The LAST STARFIGHTER

   Film (1984). Lorimar/Universal. Dir Nick Castle, starring Lance Guest, Dan O'Herlihy, Catherine Mary Stewart, Norman Snow, Robert Preston. Screenplay Jonathan Betuel. 101 mins. Colour.

   In this cheerful, derivative wish-fulfilment story, Alex (Guest), who lives in a trailer park, is a teenage whiz at computer arcade games. Attaining the highest-ever score on the Starfighter game, he is conscripted (though at first refusing) by its inventor, an alien (Preston), to play a real-life version of the game in a real starfighter and so save the Galaxy from the invasion of the Ko-Dan Empire. While he is offworld, his place on Earth is taken by a robotsimulacrum; this leads to amusing problems. Made for a juvenile audience, TLS is achieved with such good humour (and interesting computer animationfor the space battles) that it survives its silliness to become quite a good film. The novelization is The Last Starfighter * (1984) by Alan Dean FOSTER. (For further discussion of computer-game/real-life confusionsCYBERSPACE; VIRTUAL REALITY.)

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