Alternate ending?

you must be mistaken about looking for his lucky penny, it's not in any of the releases

Spread The Fear,
Toyland Chairman
http://www.freewebs.com/demonictoys/index.htm

this also was the scariest movie of my childhood... and yeah, after watching it again i realized not only that it's one of the worst movies ever, but also that alot of my memories of the movie had been warped (probably due to time, my underdeveloped brain at such a young age, and oh yeah, drugs) but i was always so scared of the following parts: when the dad chugs the coffee in the beginning, when the teacher was eating the frog, and when the 2 dudes with metal detectors get sucked down.

Interesting that you envisioned the parents getting eaten. I read the script when this was still a relatively new release and the ending was much more elaborate (and overwrought) than in the final cut of the film. Here's what happened in the long version:

The spaceship explodes and David and his parents (graphically) get fried in the blast wave. THEN, he wakes up and tells his parents about his dream, as seen in the released version. Afterwards, he tries to sleep again, and is awoken by the spaceship landing again. Before he runs from his room, we were to have seen the Supreme Intelligence creature crash through the window, screaming, and the rotor-device was to burst through his floor, like in the scene at the school. After that, he runs to his parents room, where he, yes, finds his parents being EATEN by the Martian drones!! In teh final cut, we only see David's reaction to this as he screams and the shot fades to black.

Some were critical of Tobe Hooper's ending being pretty much the same as the original film's, but if this full-length, double-whammy ending had been included, the film would have probably been rated R and completely scorned by everyone for being way over-the-top. I always figured the parents were being eaten, too, upon my first, innocent viewing, since the sound effects pretty much conveyed that assumption. I'm surprised, however, that the cut ending hasn't found its way to video yet...
If you want to read through the whole ending in detail, it's also brought through in the 1986 Ray Garton novelization, but slightly different, again, as a dream within a dream!

I just watched this film. He woke up, his parents came in to his room and calmed him down, they talked about his penny collection being why he dreamed about aliens wanting copper, he insisted on seeing the back of his dads neck, he cried... When his parents go back to their room he sees flashing lights, looks out window and sees ufo landing and runs to his parents room. The journey through the hall to their room filmed in crazy fish eye vision. He opens their door and bright lights are flashing, the camera does not leave his face, you hear some slurps and crunches, as the boy screams "NO! NO! NO! NO!"
The parents are not shown again, leaving whether they were being eaten, raped or given a very thorough mani-pedi up to your imagination.

the version of the movie we got - in new zealand - the parents DID get eaten. he goes into their bedroom where the aliens are already, eating his parents, judging from the noises of pleasured munching and his horrified face...