cult film freak: LANCE GUEST WITH ROBERT PRESTON IN 'THE LAST STARFIGHTER'

Title: THE LAST STARFIGHTER Year: 1984 Rating: ***1/2

The connection of THREE AMIGOS, GALAXY QUEST and TROPIC THUNDER... of actors thinking they're taking part in just another paid gig that turns out to be incredibly real and dangerous... in a way began with Nick Castle's THE LAST STARFIGHTER where Lance Guest plays the oldest son of a trailer park landlady... in the kind of lonely Middle American town that Steven Spielberg practically created for CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (and a bit like the "there's something better somewhere else" planet of Tattooine in STAR WARS)...

Castle includes other Speilbergian touches, like a highway speed-limit-sign rattling from the power of a spaceship.... here belonging to scene-stealer Robert Preston, who, with his signature speaking voice that practically sings every line, is beyond perfect as the pre BACK TO THE FUTURE DeLoreon-driving alien-in-human-form recruiter for an actual "star war" that Guest's Alex Rogen is hired to fight in...

Lance Guest in THE LAST STARFIGHTER

The catch here is — he's an extremely agile video gamer, specifically the titular LAST STARFIGHTER that was created to test possible pilots... yet the slowest parts happen once Alex winds up in a giant space-ship (with grids like STAR WARS' Yavin strategy center) where a group of eclectic applied-effect aliens are preparing for battle...

But the tightest, most intriguing character-development occurs in the villain's vessel where Norman Snow — as a spoiled-heir-turned-evil-tyrant — overacts with the kind of heated fervor needed for science-fantasy...

Lance Guest in THE LAST STARFIGHTER

Leaving the best sequences on the ground... particularly those involving Alex's "Beta Unit" replacement clone, awkwardly (and hilariously) attempting to seamlessly blend in with his... or, Alex's... best girl Catherine Mary Stewart and precocious Playboy-reading little brother...

Meanwhile random humanoid assassins provide necessary sudden-jolt action sequences... injecting jump-scare horror into the sci-fi adventure... between trips into outer space...

Lance Guest in THE LAST STARFIGHTER

Where the whole space war (with dog-fights looking as if STAR WARS were in the TRON computer) never feel complete enough to matter beyond Alex's camaraderie with a stalwart alien played by Irish veteran-actor Dan O'Herlihy...

As director Castle strategically narrows the exterior action into what feels like random video game sequences, which brings the whole theme... of the gamer taking part in the real thing... into a neo-pulpy wish-fulfillment yarn that works better in various narrowly-escaping sequences than as an attempted-epic whole.