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Amphibians in Movies
 
Communion (1989)
 
Spoiler Alert !

Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.
 
This is the bizarre sci-fi movie that the Christopher Walken "Dancing with Aliens" meme comes from. Walken plays Whitley Strieber, a science-fiction author who has a nightmare in which he was abducted and probed by aliens that he comes to learn was real, not a dream. There is a brief scene with some newts in an aquarium. It's trivial, but I feel obligated to report any occurrence of salamanders in a movie, since they're so rare.

Newt Scene Screenshot Newt Scene Screenshot Newt Scene Screenshot
Newt Scene Screenshot Newt Scene Screenshot Newt Scene Screenshot
Streiber goes to see a doctor to get checked out. He tells the doctor about his dream of being abducted by aliens. After the doctor examines him, he gets dressed and goes into the doctor's office where he talks about getting probed in his rectum. Then, all of a sudden, we see a close-up of some newts swimming in an aquarium. Strieber tells the doctor that at first he thought it was a nightmare, but now the dream feels real. He says "...they had big eyes. Fish." Then we see another shot of a newt swimming in the water. The doctor asks if the aliens were wearing dark glasses and Streiber says : "No, eyes, big dark eyes like a... No, more like an insect." Not human. Then we see him standing in front of an aquarium in the doctor's office.

Later we see Streiber in the alien's space ship high-fiving and dancing with them. We see small dark aliens and tall thin orange aliens that are reminiscent of the orange newts.

It's a mystery why we suddenly see close-up shots of swimming newts. Maybe it's because they're strange and unknown to most of the viewers. Maybe it's because Streiber mentions that the aliens are like fish. Maybe we're supposed to think they're fish?

The newts we see appear to be Rough-skinned Newts, which are extremely toxic, an odd choice for a doctor's office.


You can read a review of the film and watch it at TheSilverScream.com.