What it was like watching it in 1984 with an audience in the cinema
One Saturday night, in the Windham Mall in Maine, my father took me to "The Last Starfighter", showing on one of the four "small" screens. There was a pretty good crowd for it.
After we returned home, my mother had on Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" playing in the background, on, I think, channel 56 out of Boston. It was the scene towards the end where a supporting character was discovered dead on her steps. I did not watch that movie until much later. She was the one who introduced me to Hitchcock and suspense, but she hated horror.
What I want to share was one experience watching "The Last Starfighter" with an audience. Now my mother hated violence and horror and such, but my father had a higher tolerance for violence. My mother had nightmares from "The Godfather" after he took her to it in Philadelphia. She hated it, but it was one of my father's favorite films.
So, that Saturday night, watching "The Last Starfighter" on a sort of small screen (the cinemas there were small, but for a child, it would not seem so bad), the audience laughed some at the humor, but were mostly silent. Then something happened. They became very vocal with disgust and horror. My father even reacted with shock: "My word", I think he said, and he virtually never spoke during a movie. The reaction was so strong that it seemed close to the level of people running out and leaving. They were horrified. I think it had something to do with the contrast with what had been going on in the movie up to that point... It was a bright, happy, "family" movie.
What was the scene? When the covers over this mysterious figure in bed are removed, and Beta is revealed.