing slightly to the hold music as he waits.
• That’s Kevin as the first tech support voice. The next voice is Jim, I think, then the live voice is Paul.
• “It’s bold!!” became an immediate catchphrase.
• I sometimes note especially “naughty” riffs, but it would be impossible to do for this episode. There are dozens during the refueling scenes. My favorite is: “I think he has whiskey jet.”
• Non-spaghetti ball bumpers: datebook, beaker, film canister.
• I once showed this episode to my brother, who was an Air Force pilot. He hated it.
• There was much discussion in online MSTie forums about Crow and Tom, ahem, “refueling.”
• There’s an extreme closeup on the Crow’s phone at one point, and, based on the spray paint flecks on it, I assume it’s been laying around in the prop room.
• Notable theater moment: Mike and Servo get up and dance.
• Those bouncing bombs looked strange to me but several commenters explained that with low-level bombing you need time to get away and the bouncing is designed to give the pilot that time.
• Art riff: “Christo’s latest installa-[boom]…well, good.”
• Random riff: Crow just blurts out: “I hope they blow up Blossom.” (Glad they didn’t.)
• Callbacks: “Shut up Iris.” (The Beatniks), “People seemed to laugh more then:”(Stranded in Space), “Eegah” and “Watch out for snakes!” (Eegah).
• Then-current reference: Tailhook. Honorable mention: “Marilu Henner is replacing Vicky!”
• The topic of corn de-tassling also got a lot of discussion in the forums.
• Segment 2 is great, and I know that many female fans of Mike enjoyed the notion of him being debriefed (tighty whitey alert!)
• Servo does something they rarely do on the show — he takes note of the reel change alert in the corner of the screen and comments on it.
• As if the previous great segments weren’t enough, in segment 3 we are treated to a performance by the United Servo Academy chorus. Kevin wrote both the music and lyrics and I assume spent hours overdubbing himself into many-part harmony. The commenters explained that Mike is imitating Bill McGlaughlin from the local classical music radio show “St. Paul Sunday.”
• Somebody once dissected the lyrics of the song, indicating where every line was stolen from. This has links to almost all them. By the way, if you’d like to hear/see a very nice live version of the song, check out this now-legendary moment from the first JoCo Cruise.
• We get one of the show’s few Cheech and Chong references as Tom Servo imitates Sister Mary Elephant.
• As soon as the character on screen says “poopie suit,” that’s it. Off Tom and Crow go on a long string of scatology, and there’s no stopping them. Mike’s Joel-esque pleas for them to stop fall on deaf ears.
• The “Boogers” incident actually happened, according to the ACEG.
• There is no cast/crew roundup. Nobody involved in this movie worked on any other MSTed movie.
• CreditsWatch: Host segments directed by Jim Mallon. For interns David J. Belmont, Shannon McNeely and Peter Nicolai, this was the final episode they worked on.
• Fave riff: “You know, it’s all kind of dull until you remember how sharp those wings are.” Honorable mention: “Found him! He was under a pile of blankets in my room.”

187 Replies to “Episode guide: 612- The Starfighters”

Commenting at Satellite News

We are determined to encourage thoughtful discussion, so please be respectful to others. We also provide an "Ignore" button () to help our users cope with "trolls" and other commenters whom they find annoying. Go to our Commenting Guidelines page for more details, including how to report offensive and spam commenting.

  1. swh1939 says:

    Hands down, the best part of this superior episode is the host segment where Tom and Crow are re-fuleing. I always laugh out loud.

       4 likes

  2. Sampo, I am 100% with you about the duller the movie the better the riffs.

    Maybe that alone explains why I don’t like Rifftrax doing modern films which, by and large, may be pretty awful but are seldom dull. Mike, Joel and the bots are never better then when we get cars backing up needlessly before driving away, endless mountain climbing, or the reuse of stock footage over and over and over again.

    (While I’m not a huge fan yet of Cinema Titanic I think the 10 minute section at the end of Doomsday machine when absolutely nothing happens and the characters stand stock still is the funniest and most Starfighters moment of any of the RT or CT offerings).

       0 likes

  3. Wilford B. Wolf says:

    As former technical support, I know UART pretty well. In Windows machines, the UART settings have to deal with how the modem connects and interacts with your computer. Sometimes you have to fiddle with them to resolve timing conflicts.

    Yes, some bombs are designed to bounce first and then explode. They were used quite a bit in Viet Nam

       1 likes

  4. MPSh says:

    This is one of my favorite eiposdes, though I concede that the movie is about the dullest they ever did. The riffs on the odd faces and the even odder facial expressions of the Air Force officers were particularly hilarious (e.g. [Colonel] “That’s good” [Servo]: “Yet I feel hollow”).

    I didn’t find the information superhighway segments particularly funny, but I _loved_ the BOLD barbequeue sauce segment. (“BOLD? Why, hell yes, it’s bold!!!!”). Mike calling the mads “hairdressing sissies” was a nice touch.

    Favorite riff: “Yeah, there sure are a lot of girls here” “That’s great, because I…” “SHUT UP!!!”

       3 likes

  5. Kenotic says:

    They seemed to do a few “Please Land on/Blow up” People jokes. Yahoo Serious, Blossom, Bill Maher — and I’m not sure I disagree with any of those choices.

    IIRC, my taped copy has an ad for the instantly-forgotten TV Network “America’s Talking.” It was something of a TV talk network that eventually was canned and replaced with MSNBC.

       0 likes

  6. Preston P says:

    I adore this one.

    My favorite riff is during a badly-lit close-up of one of the actresses, Tom shouts “FRANKENHOOKER!”

    So many other classic bits here too… the poopie suit, “I gave them my anti-communist speech”, the sharp wings, ‘the wife’… And this is a movie where there is literally no conflict, no peril, no drama, NOTHING HAPPENS AT ANY POINT DURING THIS FILM. Seeing these guys work with a film like this is a sight to behold, because they’re still able to make it funny.

       5 likes

  7. I haven’t seen this episode yet, but I’m assuming the “bouncing bombs” are a continuation of a tactic started during WWII. The bouncing bomb used a timed fuse instead of a contact one, would dropped from very low level and if done right would bounce a few times before exploding. The timed fuse and the bounces would give the low flying plane that dropped the bomb time to get away from the explosion. This tactic was used on both land and water. The low level drop was I believe considered more accurate, even with the bounces, especially against smaller targets.

    And no, I have no military experience. Just a military history junkie. :mrgreen:

       2 likes

  8. Travis says:

    I showed this episode to my Dad about a month ago, who was in the airforce at around the same time as the film. He said that the starfighter planes were a joke, and were called the widow-makers. Apparently those small wings really made it difficult to pull out of a stall.
    He also felt that the movie had to have been bank rolled by the air force as a way to sell that plane, but I never found anything to promote that.
    Also, did anyone notice during the poopie suit scene in the pool there were a few guys in inflatable floaties? I guess you don’t have to know how to swim to be in the Air Force, but it sure helps your dignity.
    Then again…they were in poopie suits, so I guess dignity went right out the window…

       12 likes

  9. MattG says:

    This is my favorite episode of Season 6 because nothing happens in this movie. Yes, the duller the film, the better the riffs. Science fact! The host segments are great too, particularly the United Servo Academy Men’s Choir, plus the barbecue sauce skit was quoted endlessly among my friends and I back in high school (“But Clay, do you think it might be… bold?”) I could quote riffs all day, but I’ll control myself.

    “We’re gonna bomb ’em back to the Jazz Age!”

    (A plane flies overhead) “I can’t tell ya how happy that makes me.”

    “He’s broken the face barrier.”

    “He’s got a scorched face policy.”

    “Is your face ugly? Misshapen? Join the Air Force!”

    “It’s the new Air Force goofy bomb!”

    (“You took two minutes up there and that’s two minutes too long!”) “Should have been none minutes.”

       5 likes

  10. thomas says:

    The way too brief Poopie Suit had me rolling on the floor. I wish they would have brought a longer version to a host segment. Same with the brief Mitchell song where he’s running away from that guy’s house.

       0 likes

  11. PeterK says:

    UART stands for universal asynchronous receiver – transmitter, which is a chip that manages communications between the computer and peripheral devices like modems, printers and so forth. Hardware, in other words. In the old days it was set by DIP switches, where you had to set 8 or more little switches up or down. As for fx1050, I dunno though it might stand for an old Epson printer, in which case the error was that the computer couldn’t communicate with the printer, on a machine running CP/M or DOS.

    Whoa. I totally geeked even myself out. Poopie.

    Loved this episode. Watched it with my son who was only 7 at the time, and had some quick verbal dancing to do during the endless refueling sequence.

       4 likes

  12. Castleton Snob says:

    I love this episode. A young Robert Dornan. I always laugh at how every male in the movie finds the plain looking woman with the bad hair, Mary I think her name is, so amazingly attractive. Also the coffee references, and the refueling double entendre’s are excellent.

       0 likes

  13. rhr says:

    “So basically, according to themselves, the air force is a bunch of leather-faced, not-so-bright, heavy-drinking, dull-witted, speed freaks who poop in their pants and can’t make it with women, right?”

       5 likes

  14. bartcow says:

    I love this one, but my wife hates it. She has a low threshold for movies that are TOO bad. I’ve tried explaining the “worse the movie, the better the episode” theory to her, but to no avail. Oh well.

    We have a good friend who grew up in Iowa, and she really appreciated the nasally “love interest” describing corn de-tassling.

       2 likes

  15. Saint Rude says:

    Bob Dornan’s character’s father is (unintentionally) hilarious, too. The Liberace jokes are pretty appropriate.

    “Put Dad on the line!”

    And I laughed harder at the Crow/Tom refueling sequence than any other host segment. Ever.

       2 likes

  16. Cubby says:

    As someone who grew up in Iowa, (Servo: Oh, so you’re stupid!) I must admit that my first job was as corn detassler. We never hyphenated it.
    (I later moved up to spraying beans – where you sat on a jury-rigged row of chairs in front of a tractor, armed with a spray-gun connected to a vat of herbicide and rode up and down the rows, spraying chemicals on the weeds. Only the weeds, as the herbicide was a broad-spectrum killer, or you’d kill the soybean plant. You did want to know this, right?)

    I always loved the dairy farmer response, “His name’s GEIN!” So enthusiastic.

       4 likes

  17. underwoc says:

    I used to be an Air Force officer, but I was too blind to join the Fighter pilot club. I was sent to a bunker in Montana to watch nuclear missiles do nothing. I LOVE seeing those jet jockey snobs look stupid in this film. (On the other hand, I also love the scene in WarGames with the missileers – “Turn your key, Sir!”)

       5 likes

  18. Kris says:

    Holy God, I love this episode. It’s just so filthy (Intentionally? Who knows?)and pointless and bizarre. I think I described it over on the Discussion Board as “plane porn.”

    “Is your face odd and misshapen? Join the Air Force!”

    Also, it needs to be said: Kevin’s performance during the United Servo Academy Choir of A Capella Robots or whatever the heck it’s called is just divine. One of my all-time favorite songs in the series.

       5 likes

  19. Grumpy says:

    I love the fact that in this film the most exciting thing that happens is a rainstorm… which happens off-stage.

    They don’t even show us the freaking rainstorm. They telephone in the rain.

       5 likes

  20. Grumpy says:

    Oh, and I only saw this episode for the first time when it came out on DVD. It was then that I finally figured out what the source of the music they would hum (from the refueling sequences). I had somehow thought it was Star Trek TOS stock incidental music they were humming.

    I now often find myself humming that music at inappropriate times.

       1 likes

  21. Cabbage Patch Elvis says:

    Hell yes, it’s bold! I dig this one A LOT. It’s certainly an ugly piece of film, and it seems that they didn’t hold back in the riffing. They get pretty brutal at times, which just adds to my enjoyment.

    He’s broken the face barrier!”
    “Our mission: to put talc on that man’s butt!”
    “I love his sweaty butt.”
    “Your father and I are worried, son.”
    “Promise you’ll call, over.”

       2 likes

  22. 1 adam 12 says:

    I also saw this one for the first time on DVD, although it was already legendary among my circle of friends before I met them. Something about going to sleep during refueling, waking up to more refueling, nodding off, waking up to EVEN MORE REFUELING, and attempting to convince others that the movie was a Mobius strip, will do that.
    Fave riff: “So basically, according to themselves, the air force is a bunch of leather-faced, not-so-bright, heavy-drinking, dull-witted, speed freaks who poop in their pants and can’t make it with women, right?”

    (#13 rhr got it exactly right.)

       1 likes

  23. Spector says:

    One of my all-time favorite episodes! I served in the Canadian Forces and spent four years on an air force base so this one had special meaning for me.

    Great host sequences. Loved Crow’s adventures with tech support, Cowboy Mike’s Own Original Red Hot Rico-cheeeeettttt (pow, pow, pow, ka-pwing!) BBQ Sauce, Crow and Servo “debriefing” Mike and of course the United Servo Men’s Academy hymn, which highlights Kevin Murphy’s amazing voice range.

    As for the movie, on its own this bad boy would be duller than dishwater, which just made it great fodder for Mike and the ‘Bots. So many great lines as many folks have already posted. Here’s a few more:

    “Bob Dornan? The Congressman? What, Rush Limbaugh wasn’t available?

    “Bob Dornan, Wild at Heart”.

    “This week on the American Sportsman, Clint Eastwood really goes after the elk in the MacKenzie Range”.

    “Not an ac-tor”.

    “But it’s poopie-suit day!”

    “You’re lookin’ mighty chipper. Somebody get re-fueled over the weekend?”

    I loved the riffing during the refueling sequences, which I consider among the best riffing sequences in the show’s history. Every one was a gem and the first time I watched this I nearly had a “poopie suit” as I was laughing that hard.

    And of course, the “poopie-suit” songs. Yes, it was childish but damn it was funny. Just goes to show the range of the Best Brains crew.

    A five star episode in my opinion.

       2 likes

  24. Adding my love for “Yeah, there’s lots of girls around here…” “Well that’s great sir, because…” “SHUT UP!!!”

    Also, I love the long dull speech Bob Dornan gives his main squeeze about why he can’t “buzz” her house, and Crow’s riff on it “Well… it was just a joke, I didn’t really think you were gonna do it!”

    “Non-stop telephone action!”

    And man, did that fey congressman get irritating or what? Did he have ANYTHING to do besides call the general and ask about his kid? Shouldn’t he, you know, be actually WORKING?

    It’s also interesting hearing them mention “Nellis”. I grew up in Vegas and knew Nellis AFB quite well. And, like the girl from IOWA, I thought it seemed like a really effeminate name to call an air force base.

       1 likes

  25. MikeH says:

    The most utterly pointless so full of nothing film I think that has ever been put to film, and THE funniest. Mike and the bots are in top form riffing on NOTHING and making it so damn funny. All the people are odd looking, except ol Bob Dornan. I am a bit surprised they didn’t make any political fun of him, but maybe all for the better, maybe cause he was the most normal of the looking. Everyone else from George Goober Lindsay, Frankenhooker, the big faced commander and Liberace. Plus rubber bombs, missles hitting white rectangles, giant jarts, hours of refueling over mountains, suggested plane crash in a non-existant thundestorm, possible landing gear failure, lots of snuggling, and best of all: POOPIE SUIT!! Along with the poopie suit song. This movie has it all.

    Tom: “yes the wife is gonna be happy to see the me”
    Crow: “we’re gonna have the sex!”

       1 likes

  26. R. Totale says:

    “our job: spray talc on that man’s butt!”

       2 likes

  27. Joseph Nebus says:

    I believe this movie is the unspeakably awful ripoff of X-15, starring Charles Bronson, Mary Tyler Moore, and the X-15 research spaceplane in a movie that has a roughly analogous plot in which really not a lot happens, but has some great spaceplane footage.

    This movie was, quite truly, the centerpiece of my friend John’s bachelor party. A year or so earlier he’d visited me in Singapore, and I had to work one day, and he spent it watching various MST3K episodes I had. (As it happens I hadn’t got around to watching this one yet.) He was so enraptured with the barbeque sauce sketch that he was quoting it endlessly for pretty much the rest of his life. Above all else he wanted Cowboy Mike shown to the guests of his bachelor party [1].

    Well, I was happy to bring it along and show it, although I was mystified that he talked about how it was fine to turn it off after the host sketches. What I didn’t realize was that he had fallen asleep swiftly and soundly after the movie started so he had never seen the episode before. Happily, he’s (among other things) an amateur pilot, as were several friends there too, and everybody was a MiSTie of some order so the experiment turned into a grand experience for everyone and a new cherished memory to go alongside the Poopie Suits.

    [1] Since everyone attending was a touch too mature for traditional bachelor party activities the night turned out mostly to be one of movie- or TV-show-watching. Particular highlights included MST3K, Danger Mouse (to the real delight of those who’d come from Commonwealth nations) and the mind-tripping 1914 silent His Majesty, The Scarecrow Of Oz which you have got to see because you won’t believe it.

       9 likes

  28. Ben says:

    Probably has the most sexual references than any other episode I’ve seen. It’s a classic!

       0 likes

  29. Dave says:

    The voice Mike Used to introduce the “United Servo’s Men Academy” skit, I believe he also used in Episode 913 “Quest of the Delta Knights” to introduce Servo singing yet again. Does anyone know who he is imitating?

       0 likes

  30. I went to a spicy foods convention here in Albuquerque a couple weeks ago, which prominently featured various barbeque sauces. So pretty much all through it, I was stifling a laugh, thinking, “BOLD?!? HELL, YES, IT’S BOLD! IT’S SO BOLD, IT’S RATED UNSAFE FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION!”

       9 likes

  31. Meadows says:

    “Now available in new EXTRA BOOOOLLLLLDDD!!!”

    Probably my favorite, most-quoted Mike segment ever.

    And a great all-around episode.

       2 likes

  32. jjb3k says:

    I introduced a friend to MST3K once, and it took a few episodes before he really got into the show, but once he saw this one and the Cowboy Mike’s Own Original Red Hot Ricochet Barbecue Sauce skit, he was hooked. He and I still frequently bellow “BOLD? Well, hell yes it’s bold!” at the top of our lungs for laughs. “How bold is it? Bold enough to bulldog yer tasebuds and hog-tie yer tongue!”

    This episode is one of those ones where there isn’t a single bad riff in the entire thing. I think the secret is that there’s just so much nothing in the movie that it let the Brains just fire away without having to follow any plot or character development. It’s the same reason why they always seem to knock it out of the park with long dance scenes (see “The Creeping Terror” for a prime example).

    The scene where Senator Wikowski calls Colonel Hunt is just a non-stop barrage of great riffs (“Sarah?”, “And his face springs into action!”, “My brother George…”, “They were in BTO?”, etc.). In fact, any scene with that guy in it is pure gold. “My dad died in the war, who was that?”

    For some reason, “Lt. Hebe”/”Lift Here” makes me laugh so hard I cry. Every damn time I see it.

       7 likes

  33. Neil says:

    In my top five of episodes of all time!
    Perfect host segments.
    Perfectly bad movie to riff.
    But what makes me love this episode so much, I think, has too do with being a navy brat, and spending too much time growing up on base watching movies like “Starfighters” which I,m almost sure was produced by the military, just like alot of other movies I remember seeing starring guys with strangly shaped heads.

       3 likes

  34. John Seavey says:

    It’s a great episode, no question, but I do have a part of me that wishes that the “poopie suit” scene had come at the beginning of the film instead of the end. Because while refueling is great, the poopie suit is one of those riffs you can build a film around. (Like “This is where the fish lives,” for example.)

       0 likes

  35. The Professor says:

    I would like to add that out of all the movies ever done on MST3K, this one has my favorite music. I’m a real sucker for The Association and Ray Coniff (who, if i remember correctly, both get mentions in the riffing) so the music played during the refueling scenes is just golden to me. “Baaaa ba ba baaaaa. Baaaa ba ba baaaAAAAAH!”

       4 likes

  36. M "C'MON, STEAKS, YOU WANT SOME?!" Sipher says:

    Mike’s face contorted with rage as he screams “BOLLLLLD?! WELL HELL YES IT’S BOLD!!!” remains one of my all-time favorite MST moments ever.

    This episode, for me, is a prime example of rock-solid riffing overcoming a movie that has little to go on. It helps a LOT that the filmmakers were apparently so damn convinced that all this was fascinating and exciting. I don’t get the impression they felt they were padding the film out at all, but stuffing in tons of action and suspense and whitebread sexiness. It’s almost endearing. Almost.

    The rigidity of the film is countered by the SOL crew’s far more relaxed approach… and the sheer level of dirty riffs doesn’t hurt. Trace does a disturbingly good bedspring imitation.

       5 likes

  37. adoptadog says:

    Terrible, pointless movie – GREAT episode! Especially love Cowboy Mike’s Barbeque Sauce, and the United Servo Men’s Choir. My husband thought he’d use this to doze to one day, but ended up watching it & laughing a lot instead.

    “Kaboom, kaboom, yadadadadadadada…”

       4 likes

  38. H says:

    This is a great episode, I think we all agree. I particularly love the internet jokes. We had had internet for a year or two then too. Movie is such a gold mine. Host segments hit all the right points and refueling is one of the all time greats. And the barbeque sauce sounds like something I’d be into.

       2 likes

  39. Roman Martel says:

    Like a few others here I didn’t see this one till it came out on DVD. It quickly became one of our favorites.

    A lot of people are pointing out how nothing happens in the film (they even mention it in the Colossal Episode Guide), but seriously enough happens in the film to create seeds for jokes and I think that is the big difference bewteen this and “Monster A Go-go” which also has nothing in it, and somehow defeats Joel and the bots with it’s crushing emptiness.

    Here the refueling, the poopie suits, the strange faces, the bizarre dinner scene, the whitebread romance all provide the writing team plenty to work with. I think it also shows how good they got, that another movie about Nothing actually turned into one of the best episodes.

    And yes the host segments are just as classic. the BBQ suace sketch has now made it impossible for either me or my wife to pass any sauce in the supermarket without contorting our face and yelling It’s BOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLDDDDDDDDDD!
    I think we’ve scared a few fellow shoppers that way. :lol:

       3 likes

  40. Kitty Reed says:

    Dreadful dreadful movie. The true anti-movie.

    Great host segments and riffing. Love this one.

       2 likes

  41. John M. Hanna says:

    This movie had so much nothing happening in it it could have been called “Andy Warhol’s Starfighters” (Warhol being famous for making films which are devoid of action).
    Thanks to this film I now know more about corn detassleing than I ever wanted to.
    Also, does the Air Force still use the term “poopy suit”?

       3 likes

  42. Cabbage Patch Elvis says:

    Professor – they also reference Sergio Mendes (Sergio Mendes and Refueling ’66?). Good stuff.

       3 likes

  43. Grumpy says:

    BTW, I’d seen references to Poopie Suits for a long time on MST3k fora before seeing this episode. I’d always sort of assumed that a character has garbled a line and it sounds like “poopie suit” or that there was a suit that was the color of poopie or something of that kind. Never dawned on me that it would come from the movie itself and would be a suit for making poopie… Sheesh.

       1 likes

  44. Professor Gunther says:

    “Is your face odd, misshapen? Join the Air Force.”

    Five stars all the way! Watching this “movie” is, of course, like staring into the void. And I’ve always loved how the music becomes all emotional toward the end–as if that will make us care! “Wow! Bob Dornan’s character is truly Shakespearean in its development. Wait a minute; that’s just the music.”

    The skits are outstanding!

       2 likes

  45. This Guy says:

    @29:
    I still think that in both instances, Mike is imitating Bill McGlaughlin from the classical music radio show St. Paul Sunday. The tone of voice is very similar, and it has the local connection.

       0 likes

  46. Kenneth Morgan says:

    I still can’t understand why the USAF would presumably spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars developing an important piece of fighter pilot equipment, then give it the unbearably stupid name of POOPIE SUIT!

    Regarding the refueling scenes, check out the movie “Strategic Air Command” with Jimmy Stewart. It, too, has an air-to-air refueling scene that, I figure, “Starfighters” ripped off, even down to the same type of music. “Strategic Air Command” is a better movie, though; it has actual actors.

    My favorite riffs are after the downed pilot is “rescued”.
    MIKE: It was terrible! I had to eat a bug and drink my urine!
    SERVO: But you only had to wait ten minutes!

       0 likes

  47. MikeK says:

    Another great one. Season Six really was a great season for MST3K.

    The Starfighters is an odd movie with an odd message. I know it doesn’t seem to be about anything, but there must some purpose to it.

    I think it is this: fighter jets > bombers.

    Outside of that it really has no point.

    The double Nintendos during the refueling scene are hilarious. The creepy re-enactment by Tom and Crow is funny as well. It’s still creepy though, like when Servo shoved himself down Gypsy’s throat during The Creeping Terror.

       3 likes

  48. Snelg says:

    More bouncing bomb stuff than you probably care about:

    Wikipedia article

    The Dambusters, a British WWII squadron that made the bombs famous

    Beer commercial parodying the movie “The Dambusters”

    To be honest, I first learned about the bouncing bombs from that beer commercial :???:

       0 likes

  49. Stickboy says:

    I want to join just about everyone else in saying that when I first saw this on DVD, having read about it in the Guide and wondering what a film wherein nothing happens would look like, this quickly–almost immediately–became one of my favorite episodes. I, too, love Mike’s facial expressions during the Barbecue skit. And Servo’s song is a classic.

    About Crow’s computer: remember when “multi-media” was the hot phrase of the day? Even then I knew all it really meant was it could have pictures and sound, but it showed up everywhere as a marketing gimmick. Just silly.

    The poopie suit song floors me every time.

       1 likes

  50. Jacob says:

    This is yet another top notch epsiode. I (like most people) saw this when it first came out on DVD, and thought this was one of the funniest episodes I’ve ever seen. My favortie riff in this episode is when you see one of the starfighters flying just above ground and Crow says: “This is high enough for me, thank you very much.” I also like it when you first see the bouncing bomb and when it lands Crow says: “It landed on Pigpen”

       1 likes

Comments are closed.