The sequence with the man on the motorcycle was added to the movie after principal shooting had wrapped in order to pad out the running time to a reasonable feature length.
This film was the third featured movie in the 2009 live show tour of "Cinematic Titanic", featuring "riffing" by alumni of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1988).
The film was shot in 1972, but was shelved for six years because Don Dohlee couldn't find distribution. Then serendipity intervened. With Star Wars registering in the box-office red zone in the summer of 1977, local TV stations craved product to sate the sci-fi zeitgeist. Through a friend of a friend, Dohler sold The Alien Factor to a television distributor as part of a 15-movie package. It showed on TV all over the U.S., as well as in some Spanish-speaking nations. And while The Alien Factor never snared a legitimate theatrical run, it popped up for local midnight screenings at Baltimore movie houses.
The astronomer and the town mayor incorrectly use the words "meteor" and "meteorite" interchangeably as if they meant the same thing. In fact, the object is a meteor until it hits the ground at which time it becomes a meteorite.