CULT MOVIE REVIEW: The Fourth Kind (2009)

COMMENTARY: In terms of UFO stories, there is this strange tradition in the modern cinema of the pseudo-documentary: a film that mixes stock footage of purported flying saucer sightings with newly-filmed, "dramatized" material. For three decades, the "real" and the staged have been mixed in movie ventures including Target: Earth?, a film which featured actor Victor Buono playing an alien, plus real scientists including Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov. The 1970s and early 1980s truly represented the heyday of UFO pseudo-documentary explorations like that, including UFOs: It Has Begun (1976), UFOs are Real (1979), UFO-Exclusive (1979) and UFO Syndrome (1981). In the same decade, there were also a number of pseudo-documentaries pursuing author Erich von Däniken's popular hypothesis about "ancient astronauts" visiting man in pre-history, the whole Chariot of the Gods (1970)/In Search of Ancient Astronauts (1973) approach.

Surprisingly, the year 2009 brought a dedicated revival of these "alien encounter" formats with a new twist, director Olatunde Osunsanmi's out-and-out horror effort The Fourth Kind.  Here, the filmmakers have also adopted The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Paranormal Activity's (2009) marketing scheme: selling their genre film as being entirely based on fact. The truth, of course, is that all the "authentic archival footage" featured throughout the film, captured by police cameras, home video cameras and other sources is staged; prepared exclusively for this movie. Like the first-person camera approach of Paranormal Activity, this conceit is designed specifically to scare viewers, to make audiences believe that what it is witnessing is authentic. The underlying conceit here is incredibly interesting, if a little complex. Director Osunsami employs split-screens on several occasions to place purportedly "real" archival footage (say of a police hostage situation on a front porch, side-by-side with his staged representation/re-enactments of the same moments. The trick, of course, is that both incidents are staged for the film; both are faked. Yet placed side-by-side in one frame-- with one heightened artificial image reinforcing the authenticity of the other -- audiences are asked to seek out the visual differences between grainy home video and apparent Hollywood confabulation. In this hunt, our eyes conclude that the home video is realistic, and actually buy into that (false) footage as being truthful. In other words, Osunsami deliberately deploys slightly-exaggerated Hollywood artifice to make us believe in the veracity of the cheap, home video material. And he's largely successful in his clever game too.

Indoctrinated in everything from America's Funniest Home Videos to Cops to World's Wildest Police Videos, modern TV and film viewers have come to instinctively trust the shaky, grainy, cheap approach to filmmaking, and, oppositely, inherently distrust the more accomplished, romantic, Hollywood approach. The latter is exemplified here by the presence of movie star Milla Jovovich in the lead role of Dr. Abigail Tyler, a woman who uncovers a rash of alien abductions in Nome, Alaska during the first five days of October, 2000. Modern audiences crave and subscribe to naturalism in films these days, eschewing artifice and theatricality as much as possible. This movie encourages that impulse; asking us to reject the artifice of the Jovovich dramatizations and believe the naturalism (the lie) of the 911 tapes, the police camera videos, the home video sources, and so forth.

Case in point: our main character. The Fourth Kind also presents another woman as the real Dr. Abigail Tyler, and let's just say, to paraphrase Wes Craven's Scream, she's no Milla Jovovich. Presented in an archival video "interview" from Chapman University (with director Osunsanmi, no less), we come to believe this unglamorous woman as "the real thing" because she is awkward, halting, relatively unattractive, and distinctly un-movie star-like. Of course, she's an actress made to appear that way. This is where the movie proves genuinely smart. The "staged" re-enactment of scenes feature lovely Jovovich looking great and sexy in her stylish wardrobe, playing out hypnosis regression scenes against backgrounds that are more romantic, more affluent than what we see in the home video. Osunsanmi deliberately plays up the exaggerated production design in these sequences; they are an artist's heightened version of reality and audiences detect that fakery. Thus the documentary footage, lensed in less elaborate, less-stylish surroundings, seem increasingly real. The supposedly "documentary," archival footage moments deploy available light, less attractive actors than Hollywood would permit, poorer sound, and more naturalistic blocking and camera work. People step out of frame. The blocking cuts off heads during shots, action occurs off-screen, at the corners of perception, etc.

It takes about twenty-three minutes or so for the head to get accommodated to The Fourth Kind's fashion of operating, and audiences must endure a cheesy opening by Jovovich, directly addressing the audience. She comes out of a blurry fog, as if awakening from a dream, and breaks the fourth wall. But here's the thing: we must remember that this is all part of the format and genre (the UFO pseudo-documentary) too. Hollywood "stars" (often slumming it, in need of a paycheck) were always asked to front this goofball stuff with all sincerity and pomposity, whether it was Jose Ferrer, Burgess Meredith or Rod Serling.

And Osunsanmi is uncannily skilled even at excavating the right visuals in the movie's re-enactments too. For instance, he finds exactly the right shot during a domestic dining room scene to visually express the absence of Tyler's husband, Will (who has died under mysterious circumstances). He also forges a scintillating sense of uneasiness and scope with the first shots of Tyler arriving in picturesque Nome, an isolated town that can only be reached by airplane. You get the impression from Tyler's flight over Nome -- an outcropping of human technology and community blanketed on all sounds by green mountain ranges -- that the town is the perfect "test tube" environment for alien abduction and experimentation. And no one has to say a word about that idea for it to carry thematic currency.

Occasionally, the movie missteps, no doubt. Early on, there's a crisply-edited montage of hypnosis sequences featuring three of Tyler's clients as they all discuss exactly the same thing: a menacing white owl watching them from their bedroom windows. The montage, a time-saving measure, actually deprives us of Abigail's "learning curve." It's the wrong technique for the sequence because the audience should gradually learn that all of her insomniac clients have experienced an identical terror, the presence of the owls actually a mnemonic avatar for the extra-terrestrials. And the audience should see this unnerving truth dawn on Abigail slowly too. Instead, by cutting between three separate hypnosis sessions at lightning speed, there's no sense of learning, no graduation of suspense, no escalation of terror. It's one of the few scenes in the movie that absolutely doesn't work.

Yet what does work, remarkably well, actually, is Osunsanmi's "documentary"-style footage, which -- at about the forty-five minute point -- kicks off into absolute horror when two patients, named Tommy (Corey Johnson) and Scott (Enzo Cilenti) are regressed to the time of their alien abductions. These actors, and the ones in the side-by-side "documentary scenes", featured in split-screen, do an absolutely amazing job of expressing terror, using only their body movements to carry the scares. You actually think they are experiencing alien-generated seizures or spasms.

And then, later, we see archival footage of Scott actually being "possessed" by an alien and the static-ridden, rolling video footage provides a psychic jolt. Against your better judgment, you may feel frightened or at least unnerved) and in part it is because of Osunsanmi's conceit of pitting the documentary-style faked stuff against the Hollywood-style faked stuff.  Especially admirable is the way that the film attempts to bring in the Chariot of the Gods aspect of the form, by explicitly referencing Sumerian cuneiform and artwork. Again, some people may claim that this subplot is a real stretch in believability (that ancient astronauts or aliens formed our race's perception of "God"), but the movie is working in a specific genre and therefore must abide by the rules of that genre.

By and large, critics absolutely hated The Fourth Kind. There are two important reasons for this, and they have nothing to with the technical skill or entertainment value of The Fourth Kind. The first is that many modern journalists/critics may not be familiar with the style and history of the UFO pseudo-documentaries of the 1970's, and thus don't understand the genre the film is deliberately and delicately aping. They have no idea that this is an updating of a historica movie form. Therefore, they have no way to put The Fourth Kind into any kind of meaningful context for their readers. And secondly -- by and large -- critics really, really don't like to be tricked or out-smarted by movies. They don't want to admit, essentially, that a movie has gotten one over on them (which is why they all watch M. Night Shyalaman movies obsessed with picking apart a so-called trick ending...whether there is one or not). Therefore, it is easier to belittle or dismiss that which they don't "get." For example, many critics found the "dramatizations" of The Fourth Kind to be cumbersome, and the Hollywood scenes over-designed. Yet this is the crux of the issue; it's the point of the movie. It's a leitmotif. The Fourth Kind encourages our eyes to note the unrealistic, romantic affluence of Abigail's surroundings, so typical of Hollywood movies since at least the 1990s), and then note, by side-by-side comparison, the relative naturalism of the archival, supposedly-documentary footage. In that distance between staged, A-movie re-enactment and "direct cinema"-style documentary footage, the movie pushes its viewers to believe the veracity of the latter over the former. The point is to scare us silly and, again, as a horror film, The Fourth Kind is supremely effective on that front.

The Fourth Kind is never obvious. We make out enough here to be horrified, and to get a general visual impression of what is occurring. But critically, we're never spoon fed CGI-close-ups of aliens for instance, in The Fourth Kind. We are asked, instead -- again in cheesy pseudo-documentary format -- to consider simply what we have seen, and what we believe. And yes, it is a little cheesy, but once again: that's the nature of the form. It is part and parcel of the pseudo-documentary paradigm. We don't have hard proof of UFO alien abductions, so what we're left with is earnest "believers" like Milla Jovovich, (or in the earlier instances, Rod Serling, Jose Ferrer or Burgess Meredith) building a spine-tingling but sensational case for us.

The Fourth Kind involves some splendid trickery and it is a good, effective horror movie. It won't make you believe in alien abductions or UFOs, but it will scare you. The exciting thing is the fashion in which it visually generates its overaching mood of terror. Here, something as simple as an audio-tape recording that starts normally and drifts off suddenly into nightmare territory is more than enough; thanks especially to the way the director laboriously sets-up and rigorously maintains his real/fake dynamic. He is aiming at something deeper too, and this is seen in the explicit comparison of the aliens to "God."  Specifically,  humans deeply fear being powerless in their own lives. The Fourth Kind gets at that idea; how our sense of purpose, superiority and direction is undercut if there are indeed "higher beings" acting upon us with impunity and without mercy. Our human connections (to our children, for example), mean nothing if we're just laboratory rats. It's the same kind of horror that The Mothman Prophecies generated so expertly. Movies like these succeed in making the human experience, and the bounds of human knowledge, seem terribly small.

Is The Fourth Kind's all-out attempt to subvert our "truth radar" just some intellectual game? Perhaps so, but in vetting this particular game, the director of The Fourth Kind has successfully updated a genre (the UFO pseudo-documentary) and breathed new life into the mockumentary or found footage horror film. Taken on its own terms, and in the right context, The Fourth Kind is a powerful and well-made horror film.

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Fire in the Sky (1993)

On November 5, 1975, in Sitgreave National Forest in Arizona, blue-collar logger Travis Walton disappeared without a trace.

Five friends and co-workers, including so-called "pillar of the community," Mike Rogers, re-counted a harrowing tale of a flying saucer encounter...but the local authorities immediately suspected a more earthbound solution: foul play.

But then Walton miraculously returned -- more or less intact -- to the small town of Snowflake five days later, and gave the world one of the most notorious "alien abduction" cases ever reported. The media, UFOlogists and sight-seekers descended on the town, creating a circus atmosphere.

Some investigators believed Walton's incredible tale of flying saucers, alien abduction, Greys, and probing medical tests, especially since it is one of the few UFO-related stories to feature multiple eyewitnesses (and furthermore, eyewitnesses who have passed lie detector tests on more than one occasion).

Other investigators viewed the bizarre incident as a brilliantly and elaborately orchestrated hoax. On the latter front, the skeptics pointed to Walton's apparent involvement in a check fraud scam some years earlier, and the fact that the alien abduction drama The UFO Incident had aired on television shortly before his disappearance. Is that where Travis got the idea to "stage" his own disappearance? Was this all just a scheme to hit "the big time" and make some money from the story-hungry national tabloids?

Where does the truth reside? Of course, we can never know the answer for certain, but 1993's drama Fire in the Sky, written by Tracy Torme and directed by Robert Lieberman dramatizes Travis Walton's unusual story from the perspective of the men who initially reported this "close encounter."

What remains so unique about Fire in the Sky is that it eschews sensationalism and focuses intently on the human cost of those involved in Travis's disappearance, particularly family man Mike Rogers.

Robert Patrick ably and sympathetically portrays Rogers, and despite his second billing, Fire in the Sky is really his movie. We follow the agonized, haunted Rogers as he deals with his own pervasive guilt over leaving an unconscious Travis behind in a field on the night of the UFO encounter, as he becomes a pariah in Snowflake, and as his family and friends turn against him one-by-one. Adding insult to injury, even Travis ultimately blames Rogers for his actions on the night of November 5, without truly considering that Rogers -- as leader of a logging crew -- had four other men he was responsible for protecting in that situation.

In terms of drama, it's illuminating to note how the UFO encounter reflects the dynamics of the already-existing friendship between Travis and Mike. (In the film) Travis daydreams of opening up a huge motorcycle dealership with Mike. He flits from one get-rich-quick-scheme to the next, never landing long enough to consider reality. He speaks of romantic notions like love (for Mike's sister, Dana), and doesn't seem tethered to any real responsibilities. Mike is the polar oposite: "grounded" by conventional concerns like mortgage, money and family. He has no time to fantasize about impossible things. He's worried about the next paycheck, the next contract...the well-being of his daughters and wife.

When the UFO spirits away Travis -- whose feet are already metaphorically off-the-ground -- it is again, Mike who must clean-up and interface with the unpleasantness of the "real world." He must contend with the responsibilities and repercussions associated with Travis's disappearance and return. Mike must be the stalwart leader of men and still, somehow, hold out hope for their joined future, so that his co-workers don't succumb to hysteria and pressure from law enforcement.

Travis's encounter with the aliens (aboard their spaceship) in Fire in the Sky is dramatized in the film's last fifteen minutes or so, in a self-contained set-piece of sorts. The depiction of the alien ship (exterior and interior) leans heavily towards the terrifying, an interpretation which doesn't accurately reflect Walton's real-life testimony about his experience. In fact, screenwriter Torme reportedly apologized for the frightening views of the aliens in the film, noting that the "horror" aspect of the journey had been insisted upon by higher-ups in the production.

Yet, in terms of theme and narrative, the horror movie approach to the alien experience remains undeniably effective because it seems to scare Travis straight. After he returns to Earth and recovers (arriving almost as a newborn: naked and in the fetal position), he stops dreaming impossible dreams, marries Mike's sister, and commits to a stable job and the family life. He has metaphorically been "reborn." By contrast, a shattered Mike -- who has taken all the heat for Travis over his sojourn -- retreats from the world entirely; at least until Travis arrives offering conciliation and forgiveness. Rogers -- a meat and potatoes guy if there ever was one -- has been forced to open his mind to possibilities (to dreams and fantasies?) he had never before considered, so he has become a reflection of Travis, pre-ordeal. When they resume their friendship, Mike and Travis again balance one other.

The alien abduction scene in Fire in the Sky is probably the scene that most viewers remember most from the film. And that's entirely understandable, as it presents the interior of the alien spaceship as a world approximating a charnel house: a dark, dank locale of enormous and inhuman suffering and pain. With vertigo-provoking photography, we travel with Travis (via flashback..) inside an extra-terrestrial chamber that looks like something akin to the mad cannibal house in Tobe Hooper's seminal Texas Chain Saw Massacre. We are even treated to a trademark Hooper shot from that film: a close-up view of a victim's eyeball, wide and almost popping with unbearable terror.

The alien spaceship set-piece begins as Travis -- feeling pancake syrup fall on his face after hiding under a kitchen table -- recalls a similar feeling: something moist and goopy touching his lips aboard the alien ship. He opens his eyes to find himself inside a chamber that resembles a fleshy coffin made of coruscating human fat tissue. Travis then breaks through a membrane wall only to find himself weightless inside a huge, organic chamber. He finds himself in a room of alien space suits, and there is a splendid jolt involving one such space suit coming to life, unobserved, behind him. Then Travis is captured by aliens and dragged down a claustrophobic tunnel to an examining room.

The long trip to the operating theater is grotesque, and horrifying. The floors are ashy -- as if composed of ground-up human bone. Relics of previous experiments have been mindlessly cast-off everywhere: eye glasses, boots, sneakers, etc. Then the aliens come at Travis with unclean, byzantine surgical instruments including saws, drills and needles. It's clear that these aliens -- unaware or uninterested in human pain and discomfort -- boast a very different concept of "hygiene" than we do. Lieberman's camera then barrels down from a high angle, right into Travis's terrified face, and it's here that we get that familiar Hooper eyeball shot.

Without exaggeration, this fifteen-minute or-so sequence in Fire in the Sky is a masterpiece of production design, special effects, camera-work and editing. There is a deeply diabolical, intelligent nature to these alien invaders (they have the eyes of old men...), and you never once get a sense that you are looking at animatronics, constructed sets, or special effects. On the contrary, the persistent use of the P.O.V. perspective lands us in Travis's (shaking...) boots as he countenances the impossible, and the terrifying.

There are aspects of Fire in the Sky that simply don't work, which is the reason why, I suspect, the film has not achieved much mainstream or genre critical success. The police procedural aspects of the tale (seemingly de rigueur in the 1990s) go nowhere and fail to resolve in any satisfactory fashion. And, for much of the film, Travis (D.B Sweeney) remains something of an enigma; an opaque "dreamer" but not so much an identifiable or individual personality. And I also suspect that many audience members were non-plussed by the film's straight-faced dramatic approach. The film more or less takes Walton's incredible story as simple fact, rather than attempting to punch holes in it, and then proceeds to calculate the human toll of such a strange encounter.

Where it counts most: as a human story of loyalty and friendship, and one focusing on Mike Rogers, Fire in the Sky succeeds. And that (admittedly-inaccurate) tour of an alien saucer remains nightmare fodder, pure and simple. Taken in tandem, an image starts to coalesce here: of simple, groping humanity opening his eyes to the great mysteries of our time, and coming to understand that his connection to other men is the thing he needs to take with him into that vast unknown.

CULT TV FLASHBACK #69: Dark Skies (1996-1997)

Here’s a decent a science fiction TV effort from the 1990s that probably didn’t get the love it deserved during its original network broadcast. In fact, the expensive, highly-promoted Dark Skies suffered cancellation after a pilot and just nineteen hour-long episodes aired on NBC.

Dark Skies (1996-1997) ran during the reign of the magnificent X-Files, and – rightly or wrongly – has always been viewed by an unimpressed media in the shadow of that more popular creation; as an unworthy imitation rather than as its own individual (and original) thing.

Variety termed Dark Skies “shamelessly derivative” of the X-Files and The Invaders, while The Skeptical Enquirer dubbed the series a “clone” of Chris Carter’s series. Entertainment Weekly noted Dark Skies boasted “amazing gall” and concluded that the sci-fi proceedings -- if not laughable -- were “at least snickerable.”

The tantalizing premise of Dark Skies is that – simply stated – American history as we have learned it and experienced it is a sham. It's nothing but a carefully-constructed confabulation. Assassinations, natural disasters, presidential elections, economic upheavals and foreign wars are all merely the cover story for something else, something far more sinister.

In particular, these turbulent events are the results of the American government’s pitched battle against a malevolent extra-terrestrial alien collective consciousness known as “The Hive.”

Battling the Hive is a dedicated, secret American military organization called SHADO.

No, just kidding.

The secret organization is “Majestic 12,” led by Captain Frank Bach (the late J.T. Walsh). Bach’s agency was formed after the Roswell encounter in 1947, and on Dark Skies it was operating well into the 1960s. Like Commander Straker before him, Bach wasn’t interested in pursuing half-measures or courtesies. His mission was to save America from evil aliens. Pure and simple. This mission made him both a patriot and a zealot.

But Bach isn’t even the central figure in the series. Rather, Dark Skies focuses on two idealistic young college graduates who have come to serve in the Kennedy Administration in Washington D.C. during the Age of Camelot: John Loengard (Eric Close) and Kim Sayers (Megan Ward).

These youngsters arrive in DC full of hope and can-do optimism, planning to make their mark on the planet...and the future. They learn in short order of secret conspiracies and corruption, both alien and human. Their discovery -- their unwitting ‘awakening’ from dreamy Camelot -- echoes a very real disillusionment and disappointment that grew up in youthful America after the Kennedy assassination and led to the Vietnam War Era. Dreams die hard.

Over the course of the series, John and Kim travel across these great United States attempting to stop the grand alien invasion plan, and occasionally curb Bach’s worst civil-liberty-crushing excesses. Various Dark Skies episodes involve the Kennedy Assassination, The Warren Commission and even the Watts riot.

On their travels, John and Kim encounter famous historical figures such as Howard Hughes (“Dreamland”), Gerald Ford (“The Warren Omission”), The Beatles (“Dark Day’s Night”) Timothy Leary (“Bloodlines”) and even alien abductees Barney and Betty Hill (“The Awakening.”)

Dark Skies producer James Parriott described the series with this phrase: “Our future’s happening in our past.” I enjoyed that idea very much, and felt that the period-piece aspect of the series successfully differentiated Dark Skies from The X-Files. Also, Dark Skies featured a continuing enemy: the alien hive. The X-Files (beautifully) alternated between aliens, genetic freaks, serial killers and other antagonists. So I don’t necessarily view Dark Skies as a direct copy except in the most superficial matters. For instance, John and Kim “investigate” cases together like Mulder and Scully, and there’s an overriding conspiracy. If you want to talk about a real series with gall, and one that's a by-the-numbers clone of X-Files, just check out this year's Fringe.

One other notable difference: Dark Skies never evidenced the sense of humor that The X-Files so intelligently cultivated. All in all, It was a rather…dour program.

Dark Skies also underwent an unnecessary cast shift about half-way through the run of twenty episodes. A pre-Seven-of-Nine Jeri Ryan joined the cast as Juliet Stuart -- a no-nonsense but very sexy Majestic agent -- starting in the episode "The Warren Omission." Abducted by the Hive, Kim Sayers' just....disappeared. The character was all-but-abandoned for the remainder of the program's run. She returned briefly as an alien agent, but the shift never quite felt right. The casting change simply smacked of desperation: the shuffling of deck chairs on the Titanic. Especially since there was incipient sexual tension between Loengard and Juliet. That facet of their relationship felt highly inappropriate, given the tragedy that had occurred to Kim, the love of Loengard's life.

Still, there's much to appreciate in Dark Skies. The idea that the sixties were so turbulent because of the Hive is one that's fun to speculate about. And also, there's a good subtext here that these alien invaders are communists. "We have no color. We have no conflict," one alien tells Loengard in an episode set in Mississippi at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. Also, the production values of Dark Skies are absolutely top-notch, and the series features the occasional harrowing horror scene (like the forced expulsion of an alien "ganglion" from a human being, during the pilot.)

Dark Skies was extremely popular in Europe in the nineties, and it developed a small but dedicated cult following here in the States. The final episode of the series, "Bloodlines" featured a voice over narration from an elderly Leongard informing viewers that the alien menace had finally been beaten. It was a stopgap measure to be certain, a stop-gap attempt to bring some closure to a series destined never to return. But still, you can't help but feel watching Dark Skies that there was a lot of life left in the premise, even with the wrong-headed cast changes. After all, we haven't run out of interesting American history yet, have we?

Hopefully, a Dark Skies series DVD is forthcoming soon...

Theme Song of the Week # 44: Dark Skies (1996)

CULT TV-MOVIE REVIEW: The UFO Incident (1975)

The unsettling and inexplicable experience of Barney and Betty Hill -- of alien abduction -- was recounted meticulously in John Fuller's best-selling book, The Interrupted Journey. The same tale was also memorably adapted for American TV screens in October of 1975 by writer Hesper Anderson and frequent TV-movie director Richard Colla.

The film's title was changed to The UFO Incident, and actors James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons were cast in the lead roles. The late Barnard Hughes co-starred as the couple's stolid psychiatrist, Dr. Simon.

The UFO Incident commences a few years after the alleged alien abduction, as a troubled Barney and Betty Hill, an interracial couple living in New England, feel a strange compulsion to re-trace their steps from the night of September 19, 1961, the nights their lives were forever altered. There are gaps in their memories that they can't explain, and this fact vexes them both.

Since September '61, The Hills have driven the same stretch of New Hampshire road eight or nine times, but on this particular occasion (an event translated directly from Fuller's book...), something unexpected occurs. The presence of a group of men on the side of the rural highway causes a usually calm Betty to fly into a spasm of hysteria and panic. We see an alarming quick cut -- as she screams in terror -- of a gloved, grey hand reaching into the car...as if to grab her.

Meanwhile, Barney is still reluctant to face the possibility that he and his wife encountered a UFO at all. He is insecure living in an all-white community with Betty and fears ridicule and isolation should the story of flying saucers come to light. "Your dreams are your dreams," he tells Betty, "and reality is reality." Later, Barney angrily acknowledges "I know it happened...but I can't get myself to believe it."

The couple goes to see Dr. Simon, a psychiatrist, to aid in resolving their "anxiety problems" and "double amnesia." But what the Hills ultimately reveal in long, detailed hypnosis sessions is something extremely terrifying: a close encounter with the crew of an alien spaceship. Aliens stopped their car by moonlight, and escorted the alarmed humans aboard their flying saucer. There, these curious, inhuman creatures conducted a variety of invasive medical exams, including a pregnancy test, before sending the Hills -- with wiped memories -- on their way home.

Over time, Dr. Simon helps the Hills contextualize and accept the events of September 1961, even if it can't be fully or even adequately explained. The cloud of anxiety lifts (especially for Barney...), and some sense of normalcy returns to the Hills, despite the oddness of this weird event in their history.

The UFO Incident inter-cuts a series of tension-provoking hypnosis sessions with more routine views of Barney and Betty's domestic life, to good effect. James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons share a number of sweet, well-written scenes together at the Hill residence, strongly registering as likable, "real" people under unusual duress. These relationship scenes purposefully contrast in tone with the horrific recitation of the fascinating, you-can't-look-away abduction details.

For the most part, the hypnoses scenes in The UFO Incident admirably eschew spectacle for intimacy. Colla's camera remains pinned to Jones' expressive face in intense, sustained close-up photography. Barney grows ever more disturbed during his account of the alien encounter, and the performance is stunning. Watching Jones "live through" Barney's experience, you are absolutely riveted. And when Jones breaks the carefully-staged close-up composition, suddenly lunging from frame "trying to escape," you'll feel your adrenalin kick in. This is scary, scary stuff.

There are also occasional cuts to flashbacks during the hypnosis session; to Barney worriedly studying the night sky, clutching his binoculars, for instance. Intermittently, the audience can make out a light shining down on forest trees, but other than that, we never actually see the UFO in flight. This is an effective technique simply because we seem to be remembering "fragments" of the experience at the same time Barney or Betty does.

The medical examination scene aboard the alien space craft is vetted with similar tact and dramatic flair. Colla's camera cuts to a variety of insert shots: close-ups of alien surgical tools and other instrumentation, for example. When these shots begin to flash by, faster and faster, we feel as though we are being overcome by a flurry of images, literally overtaken by the experience.

The UFO Incident's most chilling image, however, arises during Betty's hypnosis session. She describes (again, in committed close-up), a group of "men" appearing ahead of the car; coming out of the forest and slowly nearing. Here, the film flashes back to a sort of wooded glade, and at first we don't see anything distinct. Then, appearing in shadow -- in the blurry, darkened distance at first -- black-garbed creatures loom, eventually coming into plain sight. Again, it's very chilling.

Colla and Anderson rigorously and faithfully follow the events and experiences in Fuller's written account, a fact which makes this TV movie an unusual artifact in a medium that prefers to tart things up. But, The UFO Incident isn't exactly a documentary, either. Instead, the film seeks and ultimately locates the core of the Hill drama: the manner in which the encounter with the aliens plays into Barney and Betty's already-existing fears.

For instance, Barney is a pragmatist, afraid of that which is real, meaning racial prejudice, intolerance and hatred. He's also grappling with another very real fear -- his health. The men in Barney's family all died young from strokes and he fears the same fate. For Barney, acknowledging that the UFO experience is actually real, proves a traumatic and difficult thing. If it's real, then he has to deal with it the same way he has to deal with bigotry or his illness.

Coming from a more privileged background, all of Betty's fears are based not in the real, but in the unknown. She's not alone; but she fears being alone (of losing Barney). She fears the "unknown" of death too. For her, the UFO experience means countenancing and accepting the unknown in her life.

The UFO Incident could have easily proven a really lurid, sensational bit of business. However, the steadfast focus on character, on performance, and on effective camera-work renders the movie not merely respectable, but actually admirable. The movie could have been an over-the-top geek show, but The UFO Incident understands it doesn't need to embellish, enhance or "stylize" the story of Barney and Betty Hill to render it attention-grabbing and suspenseful.

On the contrary, all the drama -- all the anxiety -- we can handle is abundantly present. In close-up. In the expressive, human faces of Jones and Parsons.

BOOK REVIEW: The Interrupted Journey

This riveting forty-year old account of the Barney and Betty Hill Abduction is a cause celebre in UFO literature and lore. The story, told expertly by journalist John G. Fuller, has also become fodder for TV movies such as The UFO Incident (1975) and fictionalized hour-long dramas such as Dark Skies (1996-1997).

The Interrupted Journey recounts (in meticulous detail) the events of the evening of September 19, 1961, a span when an unassuming interracial couple -- the Hills -- saw their weekend drive in New England interrupted by a...flying saucer.

A UFO not only shadowed these unlucky sojourners for a time, but aliens actually took the humans aboard their craft, the Hills alleged. There, a slew of medical exams were conducted before the couple's release.

After this event, as Fuller recounts, the Hills returned to their home and their jobs. Life went on, but they both felt mysteriously unsettled, with significant gaps in their memories. Betty experienced nightmares for a time. Barney saw a flare-up of his ulcer.

Soon, Betty began to remember bits and pieces of the unnerving experience, even as Barney resisted the idea of aliens and flying saucers all together, fearing that friends and family would find his story ludicrous. But slowly and surely, the couple began to come to terms with the bizarre, inexplicable events of that night.

The Hills were aided in this endeavor by a reputable, rock-solid psychiatrist, Dr. Benjamin Simon, who utilized hypnosis to excavate the Hills' buried (or blocked?) memories of the close encounter on September 19th 1961.

Their stories -- told separately in marathon individual sessions -- matched one another's very closely. Husband and wife both spoke of an alien visitation that featured missing time (a span erased by the aliens...), medical exams (including a painful pregnancy test for Betty...) and so on.

These thorough hypnosis sessions -- which often read as decisive, even prosecutorial cross-examinations -- are featured in The Interrupted Journey in the form of transcripts. These word-for-word accounts make for absorbing, provocative and even anxiety-provoking reading.

Fuller does well with the remainder of the text too, his prose devoid of unnecessary or distracting drama, hysteria, or silliness. In fact, Fuller downplays everything in a just-the-facts writing-style that disarms the inner skeptic and generates a fair bit of, well, uneasiness. The idea of alien visitation is rendered entirely believable here...and palpable.

Ultimately, we come to judge this oddly disturbing story on a human basis, a personal basis. The Hills don't seem like craven attention-seekers (on the contrary actually...). They waited for years to come forward in the public square to tell their version of the story, and then only after an unscrupulous journalist published their story without permission or input.

In The Interrupted Journey, when Barney first sees the alien leader's inhuman black eyes glaring down at him (pressing telepathically into his skull), the reader shares Barney's sense of primal terror; mainly because Fuller's sketched the man in such realistic, human fashion.

The Interrupted Journey is a remarkable work of literature, and I recommend the book as such. Just don't take it at face value or as a priori, Gospel Truth. On the (admittedly-limited) basis of literature, however, The Interrupted Journey is entirely successful. You sympathize with the characters; you're caught up in the drama, and the book evokes a strange feeling that somehow, some way, you're being watched while you turn the pages. It's not good material to read while you're alone in the house. Or after dark. The book makes you feel paranoid; like you're under a microscope.

Yet the inner skeptic in me still had some questions and concerns about the veracity of the Hill tale. Let me play devil's advocate for a bit, if you don't mind.

To start with during her encounter with the aliens, Betty is offered an extra-terrestrial book as proof of the aliens' existence. The aliens ultimately take the book back, however, conveniently defying Betty any hard evidence of the encounter.

But my problem is with the idea of the alien book itself. We're nowhere near the advent of interstellar flight, but in a few short years, print books will go the way of the dodo on Earth, totally extinct; relics. Would aliens capable of interstellar flight and mind-bending amnesia tricks still carry around books on their space ship (where space and weight would presumably be at a premium....)? Wouldn't they at least have Kindle?

Secondly, there's the alien confusion about "time." To The Interrupted Journey's credit, the book openly and fairly acknowledges this paradox. Specifically, the aliens tell Betty to "wait a minute" at one point but later, during her exam, confess no knowledge and/or understanding of time or even of the passage of time. For instance, concepts such as "years" and "old age" are beyond the Saucerites. If the aliens could translate thought well-enough to use the phrase "wait a minute," why couldn't the same technique bring them an understanding of time?

Thirdly, the physical description of the flying saucer -- Barney and Betty's mutual description -- feels uncomfortably like a 1960s phantasm of "future" technology. Barney sees (through his binoculars...) a group of aliens standing at a large black control panel. Again, in the decades since this book's publication, we've seen the revolution of miniaturization, not to mention the development of touch screen consoles. And if CNN Election Night Coverage is to be believed, we even now deploy holographic technology on a routine basis.

So why would aliens from a futuristic society (a society advanced enough to possess interstellar flight...) rely on old-fashioned, bulky, non-touch screen computer panels? More to the point, perhaps, why would four-foot tall aliens have laboratory bays with human-sized examination tables.

When Barney first detects the aliens (as reported in a startling hypnosis session) he briefly mistakes the uniformed extra-terrestrials for Nazis. In another portion of the book, he admits that he has a deep-seated affinity for the people of Israel. He identifies with them deeply, apparently fearing a similar form of persecution (as a black man married to a white woman in 1960s America). Given his initial description of the aliens as "Nazis" -- in tandem with this self-acknowledged psychological affinity for Israelis -- the intrepid reader may begin to suspect that this alien encounter could, in fact, be an hallucination, a folie-a-deux...an event entirely psychological and not what we would consider "real."

Also, there are a few notable difference in Betty and Barney's story that do bear a casual mention. Betty initially claims that the aliens possess "Jimmy Durante"-type noses. By contrast, Barney says that the aliens have no noses...only recessed nasal slits. I'd be willing to chalk this up to the fog of abduction, but it's a discrepancy nonetheless.

Finally, Betty admits that she and Barney do have some at least sub-conscious awareness of the burgeoning sci-fi pop-culture of the 1960s. In particular, she mentions The Twilight Zone by name during one of her hypnosis sessions. And then there's this little factoid, straight from Wikipedia:

"Entirely Unpredisposed author Martin Kottmeyer suggested that Barney's memories revealed under hypnosis might have been influenced by an episode of the science fiction television show The Outer Limits titled "The Bellero Shield", which was broadcast about two weeks before Barney's first hypnotic session. The episode featured an extraterrestrial with large eyes..."

But listen, I'm no debunker. I have no interest in that job assignment. In terms of UFOs, let's just say......I want to believe. I really do. More than that, I'm inclined to believe. But to protect myself, I also set a pretty high bar for that belief. Disappointment can be a bitch.

My feeling on the subject of UFOs has always been that, given the size of the universe, it seems entirely plausible that alien civilizations might indeed exist....somewhere.

It is also entirely plausible to me that some life forms "out there" would be sufficiently advanced for interstellar travel. There's a caveat, however. Space traveling requires considerable resources, not to mention a a tremendous amount of energy, and it seems to me you would only travel some place far away (like Earth...) for a matter of great import.

Which leaves me to consider four options in regards to the Hills. One: the abduction happened in exactly the way the couple described, and I'm incredibly wrong in whatever skepticism I harbor. I sure hope that's the case.

Or Two: the abduction happened all right, but it was a top secret government or military experiment (god, I love a good conspiracy theory...). Probably one involving mind-altering drugs.

Or Three: the abduction occurred, but the voyagers aboard the UFO were not aliens; rather evolved, time-traveling humans from a distant future (!). Okay, so that's far-fetched...

Or, lastly, the Hills (now both deceased, unfortunately...) experienced something traumatic but entirely human on September 19, 1961; something that they didn't understand, and that their minds couldn't adequately process, That mystery accounts for the story of The Interrupted Journey.

Again, I want to believe. And while reading this book -- for a time -- I did believe. Betty and Barney Hill seem like good people, caught up in a terrible mystery. I don't know that you could ask for better, more credible eye-witnesses. But in the end, one couple's word -- even word of honor -- is simply not good enough. Not to sway me, anyway.

I wish desperately that the Hill Abduction could be proven conclusively; that The Interrupted Journey could be respected as something more than a fine, remarkably frightening campfire tale.

Perhaps one day it will be. But for now, if I have to go on the record about this book, it's just one hell of a good read.

What I'm Reading: The Interrupted Journey (1967)

"Barney got out, the motor still running, and leaned his arm on the door of the car. By now the object had swung toward them and hovered silently in the air not more than a short city block away, not more than two treetops high. It was raked on an angle, and its full shape was apparent for the first time: that of a large glowing pancake..."

-From The Interrupted Journey by John G. Fuller (Dell; 1967), page 30.