The Last Starfighter

A videogaming boy, seemingly doomed to stay at his trailer park home all his life, finds himself recruited as a gunner for an alien defense force.

• Director: Nick Castle
• Genre:Action / Adventure / Family / Sci-Fi
• Runtime:101 minutes

Cast

Lance Guest : Alex Rogan / Beta Alex
Dan O’Herlihy : Grig
Catherine Mary Stewart : Maggie Gordon
Barbara Bosson : Jane Rogan
Norman Snow : Xur

Alex Rogan (Lance Guest), is a teenager living in the Starlight Star-bright trailer park with his waitress/trailer park owner mom and Playboy-loving little brother Louis. Alex has just learned that he failed to qualify for a college loan and seems to be stuck in his trailer park helping his mom as the park handyman and going to city college. To escape his problems, he has a hobby of playing Starfighter, a stand-up arcade game where the player defends “the Frontier” from “Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada” in a space battle. Eventually he becomes the top player of Starfighter and wins it as the trailer park residents cheer him on. After finally beating the game, he is approached by its inventor, Centauri (Robert Preston). Stepping into Centauri’s vehicle, Alex is horrified to find that it is actually a spaceship; moreover, Centauri is a disguised alien who whisks him off to the planet Rylos, in another star system.

Upon his arrival, Alex is given a flight suit. He is also fitted with a translator so he can understand the various alien languages of the League’s alien members. Alex discovers that he has been recruited as a starship weapons-expert, a Starfighter. He also discovers that the images and territories in the Starfighter arcade game represent a conflict which actually is raging between the Rylan Star League and the Ko-Dan Empire; the latter is led by Xur (Norman Snow), a borderline psychopathic traitor to whom the Ko-Dan Emperor has promised (apparently with no intention of delivering) control of Rylos itself.

Alex’s disbelief is further compounded when he is given a briefing on the situation with the other (alien) Starfighter recruits. As he leaves the briefing area, he meets star-navigator Grig (Dan O’Herlihy), a jovial alien with reptilian scaled skin. When confronting Centauri, Alex learns that the Starfighter game is in fact a test devised to find those “with the gift”. (The novelization of the film indicates “the gift” as the propensity for violent behavior, since purged from the majority of the peaceful races within the Star League.) Furthermore, the game’s story about defending the galaxy against enemies is real, with a full-blown Starfighter battle preparing to be launched. However, Alex’s recruitment is highly irregular on Centauri’s part, considering that Earth is not intended to be approached diplomatically until Humanity matures sufficiently. Before Alex can fully understand and dispute his induction, Xur appears (via a holographic projection) inside of the Starfighter base and reveals he has discovered an infiltrator in his ranks and proceeds to broadcast his death by torture to the entire base, including his father, Ambassador Enduran (Kay E. Kuter), the Starfighter commander. He then proclaims to the people of Rylos that once Galan (Rylos’s moon) is in full eclipse, the Ko-Dan Armada will begin their invasion and not even the Starfighters will be able to save them. Undaunted by his son’s declaration, Enduran defiantly replies, “We shall see, Xur. We shall see!” Read more

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