The Skydivers (1963) User Reviews

Woah! Did that just happen?

[zmaturin · 1/10 · 17 February 1999]

This film tells the turgid tale of a man named Harry who is cheating on his wife (who is played by an actress named Kevin), who is cheating on him with his ol' war buddy Joe. At one point Harry dies, I think. The film-makers were a bit ambivalent on this point.

Anyway, this is a total movie-going experience. For one thing, Tony Cardoza, in the role of Harry, cannot act. Well, make that "DOESN'T" act. He says every line in the same monotone voice. It doesn't matter if his Skydiving Center is being shut down or he suspects his wife & best friend are making out on ladder or it's his turn to pick a song at the jukebox: HE NEVER CHANGES HIS EXPRESSION! It's pretty entertaining.

Don't worry, the supporting cast more than makes up for Cardoza's lack of a screen presence. Apparently director Coleman Francis stuck in all his odd, lumpy friends in the background of this epic. There's the excited Scotsman in his kilt, a manly woman who beats up a scrawny, Iggy Pop-esque fellow while dancing, a noodly retarded photographer, a bland guy holding a guitar for no apparant reason, a beatnik holding a rooster, a gal who wears Roller Skates and an Ice skating outfit no matter where she is (including a bar), a perky gal in a polka-dot bikini dancing at the airfield (the camera focuses on her buttocks for 75% of the dance sequence), the confused millionaire, the weasly lawyer (wonderfully played by Harold Saunders from Francis' Red Zone Cuba), the confused old lady in a straw hat, the excited immigrant girl, and Steve, the creepy, stubbly Skydiver who falls to his death after yelling that skydiving is "FUN"!

Personally, I love all of Coleman Francis' unique films. Each chapter in his trilogy paints a portrait of a dark, plane-obsessed man who drank a lot.

And that's just fine with me.

Coffee? I like coffee.

[KubrickCRM114 · 1/10 · 16 June 2003]

Very easily one of the most bungling and unskilled attempts at film making in history. Sound synch is solved by showing other people listening as one person speaks, or just doesn't synch at all. The plot is a real head-scratcher, leaving one wondering who this was supposed to be about, what was the point, who was the beatnik with a chicken under his arm? Everyone appears to be reading directly from cue cards, voices droning on and on, no emphasis or vocal-inflection for these people posing as actors. Skydiving scenes are just stock footage intercut with close-ups of the actors hanging in a soundstage. Coleman Francis has a knack for throwing something new at you, but in a good way. To think that he actually wasted paper on this is dumbfounding in itself. However, the entire film is so badly done, it's quite funny. Any version is funny and worth the watch just to see such a bad movie can actually be made, but I suggest the MST3K version, as it is absolutely priceless.

If I could slap this movie, I would.

[DrClayForrester · 1/10 · 9 February 2005]

Never before in the annals of cinematic history has there risen a film so intensely stupid that it makes Jeff Foxworthy's "You Might Be A Redneck" monologues look staid and deeply philosophical.

This film stars a thin, joyless, gray man who runs a skydiving school with his large-haired, joyless, gray wife who, it seems, might be cheating on him. It's just as well, because I think he may have also been cheating on her. Really, I don't remember. I just finished watching it, and I cannot remember a single thing about it, other than the fact that a lot of it was gray.

A gray friend of the man is recently released from prison or something, and he comes to work at the school as the gray man's airplane mechanic. A romance of some kind may or may not have sparked between the gray friend and the gray man's gray wife - although my memory of it is a bit hazy - and gray woman and gray friend hatch a plot to kill the gray man (or something like that).

Stuff happens, including reels and reels of stock footage showing people jumping out of planes (gray), as well as a huge dance party inexplicably taking place on the tarmac where the gray man parks his gray plane, complete with various other gray people and music performed by, I would assume, gray musicians. (They were never shown.) The movie ends when somebody dies, but not before Coleman Francis, the evil demon behind this film, as well as the abysmal "Red Zone Cuba", makes his standard bland appearance, looking for all the world like an angry Curly Howard from the Three Stooges, and probably thinking himself pretty clever because of this ridiculous Hitchcockian tribute to himself.

As the title of this review states, I want to hit this movie, over and over again, to quell the feeling that Coleman Francis and his minions have consumed my soul, and I am left a dark, bitter husk of a man.

But maybe that's just me.

Remember Folks, Sex For Sundries is FUN!!!

[mp99 · 5 June 2001]

Just try and keep this straight: Harry is married to Beth (with whom he runs an airport/parachuting school), but catting around with Suzy, who also has a thing going with Frankie, who used to work for Harry. Frankie's place as mechanic has been taken by Harry's war buddy Joe, who would probably like to take Harry's place as Beth's husband as well. But when Harry leaves Suzy and calls her a "broad" in the bargain, well, she just has no other choice but to Do The Nasty with the local pharmacist in exchange for a little acid to pour all over Harry's parachute, which she does with the help(?) of Frankie (actually, she does the driving, the planning, gets the acid, and actually applies it to said parachute--while he stands and/or sits around looking stupid and/or nervous).

Anyways, after you're finished doing the sexual algebra--well, there isn't much left to do after that, except enjoy the spectacle of writer/director Coleman Francis' misfiring-synapse style of editing, in which the flow of scenes is interrupted with irrelevant closeups or bits of action involving other characters who have not previously been been seen on-camera (all but the most important characters in this film tend to pop up without explanation and to disappear in similar fashion--given that this film is too cheap and amateurish to deserve shelter on Poverty Row, Francis probably couldn't afford actual exposition, or maybe he didn't think about it until after the bulk of the film was shot, or maybe he shot the footage, got drunk, and suddenly ran across it in the editing room and tried to splice it in before the Four Roses left him snoring over the moviola).

You could talk about the acting, I suppose, but it would be a waste of time, given that most of the cast, with the exception of Kevin Casey (Beth) and Marcia Knight (Suzy) don't actually bother with it. The cast seems to consist mostly of people who gave him money to make the film or the relatives of people who gave Francis money to make the film, or of members of his family, or of people he ran into while on a bender. The result is the weirdest cast this side of a Fellini movie, but unlike Fellini, who generally picked talented and/or appealing oddballs to appear in his films, Francis just picked oddballs. Although there IS a tall blonde here that wouldn't look out of place dancing in the Trevi Fountain at dawn--Marcello Mastroianni optional.

Coleman Francis, a director for all time.

[bat-5 · 1/10 · 6 August 2000]

When you learn about film, we always get the usual suspects: Scorsese, Spielberg, Hitchcock, Coppola to name a few. Why is it that we never hear about Coleman Francis? Coleman Francis, a big beefy guy, makes films that have themes hidden within them much like his illustrious counterparts here. Instead of the usual Catholic guilt, fear of authority, absent father figures, we get light planes, pain, suffering, general misery. In this lovely outing, Coleman treats us with the story of Harry and Beth. A married couple who run an airfield that drops a bunch of lunkheads out of planes. Anyway, they're having marriage problems. Harry is cheating on Beth with Suzy, who has a thing for Frankie, Harry's former mechanic. Joe, an old army buddy of Harry's comes to work for Harry and falls for Beth. Meanwhile, Suzy and Frankie devise a way to knock off Harry, since their white hot rage burns so brightly. Then there are scenes of lunkheads falling through space with their cheeks flapping and a big dance scene that features a very manly woman tossing around a very skinny guy. Well, after scenes that abruptly end and bad cuts here and there and Tony Cardoza acting in only one tone of voice, you feel as if the life has been sucked out of you. At the end, Suzy and Frankie are gunned down by the director himself and the movie thankfully ends. Watching this as a double feature with Red Zone Cuba, you might slip into a coma from which you might never awake.

The Cinematic Disasterpiece of the Talkies Era

[LN_Smithee · 1/10 · 25 July 2005]

I was cruising IMDb and was checking out the Bottom 100 because I wanted to see if "Manos" was given a boost after the Entertainment Weekly story. What a pleasant surprise to see that "The Skydivers," the movie that I said was the worst I'd ever seen when I rubbernecked it twenty five years ago, has taken its rightful place at the top…I mean, the bottom.

For a while, I thought perhaps the WOAT tag should have gone to a woeful idea for a teen comedy called "Nice Girls Don't Explode," starring archetypal pretty-girl-trapped-by-a-nerd's-psyche Michelle Meyrink, but then I found my Beta cassette of "Skydivers" and came to my senses.

You've heard of "shoestring budgets" – this movie had a dental floss budget. Everything you need to know about the lack of cash Coleman Francis suffered is in an early scene in which a car – a junker with what looks like latex paint strokes across it – pulls up at the airport. As the car stops, the passenger door flies open. The driver gets out, there is dialogue I can't remember (but I'm sure it was as inane as the infamous coffee line), and the driver and another person get into the car. The driver gets in the driver's seat, the other person gets in the passenger's seat, closes the door, and sticks his arm out the open window to hold the door closed! Francis didn't have a friend who could lend him a car with properly operating doors?

Even the centerpiece of the movie – the skydiving footage – is ridiculously inept. And "Skydivers" has the most unconvincing love scene on celluloid – there's even less chemistry between those two than there was between Hayden Christiansen and Natalie Portman in "Revenge of the Sith." At least "Manos" made a lame attempt at titillation with the ladies wrestling in lingerie.

It's a shame I have to give "Skydivers" one star in order to vote (especially when there are apparent "Manos" anti-fans who are giving "Skydivers" 10 stars). When it comes to bad movies, "Skydivers" is back where it belongs: Number One with an ICBM.

"We DO have frontier justice in this town, don't we??"

[lemon_magic · 2/10 · 31 December 2005]

It isn't fair to call "Skydivers" a train-wreck of a film, when the motif revolves around skydiving...so I'll have to call it a "plane crash" of a movie.

Technically speaking, this is actually the "best" of the Coleman Francis trilogy. "Beast Of Yucca Flats" has a plot that makes even less sense than this and has even more non-sequiteurs. "Red Zone Cuba" features far too much of Francis himself to be even remotely watchable. So if you HAD to watch a Coleman Francis movie, you should choose "Skydivers". Which is like saying that if you had to jump off a building, you should jump off the top floor of The "Stratosphere" tower instead of the Sears Tower or the Empire State building because the weather in Las Vegas is better.

Where "Beast" was a failed science fiction/horror film and "Red Zone Cuba" was a Bizarro World combination of a "Road" flick and a "Buddy" flick, the central concern of "Skydivers" seems to be sexual politics. I think. I can't really explain why else the two morons who want the airstrip owner dead put acid on his chute, so I'm pretty sure that sexual politics was involved. Highlights of "Skydivers" include...oh wait, don't tell me...um...uhhh, well parts of "Skydivers" that don't actually shut your cerebral cortex down include: the skydiving footage (because no one has to act), the impromptu party that breaks out on the airstrip for no apparent reason, (it brings the movie to a screeching halt, and that's a good thing), the guitar driven songs contributed by Dwane Eddy tribute band "the Night Jumpers", and the scene where everyone hunts down the killers and shoots them dead without benefit of a trial. (After all, they were fleeing the scene, so they HAD to be the killers, right???) Oh, and the scene where the jilted lover "Suzy" trades sex for the acid to put on the chute. And the long fistfight scene that tries to go "The Quiet Man" one better. And the repeated references to drinking coffee. ("Coffee?? Gee, that's better than SEX!!!")

Wait, those aren't highlights (well, the Dwayne Eddy songs are good). So this movie doesn't actually have anything to recommend it. Except for the fact that it is so unintentionally hilarious in its ineptness that it makes a fascinating example of what happens when people without talent insist on trying to make movies.

The MST coverage of "Skydivers" is one of their best episodes - it is just so ripe for the picking (and the kicking) that Mike and the Bots have a field day with it. So if you have some morbid urge to see this film, seek out the MST3000 version.

It's MANOS, from the sky

[wink_man01 · 1/10 · 27 May 2000]

Skydivers lacks everything condusive to a good movie. No plot, no continuity, no action, no story, no intelligent dialog, no acting ability, no soundtrack, not much of anything. In the second of the Coleman Francis trio, Harry and Beth are a struggling couple, trying to run a parachute school. But Harry is messing around with Suzy. That is until Suzy's boyfriend Jimmy finds out, and decks Harry. Much to everyone's dismay, there is a freak accident at the school, which closes them down. Poor Beth finds herself in the arms of mechanic Peter. That is until Harry finds out about it and fires Peter. Meanwhile the FAA, has sent out an investigator to find out about the accident. FAA man Bob makes unwanted passes at Beth who thinks she can patch up her fractured marriage with Harry. But Oh No. Suzy, still mad about being thrown back to Jimmy, decides to get revenge on Harry.

Did you follow that? Take this indiscernable plot; throw in really bad acting, weak dialogue, poor sound recording, 5,000 continuity jumps, and plot jumps, a hand full of public domain classical pieces passed off as a soundtrack, and you've got a turd fit for the garbage compactor. Avoid this crud at all costs! 1/2 *

Gawd Awful

[bensonmum2 · 1/10 · 26 February 2005]

• Coleman Francis' film, The Skydivers, is perhaps the . . . Oh, what's the point? It's one of the two or three worst movies I've ever seen. I really try hard to not rate movies 1/10, but with junk like this, it's hard not to vote a "1".

• Almost everything about The Skydivers is abysmal. The acting, story, dialogue, effects, and anything else you can think of are ridiculous. Most any elementary school class could come up with a better production with more sophisticated production values.

• One scene worth noting is the dance scene. Just when you think The Skydivers has scraped the bottom of the barrel, it succeeds in drilling a hole right through the bottom. Out of the blue, a dance party erupts on the airport runway. It really must be seen to be believed. Hysterical!

Would You Jump Out Of A Plane For A Cup Of Coffee?

[boblipton · 4/10 · 2 October 2020]

Anthony Cardoza is cheating on his wife, Kevin Casey, with Marcia Knight, so she has affair with someone else. They stay married for the sake of the airfield they own together, where the bills are paid by a skydiving school. Eventually they will decide to try to kill each other, but this doesn't stop everyone from getting together to enjoy some coffee.

Coleman Francis wrote and directed this movie. The print I saw was certainly not a good one, but it's a nifty idea and might have made a decent Universal programmer a decade earlier. I can well imagine a cast led by, say Jeff Chandler and Deborah Pagey, directed by someone like Jesse Hibbs, mildly sordid, but with a Code-mandated ending.

Alas, Mr. Francis lacks the ability and cast to hit those buttons. Unless you are fascinated by coffee, this is not a particularly well-done movie, although the skydiving sequences are ok.

Skydiving + Coffee = Pointless Film

[[e-mail] · 1/10 · 26 October 2005]

Coleman Francis has to be one of the worst directors to ever live. Ed Wood made some inept films, but this piece of crap beats Wood's schlock. Who the hell decides to make a movie totally around skydiving and the shocking true underbelly of the sport parachuting industry (or not). It's pretty hard to decipher the plot (if there really is one).

It looks like Coleman used his usual formula of coffee, parachuting, drunks and vigilante shoot-outs to make a muddy, unfocused film. Just try watching this thing without the MST3K commentary. It's like watching something that some 10 year-olds wrote and shot with a little help from some adults who wanted to appease the brats. As per usual, the cast is completely inept, the shots look like they're out of a home movie, and the dialog is hopeless.

Coleman Francis, you were a sick, sick man.

Had to give it a 10 because it was hilarious

[johnstonjames · 10/10 · 27 June 2009]

I had to give this movie a ten rating because it is hilarious. This movie is funny with or without the MST3K Bots. Look, we all love to complain about how awful a movie is, but there really is such a thing as being so bad it's good. Bad movies, truly bad movies, are some of cinema's most entertaining films. Like most good bad movies, this film feels totally surreal, especially the really weird party thrown at the end with bikini girls and a Scottish highlander type. I would rather sit through great bad movies like this or 'Rat Fink A Boo Boo' any day over most major Hollywood blockbuster turkeys. Bad movies are surreal, like some kind of strange art style. Bad movies rule. Bad movies are the best. Scream over bad movies.

It's FUN!!!

[humanresistor · 7/10 · 2 February 2001]

I just happen to like this film, and I'd like it just as much without the MST3K characters. It would be a very bleak, depressing movie if it weren't so goofy and stupid. It would be incredibly boring, but the incompetence of everyone involved means that something's always coming out of left field to surprise you.

It's quite a bit more entertaining than most movies. I watch it again and again.

Made by Coleman Francis, bankrolled by Folgers

[Sterno-2 · 1/10 · 28 September 1999]

Never before in the history has so much coffee been consumed! Never before has there been so much skydiving! Never before had I been bored off my rear end than by watching this movie!! What Roger Corman does for walking, Coleman Francis does for skydiving.

The story concerns a small skydiving school that teeters of the brink of ruin. The owner's wife is fooling around, people are jumping out of planes left and right, a sinister plot is afoot, and more coffee is being consumed in two hours than in one year at a Starbucks. Oh, and did I mention that someone falls to their death?

Coleman Francis knows three paces in movies: slow, turgid, and dead. Your common box turtle moves faster than this movie does. However, I will say that it does not reach the level of "Red Zone Cuba", Francis' magnum opus. At least The Skydivers has that cheeky woman to look at towards the end; "Red Zone Cuba" gives us a horrible Fidel Castro impersonation.

This movie is required viewing if you plan to work in an ad agency that has Folgers or Maxwell House as a client. If not, use this to cure your insomnia.

The music...

[rbn_banks · 11 September 2004]

Another reviewer speaks somewhat poorly of the musician in this movie, which is a shame.

The "Jimmy Bryant & The Night Jumpers" credited in this movie is actually just "Jimmy Bryant", a fantastic guitarist who is considered a great by other great guitar players. How he was unlucky enough to end up in this stinkbomb of a movie is unknown, and his music was used to poor effect in the film, but trust me.... he's a great guitarist. (or was... he's passed on now.)

Leave it to Tony Cardoza (and Coleman Francis) to take a good musician and make him look bad.

Look here for some info about Jimmy Bryant:

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql:3b8o1v0jzzva

Will somebody please take this movie up in an airplane and drop it out?

[lee_eisenberg · 1/10 · 20 June 2005]

"The Skydivers" might have been a little better had it had a comprehensible plot, but it doesn't. The skydiving is the background setting for a bunch of sexual tension and other things, but it's so muddled that you'd never be able to figure out who's doing what with whom.

That said, the movie was not a total waste. It once appeared on "MST3K". According to the Satellite of Love's crew, one of the women in the movie is going for a Laura Petrie look, while Abner and Gladys Kravitz make a guest appearance. The movie alone gets 0/10 stars, but the "MST3K" version gets 11/10 stars. That Dr. Forrester was sure a cruel man for making them watch this garbage.

Snore

[nuhc · 1/10 · 3 April 2014]

Since I've watched Coleman Francis' other "masterpieces" The Beast of Yucca Flats and Night Train to Mundo Fine (aka Red Zone Cuba), I had to watch his other movie. If not for the MST3K crew this movie would just remain awfully dull and boring. Just like Francis' other movies, this too is plagued with awful acting, bad editing, weak story, and bad sound, lighting & camera work. Which is a shame for something which at least in part proposes to be an action movie, but even the skydiving "action" scenes seemed pretty dull and lifeless. But at least they had coffee.

If you're looking for a good ending, forget it. For some reason Coleman Francis thought that the way to deal with criminals is to shoot at them from the air, since all three movies ended that way. So much for arrest and due process, we know they're guilty so let's gun them down. But basically the ending is the somewhat climactic ending to a movie with hardly any plot.

The MST3K version will keep you laughing, though.

Please help me

[leonardfranks · 1/10 · 17 May 2009]

Just after I saw it, I was perfectly content to just say to myself that this film was just terrible and deserved no further consideration. Then I started considering it, and I made a classic novice mistake for movies of this nature. I tried to make out the plot. And it's really been getting under my skin. The trouble is, I can pretty much make two complete movies out of this. In one of these movies, the main plot is about a man and a woman who own a skydiving company and can't act. Their marriage is beginning to go down the tubes. The husband is beginning to be attracted to another woman by the name of Suzy. Then his old army friend Joe shows up (who likes coffee), and his wife falls in love with him. The rest of the movie is about that soap opera relationship. But there's another movie here that's just as legitimate! In this second movie, the plot revolves around a skydiving accident in which a character panics and fails to deploy his shoot, falling to his death. Then, that person's girlfriend (or somewhat), goes insane and decides to lash out and kill the person who flew him up there by putting acid in his parachute (It doesn't help that he slapped her after she tried to talk to her, wisely pointing out that she was a broad). The rest of the movie is thus about her revenge on him, and then her just desserts for that revenge. Or there could even be a third movie! In this third movie, the entire film is an exhibition for the talents of professional skydivers,as well as the beauty of the sport. The beauty of modern dance is also exhibited, as embodied by a strong woman, a girl with mysterious roller skates, a Scottish guy, an epileptic, and a floating butt. The question about which one of these is the plot is driving me mad. If it's the first, then all of the dramatic action sequences are irrelevant. If it's the second, then everything that comes before the guy dying is irrelevant. If it's the third, then none of the dialogue parts were relevant at all, and the actors were there for no reasons. I can't make up my mind about this. My e-mail address is [e-mail]. Please find it in your heart to help me understand this incredibly terrible movie.

Skydiving - to the 10th power!

[Dextrousleftie · 1/10 · 21 October 2006]

Once again I blame Ray Dennis Steckler for the horror that is Coleman Francis. If that skinny, monkey faced twerp hadn't pulled Francis out of a ditch where he was enjoying a drunken stupor, so that he could give him a part in his own 'movie', then this guy would have died unknown and unmissed. Instead, Francis began to have delusions of grandeur in which he believed that he was a brilliant filmmaker, instead of one of the worst film makers of all time. He and Hal Warren should hold the title together, frankly. These guys made Ed Wood look like an auteur in comparison.

In this gray horror, endless shots of skydiving(at least five hours or so) are interspersed with the so-called 'plot', such as it is. A wooden guy named Harry(who could have been played with more life by a crash test dummy rather than Tony Cardoza) runs skydiving school with his wife, who has a hair helmet so stiff that she must have used a pound of concrete in it to keep it in shape. He's cheating on his blandly nice wife with a scary looking woman in town. This Nosferatu becomes angry when Harry refuses to see her anymore, and decides to get revenge by putting acid on his chute. The most disturbing scene of all is when she apparently has sex with an elderly druggist to get the acid.

There's a lot of things that don't make sense, and don't seem to tie into the movie at all. Like the dance that suddenly starts on the tarmac for no reason, with an inexplicable Scotsman wandering around in the middle of it. And plot lines that dribble off into nothing over and over again. And of course, people who wander in and out of the movie and are never seen again. Lots of them. A quarter of a town at least appear, read their lines woodenly, and exit stage left. In this case, it isn't just the Director's girlfriend who gets a cameo - it's his family, friends, grocer, etc. And Francis himself, of course. The chunky, greasy, completely unlikeable gargoyle makes a short appearance at the end of the film. Well, at least he didn't cast himself as the 'hero' like he did in the horrid Red Zone Cuba. That's the only thing keeping this film from being just as awful as that one.

They say if you can't say something nice...

[flamegirl · 1/10 · 5 April 2002]

'Skydivers' is a tawdry, unpleasant, hamfisted botch of a film BUT it is far better than 'Red Zone Cuba'.

The movies of Coleman Francis offered a showcase for the talents of those who otherwise could never have made the big time. Yes, they may have been 'differently talented', but at least Coleman never played by the Hollywood 'rules' of hiring only the skilled, or trying to make movies people might like!

The best thing about this film is the way Coleman brilliantly conveys the greyness and despair of this dusty town. When I feel down in the mouth I can always say 'at least I don't live there!'

The plot is simultaneously convoluted and thin - an achievement in itself. The script sounds like it was an unpleasant chore Coleman put off and put off and finally wrote in half an hour because he had to finish it before he could get on with filming people jumping out of planes. The acting ranges from mediocre (Suzie) to quite poor (Beth) to strange (the guy whose name I've forgotten who dies first-the odd one who thinks Beth gets prettier every day) to amateur (the sky divers) to bad (everyone else) to comatose (Harry).

The editing seems to have been done at random - Beth and Joe are having a conversation indoors, there is a sudden shot of Harry outdoors nodding. That kind of thing. And the music only occasionally suits the mood of the action, presumably by accident. It sounds like the soundtrack to a Russian propaganda war film, huge brass crescendos accompany car journeys and cut into the middle of humdrum conversations.

But it is better than 'Red Zone Cuba'. And remember sky diving is FUN.

Took awhile, but a plot sort of formed

[Aaron1375 · 1/10 · 4 February 2014]

Saw this movie in an episode of MST3K, and quite frankly, I do not see ever seeing this film without the gang of the Satellite of Love as it is not something I would even think to watch. Not a horror movie, not really an action film, I guess this one is sort of a romance, but I cannot really say for sure. The story is so all over the place at first that it took me until near the end to sort of see some semblance to a plot. The film is directed by Coleman Francis so I guess it should be no surprise that the film is kind of badly edited and goes all over the place as two other films featured on MST3K he directed were like this one in Red Zone Cuba and The Beast of Yucca Flats. Having watched all three, I would have to say Red Zone Cuba was the most entertaining as the film did keep things happening as we follow three guys on their journey to nowhere. The film with the easiest to follow plot had to be The Beast of Yucca Flats, though that one was also probably the most boring of the trio. This one falls somewhere in between.

The story, well it is not really all that coherent at the beginning of this film. I would suggest it may be how it was cut for MST3K, but Red Zone Cuba also played out in a similar fashion, thus suggesting it is the editing and the fact it is a Coleman Francis movie rather than the fact it was edited down due to time constraints for the show. In fact, they even had a short proceeding this one so that usually indicates a super short film where not much had to be cut out. Back to the story, it follows a husband and wife and their sky diving school. I only figure it is a school thanks to a statement at the end of the film. Seemed more like a place where people went up and jumped for fun. Well there are affairs going on and guys who really like coffee coming to town. One jilted mistress will plan her revenge and end up getting hunted down.

The film, like the other two Coleman Francis films, made for a funny episode of MST3K. There is just so much to work with in one of the director's movies. You have random dance sequences, lots of stock footage jumps, random fight scenes and a rather brutal manhunt at the end. They had a lot to work with, suffice to say.

So not a good movie, but I had no reason to believe it would be. Just a gray movie that has very little emotion for the most part with a dance scene at the end that seems completely out of place. The story may have worked with more coherence and if one actually felt anything for the main character as the guy just comes off as very unemotional. The only reason anyone would watch the film is if they were that much of a skydiving buff, but even they would be bored by the very bland story that occurs between the skydiving. Even the skydiving is boring! Nothing to see and not much fun, but it did make for a funny episode of MST3K.

Say what you will...

[jeffreygunn · 2/10 · 27 September 2019]

Say what you will about Coleman Francis, but as director and producer he had an innate ability to get so many people together who just could not act in all of his movies. That is pure talent.

Geroni - moh - nnnnnnooooooooooo!

[geminiredblue · 8/10 · 24 November 2014]

Coleman Francis, perhaps THE worst director ever to dis-grace the silver screen. In his short film career, he made 3 excruciating fiascos that are painful to watch and sit through. THE SKYDIVERS is only slightly better than RED ZONE CUBA, but not by much. If it were possible on IMDb, I would've given RZC no stars and this movie half a star. MST3K showed this one, and their comments are some of the best ever. Here's the slim plot: At an airfield in New Mexico, a pilot/ parachutist, named Harry, shares bland, wooden dinners with his wife, Beth. On the weekends, he rents out his plane to skydiving enthusiasts. Frankie, a former plane mechanic, and his girlfriend Suzie plot to pour acid on Harry's parachute. When their plan works, the town hunts them down. And that's about it. There's not one interesting character. And none of the actors can act to save their lives. There's no real drama, or story. Everything is loosely hinged around aerial footage of people skydiving. If you simply MUST see this film, take a cue from Coleman Francis and have "lots of coffee" on hand. The MST3K version gets 8 Falling Skydivers out of 10!

It Can't Get Much Worse Than This

[hogwrassler · 1/10 · 3 October 2020]

I caught The Skydivers a couple of days ago on MST3K on IFC. This "movie" was made in 1963. The TV series "Ripcord" was real popular then and that may be what inspired Coleman Francis to grind this one out. It looks like it was shot in a vacant lot with a VHS camcorder. The direction is awful, the editing ridiculously bad, and the acting amateurish at best. The men are all lechers and the women are all loose. The numerous skydiving scenes provide some relief from an otherwise painful watching experience. The best thing I can say about The Skydivers is that it makes Plan 9 From Outer Space look like Gone With the Wind.

Bombs away!

[MadMatt7 · 10 June 2004]

Little could directors like Coleman Francis, Roger Corman, and Hal Warren imagine that their catastrophic pieces of celluloid excrement would, one day, bring so much joy to future generations. With the help of Mike, Joel, and a couple of robots, of course. Make no mistake, "Skydivers", along with "Plan 9 From Outer Space", "Manos, the Hands of Fate", etc... represents film-making at its lowest level. Lousy directing, flimsy storyline, complete lack of character development, crappy lighting, botched sound, laughable continuity, and, what might be the worst acting I've ever seen all make for a uniquely surreal experience.

While on the subject of acting, I, and other reviewers, are not kidding when we say that every actor seems to be reading from cue cards. After enduring "Skydivers", I immediately watched another MST3K masterpiece, "Sidehackers". As bad as "Sidehackers" was, Ross Hagen (Rommel, "I read your book, you magnificent S.O.B.!") was Laurence Olivier compared to Anthony Cardoza. So, in its raw form, I would highly recommend avoiding this hack job at all costs. However, if you're a fan of MST3K, this is actually one of the best episodes I've seen.