Title: The Last Starfighter (1984) Rated: PG Written by: Jonathan Betuel Directed by: Nick Castle Starring: Lance Guest as Alex Robert Preston as Centauri Catherine Mary Stewart as Maggie Dan O'Herlihy as Grig Barbara Bosson as Jane Norman Snow as Xur
By Bo Ransdell from Last Blog on the Left
Pre-screening memories: Sure, the plot seems familiar now: A young man, trapped by circumstances of economics and class, struggles to be something more, something different. He knows there’s an “out there,” a world that he could conquer if he could only get free and find the opportunity. That’s the situation that Alex Rogan (Lance Guest) represents, and, to an eleven year old boy in 1984, it was a projection, quite literally, of everything that a pre-teen felt.
Add to that healthy mix of angst the element of technology, specifically the home video game revolution, and you’ll find that same pre-teen, filled with a vague wanderlust, debating with his friends in the schoolyard whether the Atari 2600 translation of Donkey Kong could hold a candle to the arcade version (it can’t) or if Yar’s Revenge was the best in the 2600 library (it was). So, when a movie made escape possible through the medium of video games, the scales had lifted from my eyes. This was a movie I had to see.
I saw The Last Starfighter a lot as a kid, where it found a lot of screenings thanks to premium cable channels and a brand-spanking-new VCR. I still have the tape on which The Last Starfighter resides, alongside The Terminator. Even as a child, I enjoyed juxtaposition. At every viewing of the film, it reinforced the idea that you can truly excel, if only given the opportunity to do so, and it’s a belief I still subscribe to.
New memories: Seeing it as an adult, it’s hard to quiet the thrilled child still inside, the one who still believes everything is possible if given the chance and that Yar’s Revenge is the best Atari 2600 game. Roughly halfway through my mature, well-considered viewing of The Last Starfighter, I gave up trying to silence him. This was and remains a movie that encourages a sense of wonder, a sense of possibility, and, if you remembered it as a special movie when you were young, seek it out. The optimism of the film is there, and a real sense of magic, managed by genuine emotion thanks to a very talented cast. Sure, the effects, revolutionary at the time, haven’t aged so well, but they fit the imagination of the movie. And it’s that part, the spirit of opportunity in the face of adversity that makes this a treasure.
Download Natsukashi’s ‘The Last Starfighter’ podcast here
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Our featured guest: Catherine Mary Stewart
Catherine Mary Stewart returns to Natsukashi to revisit yet another indelible role from her resume.
She had first joined us for a chat about Mischief and also spoke about her other cult classic of 1984, Night of the Comet, but Last Starfighter hold a special place in her memories for reasons she recounts for us in the podcast.
After taking a stretch to focus more on being a mom, Catherine is reigniting her career with roles Rising Stars, a film with Fischer that she describes as an anti-American Idol, and a just-announced A Christmas Snow, which she details on her Facebook page (where she personally connects with her fans). You can also follow her at her blog.
Catherine is always a fun, engaging guest and has several tales about working on the set of The Last Starfighter, and we thank her for letting us share them with her.
Pre-screening memories: When I was a kid, I think I felt obligated to like The ‘Burbs. One of my favorite movies as a young lad was definitely Big, although that was mostly for the sweet apartment he had in Manhattan with the basketball hoop, soda machine, and huge trampoline. But Tom Hanks still served as that movie’s icon and got to live out every young boy’s fantasy by trying out toys for a living, getting to have a Pepsi whenever he wanted, and feeling a boob with the lights on.
This was a dark movie. And having grown up in the suburbs, I had a decidedly rosier perception of life in a seemingly idyllic hamlet on the outskirts of town, but here was Rick Ducommon talking about the local ice cream man losing his mind due to suburban monotony-turned-madness and butchering his entire family. As a third grader, what the hell am I supposed to do with that? This was supposed to be a Tom Hanks movie, dammit!
New memories: This movie is still dark, but compared to some of the really dark comedies I’ve seen and enjoyed since (the borderline-evil Death to Smoochy comes to mind), The ‘Burbs comes off as mostly tame. It strikes me more as a live action satirical comic book than anything else. The plot moves along briskly, macabre situations contrast against the bright, picturesque background and perfect weather of suburban tranquility, and we’re treated to some genuine laugh out loud moments along the way.
At the tender age of 17, while most kids are contemplating colleges, struggling to find out just what the hell they want to do with the rest of their lives, Peter (pictured far left, next to that robot guy) decided he would kick it with some new friends on a little movie “made from the guy who made American Graffiti. ”
Former memories: One of the benefits of being involved with Natsukashi is the rediscovery of a film that lingered in memory as a child very distinctly, but becomes something else entirely when seen through the eyes of an adult. The Dark Crystalwas such an experience, a movie that was best recalled as a source of fear when I was a child (those creepy Skeksis still give me the wiggins). 
As a young boy, I was terrified of the beaked Skeksis, the Garthim, creatures existing somewhere on the evolutionary ladder between a beetle and a crab, and the horrible fates of the Podlings as their life essence is drained for the use of the warped Skeksis civilization. These are the perceptions of a child, one who has grown accustomed to fears, now, but was rattled by these images when first exposed to them. 
New memories: As a grown-up, what I found upon a return to the world of The Dark Crystal was something I not only didn’t remember clearly, but was amazed by: the beauty of this film. In a world dominated by CG imagery, The Dark Crystal is a deep and satisfyingly real movie experience, and I was reminded of how a movie could create such an authentic experience while wrapping itself in imagery that is decidedly authentic while remaining imaginative and unique. 
Dave has had the kind of career that most sci-fi/fantasy geeks dream would sever an appendage for. Learning a craft of on-screen puppetry under the caring eye of Jim Henson, starting your career by bringing Yoda to life. Working with Roger Rabbit, Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors, Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, as well as the much-anticipated Spike Jonze adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are, Dave’s work reads like a laundry list of movie lovers’ desert island features.
Dave is living the dream, quite literally, as it was his desire as a young child to pull the strings as a puppeteer. The Dark Crystal was one of his earliest gigs (after assisting in a couple of small films called The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi) and, as the first Brit to do so, he perfected his craft in the house that Muppets built, the Jim Henson Company.
At around six or seven years old, I finally managed to see The Black Hole, thanks to an uncle who had both cable and a VCR, and it has the distinction of being the first film I remember being so upset by that I was unable to continue watching. The memories are so fuzzy that I can’t even judge how far into the film the disturbing part occurred, and time has left most of the film’s details as little more than fuzzy images in my mind. Men gathered around machinery, talking about 
And then Maxmilian gutted someone with a spinning claw, and my experiences with the film ended abruptly. I can’t swear that it was an especially graphic scene of violence, or even that it had no place in a G-rated film, but the image of a person being gutted by a deadly robot arm was so burned into my mind that it became the focus of my nightmares for years to come. The fact that it was Maxmillian, a figure second only to Darth Vader in my imagination when it came to cool villains, made it all the worse. Years of having the robot built up, his cool design capturing my imagination, led to it almost feeling like a betrayal to see him performing such a brutal act. Even as a child, I understood that he was the villain, and that was what villains do, but the quality of the action he took was far more intense than I was obviously prepared for – as evidenced by the fact that my screams of horror led my mother to turn the film off then and there, and my traumatized associations with the film kept me from ever watching it again.
You know what? I stand by my childhood cowardice. Although it was the only truly intense scene in the film, that gutting is basically as intense as you can get in a PG-rated film. It’s also a perfect example of how to get an incredible reaction without any blood. 
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