How the hell did they get Robert Preston to appear in “The Last Starfighter” (1984)? Especially as Preston had only just achieved a career high two years earlier with his Academy Award nominated performance in Blake Edwards’ “Victor/Victoria.” On paper – and let’s face it, on screen – it would seem that Preston is really punching down. But as Christopher Lee once said (and he is one that should really know), “Every actor has to make terrible films from time to time, but the trick is never to be terrible in them.”
And you know what? Preston is so charismatic (here doing a spin on his signature role of “Music Man” Harold Hill) that he succeeds in lifting “The Last Starfighter” to a whole other level. Even once he drops out of the narrative, the movie itself is able to maintain the good will he engenders. That’s how effective he is. One would never guess he was fatally ill at the time.
On the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner, Roy and I will discuss this popcorn entertainment from our high school years. “The Last Starfighter” was one of countless sci-fi fantasies – or space operas, as they were sometimes called – that were cranked out like sausages in the wake of “Star Wars.” I have to say, even as a kid who devoured so many of those – the good, the bad and the ugly – I gave “The Last Starfighter” a hard pass. Something about it just turned me off. Preston got great reviews, I remember, but the movie just looked plain dumb. I don’t think they knew how to market it.
Unquestionably, the film draws on so many of its predecessors. Anyone steeped in the pop culture of the era will recognize elements of “Star Wars,” “The Empire Strikes Back,” “E.T.,” “Superman,” “Blade Runner,” and “Tron,” to name a few. I had fun listening to Craig Safan’s score and picking out what must have been the temp tracks for many of the scenes.
The ‘80s were a good, carefree time for adolescent males at the movies, coddled as we were with softheaded fantasies of being admired not only by the cute girl (Catherine Mary Stewart), but also enjoying the esteem of our communities, even as we convinced ourselves that we were misunderstood and longed for something more, vicariously living out our dreams of saving the entire galaxy – the Hero’s Journey in the comfort of an air-conditioned theater.
In this case, the filmmakers even manage to idealize life in a trailer park, offering it such a Spielbergian gloss, one wonders why the protagonist longs to kick the dust off his shoes and see the wider world in the first place. This is no “Dodes’ka-den” (for me, Kurosawa’s most unpleasant film). Perhaps like George Bailey or Dorothy Gale, our hero will eventually realize there’s no place like home? Naaaaaa. There’s a galaxy to save!
The performances are fun pretty much across the board. At first, I thought the actor engaged as the protagonist (Lance Guest) a little bland, but then there’s a subplot in which he gets to have a good time playing his naive doppelganger. If it had been 15 years later, I could imagine Will Ferrell, in full “Zoolander” garb, as the usurper Xur (here played by equally Seussian Norman Snow, in the company of a bunch of would-be Klingons). If you ever get to feeling wrung-out by the intricate political maneuverings of “Dune,” watching “The Last Starfighter” would be a good palate-cleanser.
But it’s really Dan O’Herlihy, as a humanoid reptile named Gig, who serves as both mentor and sidekick to the main character, that does the most to keep things engaging when Preston is not on-screen.
Not long before, O’Herlihy appeared in one of the most unpleasant movies of the decade, “Halloween III: Season of the Witch,” as a dastardly warlock who aims to sacrifice children most horribly through the use of supernaturally-rigged Halloween masks. That film not only left a bad taste, but also alienated a whole lot of “Halloween” fans who were hoping for the return of unstoppable killing machine Michael Meyers, nowhere in sight. Ironically, “The Last Starfighter” was directed by Nick Castle, who played Meyers in the first two installments of “Halloween.” In fact, there are John Carpenter connections all over the place.
It would be criminal, however, to diminish O’Herlihy by associating him with one of his worst films. The veteran Irish actor also played Macduff to Orson Welles’ Macbeth and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in Luis Buñuel’s “Robinson Crusoe.” Here, he’s obviously having a great time, or at least understands that “The Last Starfighter” needs him to appear so.
The make-up design is terrific, more convincing than most of the creatures in the “Star Wars” movies, the applications allowing the actors to be expressive. The visual effects are some of the earliest to rely almost totally on computer technology – especially organic here, as in “Tron,” since a video game plays such an important part in the story.
That’s all I’ve got to say for now. As I’m always chiding my overeager host, “Don’t talk it out!” If you crave the full megillah, we hope you’ll join us in the comments section for the next “Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner,” as we launch into “The Last Starfighter.” Our unlikely alliance will be livestreamed on Facebook, YouTube, etc., this Friday evening at 7:00 EDT!
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By coincidence, last week Roy and I discussed John Carpenter’s “Starman” (1982), but it was so late in the week by the time I watched the film that I was unable to write anything intelligent about it in advance of the show. If you’re a fan, you can catch-up on our conversation about it here:
