Described by
MST3K as "like
Manos without the lucid plot",
The Skydivers is less a horror and more a very dull soap-opera, about the workers of a small parachuting club.
The "plot" involves the eponymous skydivers getting away from their bland, loveless marriages with bland, loveless affairs, watching
Coleman Francis's extended family go-go dancing, and either killing, dying, or suffering total mental breakdown as a result of all the deaths. They even skydive, occasionally.
Apparently to make up for the almost dialogue free
Beast of Yucca Flats, the film consists almost entirely of stilted dialogue punctuated by
Stock Footage of parachutists. That would be fine, if the dialogue wasn't all like this:
Beth: Do you want some coffee?
Joe: Coffee? I like coffee!
Still,
Skydivers is merely "poor" by comparison with the final film in
Coleman Francis trilogy...
Red Zone Cuba.
The film was shown on
MST3K with the educational short film
Why Study Industrial Arts.
This film contains examples of:
The MST3K presentation contains:
- Actually Pretty Funny: Mike consoles Servo after Crow's Uranus Is Showing jokes, only to lose control of his drink when Crow says one more.
- Also Sprach Zarathustra: Servo sings the opening notes at the beginning of his ill-fated planetarium show.
- Better Than Sex: Crow uses this phrase to mock the movie's fixation with coffee, as well as the lack of chemistry between the two lead characters.
Beth: I made some coffee.
Crow: Coffee? Wow, that's better than sex!
- The Chew Toy / Iron Buttmonkey: Crow. In this episode alone, he accidentally saws himself in half, puts himself in a double jock lock, gets blasted by Servo's fighter plane, and gets tangled in his parachute, and it's all played for laughs.
- Cooking Duel: Mike & The Bots vs Deep 13 in a battle of Swing Choir medleys.
- Disproportionate Retribution: In the opening, Crow ruins Servo's planetarium show.
In the third interval, Servo picks up a fighter plane, blasting Crow and his recently-acquired car. And that's the only misfortune Crow suffers we know for sure Servo caused. - Does This Remind You of Anything?: The student's unsettling narration at the start of Why Study Industrial Arts about why he studies Industrial Arts. The riffing picks up on the subtext:
Student: And you know, I like the feel of a board moving smoothly against a sharp saw.
Mike: Then I thrust the nail into the soft, yielding wood...
- Hair Wings: They speculate that Beth's very rigidly-styled hair could double as a parachute.
Crow: I predict in the climactic scene she jumps without a chute and her hair opens up.
- Nausea Fuel:
Mike: (nauseated) ...did Forrester's dance make anyone else physically ill?
Crow: I LIKED IT!
- Porn Stash
Crow: (as industrial arts student) Tap-ta-tap-tap... I keep Popular Mechanics under my mattress!
- Running Gag. Beth's hair.
- Don't forget Petey Plane, kids!
- Uranus Is Showing: Crow unleashes a barrage of "Uranus" jokes during Tom's planetarium show.
- Artistic License - Physics: Let's just say Servo Did Not Do the Research on his Astronomy presentation.
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