Doin' Time on Planet Earth

I was an extra in the scene when the aliens shoot up the revolving restaurant. All of us extras met a bus in Hollywood and rode up to Palmdale where the filming for that scene was done. It was a night shoot, cold as hell as I remember.

The scene as shot had paramedics hauling injured patrons out the front door of the hotel to a waiting ambulance. Hugh O'Brian's character came over to me, a uniformed cop, and asked for a ride downtown. We jumped in my police car and took off.

The aliens ran to an old bus and took off, but for some reason the front axle of the bus broke just as they were filming and had to be manually pulled back in place.

It was a fun gig, and all the actors were friendly and going along with it.

Almost all of that scene got cut except for a panning shot that shows me with my back to the camera looking up and talking on a hand-held radio. (!)

This is a very obscure and old movie, but it has a good lesson behind it: You should always be yourself no matter what people think about you. Celebrate being different and weird! This is also a great movie to see if you're a huge fan of the B52s (like I am). Two of the movies coolest characters are dressed like Fred Schneider and Kate Pierson of the B52s! Great cheezy, fun 80's movie!

~CosmicGirl

Nice to see 47 other people have heard of this film. Maybe in another universe (or planet, ala the film), it would've been more well-received. I only know of it from The Movie Channel airing it frequently around 1989-90. Since then I've yet to lay eyes on it again. Most will be unimpressed or bored, but if you like a lot of quirk to your films, you may be surprised. From rotating, airborn restaurants, gawky teens, a bird in a beehive hair-do, a so-horrible-he's funny lounge singer, and an Arabian college recruiter, this gets points for oddballness. Strouse is perfect as the kid who doesn't quite fit in, having an extra vertebrae and been struck by lightning several times. Plus a habit of over-analyzing his life, to the point of being ridiculed by his own family. Adler is good as his by-the-numbers, sunglass-clad 80s buddy, and Thompson adds some trashy sex appeal with her temptress. And I'll admit, another reason I liked it, was the lead character had the same name as me. To find a "Ryan" in any film is a rarity, but also one where the hero is such an outcast, was fun. The ending gets a bit outlandish and doesn't really resolve anything, but it seemed to the filmmakers point anyway. I mean, what else can you make of a story about a geeky 17-year-old who may be the half-human, half-extraterrestrial leader of a clan of weirdos from the planet B-52? Exactly.

Young Nicholas Strouse due to a combination of interesting circumstances learns he might be the leader of an alien race who while they might not have powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men certainly he and those like him feel they're just Doin' Time on Planet Earth. Is he the one to lead these misfits home?

Well not if it's going to interfere with his big brother Timothy Patrick Murphy's wedding this Saturday to Isabelle Walker, the daughter of Hugh O'Brian who once ran for president. But after Strouse starts getting e-mails from a pair of serious UFO fanatics like Adam West and Candace Azzara, he starts to think there might be something to him really being an alien.

Doin' Time on Planet Earth is a bit above the usual teenage coming of age party film and part of the reason is the incredibly hammy and overacted performance of Adam West who is just having one grand old time leading a band of misfits. The film is worth a look just to see him alone, burlesquing his Batman persona.

Martha Scott is in this, looking a bit lost as to how she got roped into this film. Matt Adler is fine as the perpetually hormonal best friend of Strouse and Andrea Thompson is miles from no-nonsense Detective Jill Kirkendall from NYPD Blue as the lounge entertainer and stripper who fulfills all of what Strouse really needs.

It is sad though that this was the farewell film of Timothy Patrick Murphy, best known for being Mickey Trotter on Dallas, who died way too young of AIDS. That young man had it all, looks, charisma, and a goodly share of thespian ability. He was a particular favorite of mine from the Eighties.

Doin' Time On Planet Earth is far from the worst film of this kind I've ever seen and you might get a few genuine laughs from it.

It's fairly obvious that this was the director's first film, as it is a bit disorganized and not quite as smoothly put together as it could have been. But it is equally obvious that the director had good intentions, and helped by an imaginative premise (weird, misunderstood kid believes he's an alien), he did make a likably eccentric film after all. At least it's better that the usual Golan-Globus stuff. (**1/2)