Coneheads

Poster from the Coneheads film

The Coneheads was a recurring sketch on Saturday Night Live featuring a family of extraterrestrials with cone-shaped heads, from the planet "Remulak," posing in the suburban United States as immigrants from France.

The sketch, which was featured in the show from 1975 until 1980, starred Dan Aykroyd as the father Beldar, Jane Curtin as the mother Prymaat and Laraine Newman as daughter Connie.

Aside from their obvious physical differences, the Coneheads also had a very nasal, monotone speech, and seemed to have much larger appetites than average humans. They would eat massive amounts of food during meals, (which they referred to as "consuming mass quanitities"), drink entire six packs of beer at once, and smoke whole packs of cigarettes at a time. Despite their distinctions, they were never suspected as being aliens (even when accidentally referring to their neighbors as "Earthlings") by anyone who encountered them.

Much humor derived from the Coneheads' use of over-technical dialogue, such as referring to food as "consumables", and saying "I summon you" to ask to speak to another person. The somewhat popular term "parental unit" also came from the sketches. They engaged in strange behaviors, such as rubbing their cones together as a sign of affection, at which point a bizarre, theremin-like noise is emitted, presumably from the cones themselves. There is also a game they play involving tossing rings over each others' cones, which is somehow sexual in nature, and is considered taboo for the underaged Connie to play.

Dan Aykroyd said he developed the idea for the Coneheads based on the Moai, the mysterious and ancient stone statues of Easter Island, which had similarly conical heads.

The concept was turned into a movie, Coneheads, in 1993, with Aykroyd and Curtin reprising their roles. Michelle Burke played Connie this time out.

Coneheads

See also