The Skydivers (USA, 1963) 75 min B&W DIR-SCR: Coleman Francis. PROD: Anthony Cardoza. MUSIC: John Bath. DOP: Austin McKinney, Lee Strosnider. CAST: Kevin Casey, Eric Tomlin, Anthony Cardoza, Marcia Knight, Titus Moede. (Crown International Pictures)
After such a filmmaking debut with a “revisionist” thing like Beast of Yucca Flats, what could anyone do for a follow-up but something more mainstream, digestible… better?
The Skydivers is a straightforward tale of jealousy and betrayal taken to unfortunate degrees. Harry (producer Anthony Cardoza) and Beth (Kevin Casey) are a married couple who run a skydiving school. He is running around with Suzy (Marcia Knight), a graduate of the Yvette Vickers School of the Other Woman for Potboilers. She, on the other hand is also fooling around with Frankie (Titus Moede- an alumnus of Ray Dennis Steckler pictures), whom Harry recently fired. Harry dumps Suzy, and she metes out her revenge with grave consequences for the skydiving center.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, or an embittered bit player making a movie about the basest forms of humanity. While watching this film, right after Beast of Yucca Flats like I did, one is actually surprised by the competence of the direction… in relative terms. Never mind that there are long melodramatic scenes that don’t go anywhere, that the stock skydiving footage features people that bear no resemblance to the principal cast (whose canned studio echo voices are simultaneously heard on the soundtrack), or that there are continuity errors galore. It’s much more digestible- that is, it isn’t such an “uncompromising subversion” of cinematic technique.
Taken with his other two pictures, however, Skydivers is another of Francis’ sour depictions of the awful things humans do. Everyone in this film is betraying someone for another who ends up doing them wrong anyway. As usual, this film is shot in grimy low contrast, washed out greys, which in hindsight properly enhances the seedy human behaviour. Once again the film climaxes with Francis’ favourite operative, the helicopter chasing down the villain. At the fade-out, the message is clear: Francis is creating an oeuvre in which bad behaviour begets more of the same, and it just keeps on continuing.