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
(243 votes, average: 4.43 out of 5)
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• 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.”
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Why was the father so upset at his son?
I read something a few months ago and thought, “Oh, that’s what all that folderol in Starfighters was about!” A bomber pilot is the boss of the plane, which includes several other men. A fighter pilot is only the boss of himself (unless he gets to be squadron leader). Businesses looked more favorably on former bomber pilots, rather than fighter pilots, for executive positions because they’d had executive experience already. So in Witkowski, Sr.’s mind it’s probably: obligatory military experience, business executive experience, stint in Congress…and, dare we say it?…the White House!
The funny thing about Senator Dad is that, as it turns out, the F-104 was actually kind of unsafe, even for a fighter jet capable of flying at Mach 2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-104_Starfighter
I caught this episode as part of a Turkey-day marathon; my tape had run out, and I abandoned the family to run down and check what was happening on the MST marathon. I turned on the TV and…refueling. I watched for a few minutes, profoundly confused. I had never seen more nothing on the screen; I thought, maybe MST has switched over to watching discarded B-roll from other movies…but no, that’s the actual movie. I tuned in later to see the poopie suits, a refreshing breath of freshingly fresh air.
I, too, am still convinced this was bankrolled by the AF as a training/recruitment film. It is kind of amazing how deftly the editing was handled to avoid any tension or drama, even though several dangerous events happen in the movie. At the time, lite jazz was fun and a little edgy and worked great in some soundtracks (like the legendary Charlie Brown Christmas); not so much here, especially in hindsight, it not only seems horribly dated, but hugely inappropriate music for fighter jets and bombing runs. (Thanks to Top Gun, we now expect canned 80s metal music over our jets, thank you.) Am I wrong, or did M&TB sing the “baaaaa-bababaah” music over shots of jet planes in several episodes PRIOR to Starfighters being shown? Even in season 5? Or am I imagining that?
The most disturbing scene has to be the double date with the greasy married couple in the convertible(“Wasn’t he caucasian?”), and the wayyyyy too close-ups of the pawing and groping and face mashing by Bob Dornan and his date. She was cute, but I cant eat after seeing them let loose in a Ford.
This episode is “decidedly UN-bold”. A typical 2-parter in that I can’t make it through in just one sitting. The host segments are fantastic and the riffing is good for what they have to work with, but man, I can’t agree with all the positive reviews for this episode. I like when the movies suck, but I like it even better when they suck AND stuff actually happens. I doubt I’ll come back to this one unless I watch all the episodes in order again.
Count me in with the “loved it” crowd.
The movie is so absolutely bizarre that I can’t help but love the episode. The biggest action is a rain storm… off-screen.
They set up Bob Congressmanson as the good pilot who avoids the rain. They also set up married guy and the bad pilot who does the wrong thing. And then forget to do anything with that. There’s no punishment, reward, redemption. Nothing. Apart from the characters having the same names throughout the movie, not one scene has any impact on any scene that comes before it or after it. It’s just amazing.
Definitely one of my all-timers.
Showed a friend the Cowboy Mike’s bit just as we were walking into a Quaker Steak location a few weeks ago. It was perfect.
Does anyone know the name of the song or the group who sings during the re-fueling sequence?
The turtle called Gamera is approaching the base. -Crow
Back in September, I went to Dayton, OH to see the USAF Museum. (Interesting place, actually.) I was mainly interested in seeing one of the last B-36 Peacemaker bombers. While I was there, I found, towards the back of one of the hangars, an F-104 Starfighter in good condition.
No poopie suit, though.
Stuffing or potatoes?
George Air Force Base? We were supposed to go to LARRY Air Force Base!
It had been so long since I’d seen this episode I was expecting a slog, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. This was a delight from start to finish. The only thing that didn’t seem to pay off was the Mads’ cranial link-ups, but that’s really a minor consideration. The highly-anticipated Servo choir sketch had my face hurting from smiles and laughter.
As for the movie itself, at least the music (for me) is nice to listen to when that weird choir isn’t singing. And it is interesting to see a glimpse of a base that has surely been turned into a subdivision by now.
Fave Riffs:
Honey, why don’t you just wait in the car ’til my tour of duty is over?
Were the other services as easy listening as the Air Force?
He has a Cab-Forward skull!
(red phone rings)
Even their phones are sunburned!
Only read a few of the comments so far, so forgive me if I’m repeating what someone else said, but I voted this episode as my favorite primarily because of the Iowa jokes. As an Iowan myself, it’s a hoot to hear Minnesotans and Wisconsers unload on us. I never de-tasseled myself, but I did grow up on a farm so I’m familiar with the concept. She did absolutely nothing to detract from the sheer tedium of the job and when she was prepared to repeat it for the new arrivals it was priceless.
Also really enjoyed all the jokes they managed during the re-fueling segments. I don’t know if the music was the actual Swingle Singers or not, but I do remember their 15 minutes of fame way back when.
It’s gonna be interesting to see how the vote when on today’s TurkeyDay marathon. Hope this one ranks highly.
The First time I watched this episode I thought it was one of the worst they ever did, mostly because of the deadly dull movie. I didn’t watch it for years until it came out on the disc set. Since then I realized just how good the riffing was by the MST3K crew to actually make this a fun episode to watch. That takes real talent.
Wasn’t this the episode where one of the riffs during the refueling scenes was, “OH SWEET MYSTERY OF LIFE, AT LAST I FOUND YOU!” ?
watch this with my dad once (he was in the USAF) and he liked it.
This is one of my favorite episodes. Yes, the movie is so devoid of plot, action, tension, or suspense that it qualifies as a movie only due to the fact that it’s on film. Yet it’s got just enough weird or goofy stuff in it to provide some strong riffing (poopie suits, ugly guys, corn detasseling, inappropriate music, etc.) And yes, it has endless scenes of refueling, and yet the guys just keep coming up with more and more ways to riff on it. (I love the bit where they discuss all the types of riffs they’ve already covered, and Tom says, “Refueling is a beautiful, natural thing that’s nothing to mock.”)
The host segments are hilarious too — the spoof of over-the-top BBQ sauce claims of “boldness”; Crow’s computer problems and tech support frustrations; the bots “refueling” — all great stuff!
This “movie” really feels like an air force infomercial in which the imperative to display the product in a positive light drained the “movie” of any conflict or drama. Great episode. Poopie Suit!!
Nowadays, it’s not even necessary to be on film to be a film.
Was it Mike who made that riff? Because that would be oddly appropriate since both Mike and Ed Gein are from Wisconsin.
Not that it much matters, but Ed Gein wasn’t a farmer at all, he LIVED on a farm but he earned money mostly by doing odd jobs. Not that this matters much, either, but despite how he’s remembered, Ed Gein was not, in fact, a serial killer. He “only” killed two people; to qualify a serial killer, one must kill at least three people on three separate occasions. Because two episodes don’t comprise a serial.
A factoid about Ed Gein that’s sometimes brought up is that he owned a sizeable collection of “men’s adventures” pulp magazines (regard-ay an example: http://diffuser.fm/files/2015/07/Mans-Life-1956-09-Sept-Cover-by-Wil-Hulsey.-8×6-492×630.jpg )(AFAIK no one ever seriously tried to make a connection between him reading gruesome magazines and becoming a killer). It’s just incredible to me that apparently no one ever bothered to find out which magazines made up his collection (and they were surely all destroyed long ago). Sure, there’d be no point to having such information but that is in and of itself beside the point. That’s part of what “trivia” means. Oh well.
The Starfighters fails the Bechdel Test. Neither of the female characters speak to each other.
I don’t get how that phone prank could be pulled off successfully. Unless those phones had cones of silence around them, you’d think the victim would hear the prankster next to him.
For the record, Robert Dornan apparently did serve in the Air Force as a pilot.
I once showed this episode to my brother, who was an Air Force pilot. He hated it.
Did he say why?
While I’ve got your attention, Now that Thanksgiving has passed, which week are we going to do Santa Claus?
@ #85: I believe the name comes from the fact that the suit consists of several layers, which involves a lot of sweating at room temperature. As a result, they stink up real fast.
@ #138: I imagine if you look hard enough, you find a scatological riff in most every episode.
Favorite riffs
I’m going over to this other plane. They’ve got chocolate gas.
Thank me for flying Me Airline.
Is your face odd, misshapen? Join the Air Force.
George? We were suppose to go to Larry Air Force Base.
Touch my bird. Go ahead.
This plane was recently sexed. It’s a boy.
“Do you know that flying a plane is like making love?”
You have to pay?
Cordite 4, join the formation. We like you.
It’s the New Air Force Goofy Bomb, from Wham-O.
“My wingman has a hydraulic utility failure. Landing gear down, but indicating unsafe. I’m declaring an emergency.”
Oh, and he’s crying, too.
All this because a girl wouldn’t kiss him.
This guy gets wigged out if his floor mats are uneven.
My dad died in the war. Who was that?
Is that Rod Serling?
No. No cigarette.
He accidentally started siphoning from a Northwest flight.
He’s not ugly enough to be in the Air Force.
I’ll signal them with my deodorant.
Are the other services as easy listening as the Air Force?
At ease, Lt. Loser.
I’ll wait with your best friend Steve.
To think that I could have gone the rest of my life without knowing that…
… and if you read all the credits for current movies, you will usually see one for “Honeywagon Driver” …
As far as siphoning gags (no pun intended), there’s that urban legend of the guy who tried to siphon gasoline out of an RV (by sucking on the hose first) but instead siphoned sewage from the RV’s toilet (again, by sucking on the hose…). That might’ve been kind of a stretch though.
A congressman, WORKING? Do you even LIVE here?
;-)
Much like life.
Ah, if only Hal “The Creeper” Moffatt could’ve received such advice…
Oily horseman Steve? Steve?!
Uh, yeah, in the military, the insults get a bit more severe than “sissy”…
Again, much like life itself.
Yes, when will people just LEAVE ED GEIN ALONE! He was a kindly grave robber!
Well, as I said, Gein DID murder two people, so he WAS a killer, just not a serial killer. He’s probably so well remembered (which I guess might explain why people presume he’s a serial killer since most well-remembered killers are) because he, uh, made stuff out of the corpses that he stole AND out of his victims.
Off-topic again, or further, Mike also mentioned Gein in “The Giant Spider Invasion” which, of course, took place in Wisconsin (Gein’s been mentioned in other episodes too but I’m not sure any of the others were set in Wisconsin). Also in that episode, Crow mentioned Leatherface of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” franchise. Leatherface (who of course wears masks made out of his victims; he and his family ate their victims too, something it’s never been confirmed that Gein did), Norman Bates (’cause of a shared dead mother fixation), Buffalo Bill from “The Silence of the Lambs” (who made a “lady suit” out of his victims, something Gein allegedly did in real life) and probably other fictional killers are allegedly based on Gein. Wikipedia can tell you all about this and more.
Jeffrey Dahmer, another Wisconsin resident, DID in fact eat his victims; he was killed in prison in 11/28/94, about a month after the first airing of this very episode, which has even more nothing to do with anything.
I don’t think I commented the previous times, not sure, but anyway here goes. This is one of my favorites, despite the near-absence of plot. Suggestive refueling, the lame phone gag used twice, the poopie suit, I watch this for riffing and definitely not for story/plot.
Was that auto-correct or did Samus Aran flirt with you? Which wouldn’t be a bad thing.
With a title like
THE STARFIGHTERS
you don’t really need a plot. It’s like Snakes On A Plane: “Hey, that sounds good, let’s go see that!” And by the time word gets around the thing has completed its run & the Adelphi is showing a double bill of Fail Safe & Dr Strangelove.
Mildly odd that, despite taking the trouble to address Mike as “Major Nelson” during the debriefing skit, they IIRC used no “I Dream of Jeannie” riffs on the film itself. I don’t think they even hummed the “Cape Canaveral establishing shot” fanfare that was heard in just about every episode of “Jeannie.” Oh well.
I kinda like this movie. I like that sort of music and they have a decent pile of jet and explosion footage.
It’s still dull filler, but at least it’s better than walking scenes.
As for Ed Gein, iirc they mishear Akio as “Ed Gein” in Gamera vs Guiron, and I can’t place the movie but I remember a riff of some people pulling up to a building and maybe Crow saying “Hmm, E. Gein” or something along those lines.
According to Sampo, the “whiskey jet” riff is somewhat naughty. Can someone explain why? I thought it was just a drunk driving joke.
VERY odd jobs
Nope, it’s a reference to this:
https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/the-scientific-truth-behind-whiskey-dick
Meantime: yup, all time favorite, this one. It helps that I grew up in a military family — though I was Navy, not Air Force. Which, given my casual understanding that the two services tend to look dimly on each other, adds to the humor. (Some examples: my dad often said that if he were in charge of everything one of the first things he’d do to reduce expenses was to shut down the Air Force entirely; a friend who was an Air Force baby said her dad was none too thrilled with the Navy air folks, etc. etc.)
That all said, knowing something of base life helps make the movie both less strange and very strange at the same time. But really a huge part of the humor is Dornan as the lead role. I didn’t grow up in OC but I ended up there for a long stretch starting in the early 90s and witnessed his last years in Congress directly; suffice to say there weren’t enough jokes about him, really, but every one was a keeper. I remember the first time I showed the episode to local friends in the late 90s who had missed it first time around; by the time the “Bob Dornan, wild at heart” riff came around they were already near incapacitated.
I’m too lazy to see if I commented the last go-round. So I may repeat myself. As a commentator above pointed out, kind of like life itself.
This is one of my absolute favorite episodes. What computer user from the 1990s can’t relate to Crow’s tech support dilemma? I have awful memories of trying and largely failing to get relief from the Gateway 2000 tech support lady when I desperately needed my computer to function so that I could print out a paper for an undergrad class.
My dad was in the Air Force, but he wasn’t a pilot, so I’m not sure he would relate to this movie in any way.
This movie is just jammed pack with meandering, largely fruitless attempts at characterization. I think that’s what makes all the wasted time watching jet footage so fun – you can play a game where you imagine what the filmmakers COULD have done with that time to, you know, work in some payoff for the setup they labored so hard to put in their movie.
How such a painfully dull movie can be so enjoyable to watch is beyond me.
But such is the beauty of “The Starfighters”!
That was in “Attack of the the Eye Creatures” when the young couple Stan & Susan head into Old Man Bailey’s farmhouse. I believe the riffs were “Let’s go the Tobe Hooper place,” “Hmmmm, E. Gein,” and “Let’s check out the Last House on the Left.”
I remember the first time I saw this movie, when it got to the part where they’ve finished training and are leaving for Europe, I naively thought they were finally going to DO something. All that refueling and bombing practice had to be leading to something, right? Then the end credits came up, and I was like, “Wait, what? That’s it???”