Before They Were Stars: John Travolta in “The Boy in the Plastic Bubble” (Rifftrax version)

John Travolta’ s career certainly took an interesting journey before he became a star: from singing in the shower in a soap commercial to playing a guy whose immune system prevented him from even taking showers! Travolta starred in a very infamous made-for-TV movie in 1976 called The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, based on the real-life case of a young man whose immune system was so defective that he had to live his entire life inside a sterile plastic bubble. This story would be eventually parodied in the “Bubble Boy” episode of Seinfeld and the Jake Gyllenhaal movie, Bubble Boy. Directed by Randal Kleiser (who would reunite with John Travolta two years later and strike gold with Grease), the film is pretty hokey and filled with unintentional laughs, and delivers some fairly unhealthy messages. I mean, if you’re living in an airtight plastic bubble, it’s probably not in your best interest to encourage a girl to make her horse jump over it! This clip is from the Mystery Science Theater Rifftrax version, which makes sitting through the film a lot more enjoyable.