The Last Starfighter (1984)

Director: Nick Castle

Cast: Lance Guest, Dan O’Herlihy, Robert Preston, Catherine Mary Stewart

Have I Seen it Before: Sure, but it was never a big movie for me… And yet somehow in the last couple of years I got about 150 pages into writing a new novel which stole one of its load-bearing plot points from this movie. Apparently it had seeped into my mind far more than I had thought. Thankfully I realized it when I did.

Did I Like It: But then I wonder if I could do that bit (I’m not going to tell you what it is) a little better? I respect Nick Castle, quite possibly the greatest head tilter in the history of the movies, but I don’t think he ever became the director he wanted to be.

This movie has a pretty good pitch behind it, and a couple of good performers cashing a check (Preston and O’Herlihy), but not much else.

Everyone wants to celebrate movies which were one of the first (this one and Tron (1982)) to use CGI. Honestly, I need to ask why? The vast majority of CGI ceases to work on an even basic level within five years of release. The effects here had to look like it belonged in a toothbrush commercial by 1986.

I could see why a studio executive green lit the movie in the first place. It’s like Star Wars (1977), who cares if it is a thoroughly cheap alternative? After 1983, it’s not like George Lucas is going to make anything else to compete…

Ahem.

I’m normally one to feel an extra pang of nostalgia for pantheon of 80s sci-fi, but I might, *might* be prepared to dub this one the worst of the genre. Even Dune (1984) had failed ambitions.

Apparently, I do think I can do it better.

Night of the Comet (1984)

Director: Thom Eberhardt

Cast: Robert Beltran*, Catherine Mary Stewart, Kelli Maroney, Sharon Farrell

Have I Ever Seen It Before: Never. It always felt like a movie that was bopping around there in my peripheral vision, but never quite came in for a landing. If it weren’t for <Beyond the Cabin in the Woods>, I might never get to some of these.

Oddly enough, it took a bit of doing to even get my eyes on the film now. Forget any of the array of streaming services I already foolishly subscribe to, I couldn’t even get Prime or Apple TV to rent me the movie. It was starting to feel like I might be doomed to pay out-of-print prices for physical media.

And then there was Tubi. Ah, Tubi. It doesn’t seem like the damn thing should work, and yet, it is there. Sure, I was inexplicably barraged with commercials a few times, but even Hulu does that, and apparently, I’m paying for the privilege.

Did I like it: You know, I really started to. If the whole movie was Dawn of the Dead (1978) in a movie two screen movie theater run by employees varying from the disinterested to shiftless**, I might have loved the whole thing. But the movie absolutely runs out of steam right about the time Robert Beltran shows up*** and by the time things are concluded I’m not sure what the story was supposed to be about, but it was definitely not about red dust as an ongoing threat for the human population (the dust clears with an errant Los Angeles rain), it’s not about young people coming to grips—if even in a humorous way—with the end of the world (because they all turn on a dime to be hyper-domesticated by the time the closing credits roll around), and it certainly isn’t about anyone’s ongoing feud with DMK, because that couldn’t possible have mattered less.

*Yes, that Robert Beltran.

**Yes, I’ve seen <Demons (1985)>, in case you’re in a recommendation mood.

***Insert your own joke about the Star Trek franchise here.