“

And I thrust the nail into the soft, yeilding wood.

”

609 - The Skydivers
Air Date	August 27, 1994
AKA	Fiend from Half Moon Bay; Panic at Half Moon Bay
Movie Director	Coleman Francis
Year	1963
Cast	Kevin Casey, Eric Tomlin, Tony Cardoza, Marcia Knight
Short	Why Study the Industrial Arts?
Preceded by	608 - Code Name: Diamond Head
Followed by	610 - The Violent Years

Contents 1 The Short 1.1 Synopsis 1.2 Information 2 The Movie 2.1 Synopsis 2.2 Information 3 The Episode 3.1 Host Segments 3.2 Obscure References 3.3 Video Release 4 External links

The ShortEdit

Why Study the Industrial Arts?

SynopsisEdit

Joe and the Coach double-team to explain to a high-school student disparaging shop class the many and varied uses for Industrial Arts in all aspects of modern life.

InformationEdit

• This short was included on Shorts Vol 1, released by Rhino Entertainment on VHS in July 1998, and on DVD in February 2003 as part of The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection: Volume 2, a 4-DVD set with Cave Dwellers, Pod People and Angels Revenge.

The MovieEdit

SynopsisEdit

New Mexico, 1963. The Rowes, Beth (Kevin Casey) and Harry (the electric Tony Cardoza) are skydivers, and they manage an airfield for that very special cadre of people who exist primarily for sport parachuting.

Beth puts on a cheerful front; she enjoys wearing coveralls, doing plane maintenance and watching others sky dive. Sometimes she has deep thoughts about people's possible psychological motivations for jumping. Harry, in contrast, is a remote, monotonic, depressed, passive-aggressive schlub.

Beth and Harry, alas, are experiencing marital difficulties. Beth still loves her husband, so she valiantly tries to rekindle romance by putting on her pearls and plying him with candlelight dinners served in a cozy crawl space. There is also plenty of that magical Coleman elixir, coffee. She tries to draw Harry out on their relationship difficulties, but he refuses to even discuss their problems. Instead, he cheats on Beth with local bad girl Suzy. The two adulterers like to frolic along the moonscape of the artificial bass environment.

Suzy is also seeing the worm-ridden Frankie, a dimwitted pawn with a permanent grimace. He once worked for Beth and Harry but got fired for being drunk. Jealous because Harry is seeing Suzy, Frankie returns to the airfield at night to sabotage one of the planes. He and Harry have at it. Harry, enraged almost to the point of seeming slightly irritated, threatens Frankie with extreme violence should he ever return.

Beth and Harry's slow downward spiral is suddenly interrupted by the arrival of Joe Moss, Harry's friend from the Korean conflict, who joins the airfield crew as a mechanic. He, too, is an avid fan of "the bean". He and Beth begin exchanging searching looks in Harry's absence. This escalates to an actual kiss.

From time to time various skydiving-crazed customers desirous of jump time drop by to be lifted heavenwards in the generic unmarked plane. We hear the transcendent music of the spheres as they ascend aloft and plummet back to Earth. Unidentified onlookers, some of them with apparent cognitive issues, bring cameras or guitars and pretend to observe the excitement, such as it is. One jumper forgets to pull his ripcord and buys the farm, so the FAA shuts down the airfield for a while.

One day Harry slams back the suds at a dismal hole called the "Sky Diver" then encounters Suzy as he leaves. He insults her and they have a brief physical altercation. It is after this that she begins plotting his demise. She forms a diabolical plan and commandeers Frankie's help.

At the film's climax there is a Bacchanalian skydiving blowout consisting of an alcohol-free "twist party" held (I'm guessing) on Halloween at high noon on the airfield tarmac with (apparently) inmates from the local insane asylum and a traveling circus, powered by a hired band that plays absolutely no "twist music" whatsoever. The dancing is to be followed by jumping en masse. Beth, Harry and Joe are among those who will be taking the plunge.

Suzy uses her feminine wiles to obtain acid at a local pharmacy and sneaks into the hangar where the packed chutes lie waiting. She sabotages Harry's chute, then she and Frankie retreat to observe the results of their evil handiwork.

Will Suzy's evil plan succeed? If so, will she be punished for the crime of murder? Will Beth and Harry rediscover their love?

Contains coffee, light planes, sky-diving and "Superman" wind-noise sound effects.

InformationEdit

All three films directed by Coleman Francis have been MSTed. The other two are 619 - Red Zone Cuba and 621 - The Beast of Yucca Flats. It's a shame there aren’t any more out there.

Regarding the band at the airstrip party: Jimmy Bryant (with partner/steel guitar player Speedy West) helped pioneer the West Coast rockabilly sound in the early 1950s. Click here to listen to 'Stratosphere Boogie' in full: it's worth it.

The EpisodeEdit

Host SegmentsEdit

Prologue: Tom's planetarium show is disrupted by Crow's repeated gags about Uranus.

Segment One: Dr. F's skill back in high school at swing choir causes him to propose a little competition...

Segment Two: Shop class on the SOL isn't going too well due to Tom's lack of working arms and Crow's preference to work without safety equipment.

Segment Three: Believing it's something he needs to know how to get out of on his own, Crow puts himself in a "double jock lock".

Segment Four: Crow and his hot rod comes under fire from a fighter-plane-flying Tom.

Closing (Segment Five): Crow and Tom persevere and struggle in their parachutes as Mike reads a letter, while Frank suffers through dodge ball.

Stinger: Steve the soon-to-die skydiver says, "I don't know. I feel real free up there in the high blue sky."

Obscure ReferencesEdit

• "Krazy Glue spokesman!"

A reference to a Krazy Glue commercial from the 1970s that showed a construction worker whose hard hat had been Krazy Glued to a steel beam.

• "Tool operators...Tooool operators..."

A parody of the Sade song "Smooth Operator".

• "Bravo respects the rights of the artist, but we cut their films anyway!"

A dig at a former slogan for the cable network Bravo.

• "I'm gonna go watch the Kefauver hearings anyway."

The Kefauver hearings were a series of Congressional hearings on organized crime held during 1950 and 1951.

• "Yeah! Take that paper! Make it swing, Junior. Junior tried to be a singer, but he couldn't cut it. Sit down, Junior."

Mike is pretending to be Frank Sinatra commenting on his son's mediocre singing career.

• "It won the Palme de Butt at Cannes."

A spoof on the Palme d'Or.

Video ReleaseEdit

• Commercially released on VHS by Rhino Entertainment in October 1999 as a single tape, and as a part of a 3-VHS set with Shorts Vol 2 and Catalina Caper.
• Commercially released on DVD by Rhino in November 2002 as part of The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection: Volume 1, a 4-DVD set with Catalina Caper, The Creeping Terror and Bloodlust!.
• The DVD release is a double-sided disc, with the MST version on one side and the un-MSTed movie on the other. The MST3K side also includes a trailer for the original film.

External links Edit

• The Skydivers at Mystery Science Rater 3000
• Why Study Industrial Arts? at Mystery Science Rater 3000

preceded by: Season 5		MST3K Season 6					followed by: Season 7
		1994 - 1995
601	Girls Town	1994-07-16	609	The Skydivers	1994-08-27	617	The Sword and the Dragon	1994-12-03
602	Invasion USA	1994-07-23	610	The Violent Years	1994-10-15	618	High School Big Shot	1994-12-20
603	The Dead Talk Back	1994-07-31	611	Last of the Wild Horses	1994-10-15	619	Red Zone Cuba	1994-12-17
604	Zombie Nightmare	1994-11-24	612	The Starfighters	1994-10-29	620	Danger!! Death Ray	1995-01-07
605	Colossus and the Headhunters	1994-08-20	613	The Sinister Urge	1994-11-05	621	The Beast of Yucca Flats	1995-01-21
606	The Creeping Terror	1994-09-17	614	San Francisco International	1994-11-19	622	Angels Revenge	1995-03-11
607	Bloodlust	1994-09-03	615	Kitten with a Whip	1994-11-23	623	The Amazing Transparent Man	1995-03-18
608	Code Name: Diamond Head	1994-10-01	616	Racket Girls	1994-11-26	624	Samson vs. the Vampire Women	1995-03-25