Home > 1980 - 1989 > Starman
Starman
Year - 1985
Studio - Columbia Pictures
Stars - Jeff Bridges, Karen Allen, Charles Martin Smith, Richard Jaeckel
Director - John Carpenter
Writing Credits - Bruce A. Evans, Raynold Gideon (screenplay)
Music - Jack Nitzsche
Synopsis
Jenny Hayden (Karen Allen) is a young woman living by herself in rural Wisconsin, grieving over the recent death of her husband, Scott. One night a strange visitor enters her life. An alien spacecraft enters the Earth's atmosphere and is struck by guided missiles from American fighter planes. Knocked off its intended course, it crash lands not far from Jenny's cabin.
The alien finds its way to the cabin where Jenny sleeps, and examines its contents, including photos and movies of Scott. Jenny awakens to the sound of crying and goes to the living room where she finds a baby on the floor. As she watches in terror, the baby grows to full adult size within a matter of seconds. The man looks exactly like her late husband.
She tries to escape but the alien (Jeff Bridges) stops her. As they attempt to communicate with each other, she realizes that despite the amazing resemblance, it is clearly not Scott. In his limited command of English, he explains that, to return home, he must be able to get to a location in Arizona three days from now. He compels Jenny to drive him there in her Ford Mustang.
In the meantime, the military authorities have called in an expert on extraterrestrial intelligence, Mark Shermin (Charles Martin Smith), who concludes that the occupant of the crashed spacecraft has escaped. As reports of sightings of a man resembling the late Scott Hayden come in, the search for the fleeing couple begins.
Stopping for food at a truck stop, the alien is distressed to see the carcass of a deer strapped to a hunter's car. After experiencing his first human food, including, to his delight, Dutch apple pie, he returns to the parking lot and brings the deer back to life. A fight with the angry hunter ensues, and Jenny and the alien speed away, Jenny now going willingly and with strong feelings for her traveling partner.
After several road diversions, including a stop in Las Vegas where the alien uses his special talents to win a huge slot machine payoff, they arrive at the site of a giant crater in Winslow, Arizona. But they have been located and dozens of policemen arrive to hold them for the federal authorities. Mark Shermin arrives and chats with them privately. Jenny pleads with him to let them go, that the alien will die if he's not allowed to return home. Mark is aware of the autopsy table that awaits the alien at a federal location, and, sympathetic to their plight, he allows them to leave, informing that the police that they are the wrong ones. When his furious boss, George Fox (Richard Jaeckel) arrives he fires Mark and sends dozens of helicopters to the crater in pursuit of the alien.
Jenny leads the weakening alien to the base of the canyon, and a huge mothership spacecraft, organic in appearance, descends from the sky. The choppers land, and the military can only watch in awe. Jenny pleads to go with the alien but he says that she would die. They say goodbye with a very human kiss, and the alien descends to the awaiting mothership.