Swanson County Vo-Tech officials have recently become concerned about strange behavior among the student body. Swanson County students have been spotted standing in clumps on street corners, pointing and shouting "Them! Them!" The source of this activity is an off-campus movie theater. Weekend marathon screenings of a 1950's-vintage science-fiction film have been attracting large crowds of Swanson County students. The 1954 film was originally booked for a single screening at a nostalgia festival but proved to be so popular that it is now shown back-to-back for 24 hours beginning at midnight every Friday. Weeknight screenings had to be discontinued after Swanson County Vo-Tech officials complained that students were losing sleep and not showing up for classes.
There is a party-like atmosphere at these screenings, with many of the young people showing up in costume. Some wear police or military uniforms and gas masks, while others don tartan bathrobes, braid their hair, and carry dolls with broken heads. Once inside the theater, the moviegoers put on antennae and begin making trilling noises. The viewers, many of whom know the film's script by heart, rock back and forth and chant "Make me a sergeant, give me the booze" and "This wasn't caved in; it was caved out" along with the cast. Throughout the film, the high-spirited students fling sugar, toy airplanes, and plastic insects at the screen. The theater manager says that he allows this because the profit from all the tickets sold more than defrays the cost of cleaning the theater. "However, we did have to make them stop using cigarette lighters and aerosol cans to simulate flamethrowers after the fire marshal threatened to close us down," he added.
When asked to comment on the phenomenon, a Swanson County Vo-Tech spokesman (who declined to be identified) said, " Well, at least they're not freebasing Pepsi any more."