Director: Coleman Francis
Writer: Coleman Francis
From: Cult Cinema
The drama of a couple running a skydiving company facing business and romantic challenges.
I watched the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of this and they sum up the movie pretty nicely with, “Seems like they forgot to have things happen.” To highlight how little happens in the movie, the running time of the original version is 72 minutes and they cut it down further for the MST3k version without losing anything.
The story, such as it is, is about Harry and Beth, a married couple running a skydiving service. They own a small airfield, fly jumpers up, and occasionally jump with them. They’ve just fired Frankie for drinking on the job and Harry has been having an affair with Frankie’s girlfriend, Suzy. Beth tells Harry to call it off and he gets into a fight with Frankie over Suzy. Harry decides to end the affair.
Meanwhile, Harry has gotten a letter from his Korean War buddy, Joe. Joe’s leaving the service and looking for a job so Harry and Beth decide to hire him. About fifteen-twenty minutes later in the movie, Joe arrives and starts working for them. There’s some chemistry between him and Beth. Well, not really, but the characters say something almost happens between them so there ya go. Then they decide to just be friends because Beth loves Harry.
Someone dies while jumping and the FAA shuts the airfield down until they finish their investigation. Then they finish the investigation and the airfield opens back up.
Suzy sees Harry in town, but he rebuffs her so she conspires with Frankie to kill him. They plan to put acid in his parachute. After a bit of film passes, they do exactly that. There’s a big jump, Harry dies, and the cops chase Frankie and Suzy, shooting and killing them both. The final sequence is Joe offering to stick around and help Beth run the airfield, but she says it was something she had with Harry and doesn’t want to continue it. He leaves and she gives the place one last look. THE END
Coleman Francis presents a whole lotta dull gray nothing. As I said, I watched the Mystery Science Theater 3000 which is interesting for the story Frank Conniff (TV’s Frank) had for how the various Coleman Francis movies ended up on MST3k. I’m half-remembering this from the MST3k Episode Guide, but I think he said he’d always been advocating for them to be on the show because he found them hilariously dull and inept, but the rest of the team couldn’t stand them because absolutely nothing happens. A lot. Unfortunately they came up short one season and Coleman Francis was given the limelight.
There’s literally nothing to say about this movie. There isn’t even really a plot. Sure, you have characters that vaguely want something, but there’s no effort made to achieve those goals, events don’t conspire against the characters, and, in the end, their actions don’t matter. Harry, arguably the main character even though he’s absent for large swathes of the movie, dies. The putative hero, Joe, doesn’t capture or stop the murderers. The murderous plot itself isn’t conceived or acted upon until late in the movie anyway so it’s literally about nothing for most of its running time. This is the type of movie you can only watch with the help of Mike and the bots. I recommend the episode; I don’t recommend the movie.
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