Fascinating documentary on UFOs made just shy of a decade after the first flying saucer sighting by Kenneth Arnold. The age of this and its matter-of-fact approach is what makes it so interesting. I've seen countless documentaries and television programs on UFOs. They are a staple of cable and satellite television these days. This stands as one of the best I've seen. It's just a lot of fun to watch and compare to the docs made about the subject today. It's interesting how some things have changed and others haven't, even after half a century. The presentation of facts, as well as the dramatic reenactments, are a little dry by today's standards. But keep in mind that the intention here was to handle the subject matter like a serious news story, which is kind of refreshing. Unlike most approaches to the subject today, it tries to stay unbiased and just report the cases of UFO phenomena without leading the viewer to a specific conclusion. The approach is to put the evidence forth and let the audience make up their own minds about it. This will probably be pretty shocking to those used to being spoon-fed their opinions by comedians and pundits.
15 Reviews
Credible Observers With Incredible Tales.
rmax30482328 December 2011
Warning: Spoilers
This documentary-style film follows reporter Al Chop as he begins his minor job for the U. S. Air Force around 1950 and gradually works his way up the Civil Service scale, changing along the way from UFO skeptic to -- not UFO "believer", but let's say "open-minded everyman." He has no idea what they are but he's now convinced that something is up.
The acting is so poor that I thought the performers had been hired from the ranks of Hollywood extras or had simply been brought in off the streets. At times they seem to be reading directly from cue cards off camera. I recognized only one actor, and only by his voice. It was Henry (Harry) Morgan, or Harry (Henry) Morgan, or Edward Teach, or whatever his name is, who played Jack Webb's sidekick and the Commanding Officer on "Mash." Maybe he can't make up his mind about his name but he's the only performer involved who is able to inject a note of drama into the proceedings, even if only audio. "I see 'em now. They're closin' in on me."
The principal figure is that of Al Chop. He looks rather blandly middle class, a bit like Kent Smith, if Kent Smith were a little pinched, maybe suffering from a severe case of Calvinism. There is a bit of his home life but it's restricted to a few scenes of his wife telling him worriedly that he looks piqued. He tosses her matter-of-fact orders like, "Get my car keys." The direction is full of clichés and the dialog is clipped and unconvincingly stylized, as if gotten from "Dragnet." The editing is clumsy. We're given mere second-long glimpses of the two color films that the script describes as awesomely important. And the data are dated. This was released forty-five years ago and a lot has happened since then. The population of the United States alone has grown by more than a third, with every person a potential observer. The global population has more than doubled from about 3 billion to 7 billion. I can't estimate the growth of video cameras because their number was zero in 1956 and any percentage of zero is still zero.
It's a hastily organized, poorly performed, amateurish documentary. That aside, the subject is one of monumental importance. And for reasons we can only guess at, the subject has been officially disregarded by the government. A reasonable guess would be that no official agency, especially a military one, is eager to admit that they know nothing about what's up, and in any case are unwilling to display their ignorance because of a possible panic.
Of course there have been crazes and fads before, lots of them. The phantom gasser of Mattoon, Illinois, is one of my favorites. And many of the UFO sightings reported are illusions or misidentified airplanes or other ordinary phenomena. But a few of them are incredible tales told by credible observers. (Karl Popper would have loved this.) All it takes is one, after all. And what does a UFO have to do to be a convincing UFO -- land on the White House lawn? The phenomena dealt with in this film differ from other familiar crazes. It refuses to go away, whether it gets publicity or not, whether the Air Force has decided it's unworthy of further investigation or not. The sightings keep cropping up. The interested viewer is invited to check out the many recent and archival reports at NUFORC.
The lack of official and public interest in the subject is understandable from a psychological point of view. These are what Leo Strauss and others called "known unknowns." We know they're there but we don't know what they are. Two responses are expectable: we should fear it because it's unknown, and we should joke about it because there is nothing else we can do to allay our fear. On the streets, this is known as whistling in the dark.
The acting is so poor that I thought the performers had been hired from the ranks of Hollywood extras or had simply been brought in off the streets. At times they seem to be reading directly from cue cards off camera. I recognized only one actor, and only by his voice. It was Henry (Harry) Morgan, or Harry (Henry) Morgan, or Edward Teach, or whatever his name is, who played Jack Webb's sidekick and the Commanding Officer on "Mash." Maybe he can't make up his mind about his name but he's the only performer involved who is able to inject a note of drama into the proceedings, even if only audio. "I see 'em now. They're closin' in on me."
The principal figure is that of Al Chop. He looks rather blandly middle class, a bit like Kent Smith, if Kent Smith were a little pinched, maybe suffering from a severe case of Calvinism. There is a bit of his home life but it's restricted to a few scenes of his wife telling him worriedly that he looks piqued. He tosses her matter-of-fact orders like, "Get my car keys." The direction is full of clichés and the dialog is clipped and unconvincingly stylized, as if gotten from "Dragnet." The editing is clumsy. We're given mere second-long glimpses of the two color films that the script describes as awesomely important. And the data are dated. This was released forty-five years ago and a lot has happened since then. The population of the United States alone has grown by more than a third, with every person a potential observer. The global population has more than doubled from about 3 billion to 7 billion. I can't estimate the growth of video cameras because their number was zero in 1956 and any percentage of zero is still zero.
It's a hastily organized, poorly performed, amateurish documentary. That aside, the subject is one of monumental importance. And for reasons we can only guess at, the subject has been officially disregarded by the government. A reasonable guess would be that no official agency, especially a military one, is eager to admit that they know nothing about what's up, and in any case are unwilling to display their ignorance because of a possible panic.
Of course there have been crazes and fads before, lots of them. The phantom gasser of Mattoon, Illinois, is one of my favorites. And many of the UFO sightings reported are illusions or misidentified airplanes or other ordinary phenomena. But a few of them are incredible tales told by credible observers. (Karl Popper would have loved this.) All it takes is one, after all. And what does a UFO have to do to be a convincing UFO -- land on the White House lawn? The phenomena dealt with in this film differ from other familiar crazes. It refuses to go away, whether it gets publicity or not, whether the Air Force has decided it's unworthy of further investigation or not. The sightings keep cropping up. The interested viewer is invited to check out the many recent and archival reports at NUFORC.
The lack of official and public interest in the subject is understandable from a psychological point of view. These are what Leo Strauss and others called "known unknowns." We know they're there but we don't know what they are. Two responses are expectable: we should fear it because it's unknown, and we should joke about it because there is nothing else we can do to allay our fear. On the streets, this is known as whistling in the dark.
Mediocre UFO documentary
nickenchuggets3 June 2021
Warning: Spoilers
This is a documentary that only has half the feeling of one. It's strange because most of it is told like a movie. It follows reenactments of different UFO sightings throughout the 40s and 50s, and how Kenneth Arnold was flying his plane one day and saw 9 unknown aircraft flying faster than anything he had ever seen. Air force investigators couldn't explain. When these extremely fast objects were in the skies of America and the government didn't know what they were, it posed a legitimate security concern. The program then follows Albert Chop as he becomes more interested in ufo sightings, and eventually becomes involved with project Blue Book, which was a real life archive of ufo sightings from every part of the country. The government eventually closes down Blue Book, saying that ufo's are of no military interest. By the end of the movie though, Chop is convinced they are real. This documentary is not that great because there are many repetitive parts in it, such as when people in Washington are looking at a radar screen and see unknown blips on the radar get closer to a fighter jet. Another pretty monotonous segment is when they are giving a plane radio instructions on how to land because it is too dark to see or something like that. There's not much going on and that one scene is pretty long. They also show a film of a ufo flying but it's only about a quarter of a second long. I still watched it though because it was one of the first ufo documentaries.
A serious documentary with more punch than most 1950s
David_Newcastle4 January 2001
Trivia question for sci-fi fans: name the 1956 film that featured the talents of Les Tremayne (the general in `War of the Worlds' and the opening narrator of `Forbidden Planet'), Marvin Miller (the voice of Robby the Robot in `Forbidden Planet'), Olan Soule (who had a supporting role in `The Day the Earth Stood Still' and `Captain Midnight'), and Harry Morgan (Colonel Porter of `M.A.S.H.'). Here's a hint: Harry Morgan plays an Air Force pilot whose plane is surrounded by six flying saucers above the Washington, D.C. If all this sounds too good to be true, take a peak at this drama-documentary, based on the experiences of Al Chop, a reporter who served as press liaison for the Pentagon during its investigation of UFO's from 1947 to the early 1950s. Miller, Soule, and Tremayne provide the voices for the narrated portions of the film. Although the movie contains only two brief film clips to serve as photographic evidence of UFO's, the producers build a good case based on the credibility of certain UFO witnesses (airline pilots, military personnel, radar operators, etc.). On a more subtle level, director Winston Jones pulls off a clever trick; he begins the film as a pure documentary, but he gradually modifies this approach and focuses on reporter Al Chop's personal involvement in the UFO investigation. Chop slowly changes from UFO skeptic to UFO believer (and so will you). The climax is a gripping reenactment of a true incident which occurred in 1950, when a group of UFO's cruised above Washington DC for several hours. The voice of Harry Morgan is heard over the radio as an Air Force pilot whose plane is literally surrounded by UFO's, during which Al Chop and a group of bewildered military men cluster around the radar scope, watching in wide-eyed wonder. Dramatically speaking, this scene is far superior to its counterpart in `Close Encounters of the Third Kind'. The most amazing thing about this film is the fact that it was made with the full cooperation of the United States government, and every scrap of evidence it presents was made available to any and all scientific agency who wanted to examine it. Watch it and make up your own mind about UFO's -- but you'll loose some sleep over it before you do. Note: Some reviews mistakenly identify the star of `Unidentified Flying Objects' as Tom Powers, a co-star of `Destination Moon' (1950). The star of `UFO' is actually a Los Angles newspaper reporter (not a professional actor) named Tom Powers, who portrays the real-life reporter Al Chop.
Overwrought semi-documentary, interesting from a historic perspective only
jamesrupert20142 October 2020
Interviews, footage, and recreations are combined to make the case for U.F.O.s being real, sentiently guided and likely of extra-terrestrial origin. The film is very dated and only covers the first six years of U.F.O. encounters in the US, starting with the 1947 Kenneth Arnold sighting and closing with the famous appearance of multiple mysterious flying objects over Washington, DC in 1952. The few interview and footage sequences are bridged by recreations of US Air Force press officer Albert Chop's (Tom Towers) examinations of various sightings. Real footage of the Montana and Utah sightings is shown (and examined frame by frame in the epilogue) but, after 90 minutes of portentous setup, the brief, grainy images are anticlimactic. More interesting than the U.F.O.s themselves are the reactions of the public and responses of the government (including President Harry Truman) who were genuinely concerned (although at the dawn of the cold war, the fears were as much about foreign powers as about malevolent aliens). Overall, 'Unidentified Flying Objects: The True Story of Flying Saucers' is tedious (especially the endless monotonal narration by Olan Soule) but at least is more sincere and less sensationalistic than later entries in the 'U.F.O.s are real!' genre (notably, there are no 'recreations' of saucers or aliens, just of human observers and analysts). To be fair to the film and its makers, it should be 'seen' through 1950 eyes, not 2020 eyes: more than 60 years have passed since the Arnold sighting and the entry of the term 'flying saucer' into popular culture, but despite the off-and-on hype, nothing has ever come of the claims that extra-terrestrial intelligences are visiting our skies other than a lot of great (and not-so-great) movies and TV shows, a few amusing songs, some celebrities making fools of themselves, and the memorable debut episode of 'South Park' (but, just in case, "Keep watching the skies!").
About as accurate as your local weatherman
kevinolzak2 April 2019
"Unidentified Flying Objects: The True Story of Flying Saucers" was a 1956 documentary from uncredited producer Ivan Tors, which purports to provide photographic evidence of the existence of UFOs. The first documented sighting of a flying saucer was in 1947, several more to follow, the first movie on the subject ironically titled "The Flying Saucer," a 1950 release from actor/director Mikel Conrad, who never considered the possibility that his UFO would be from outer space, merely something built by the commies. A special government bureau is started to investigate the many sightings to dig deeper for credible evidence, and some interview subjects share their stories (roughly 85% of these are satisfactorily solved). The highlights are a pair of filmed accounts, one in Montana by a civilian, the other in Utah taken by a Navy photographer. The only conclusion reached is that none of these occurrences are a danger to the nation. After the passage of six decades it's doubtful if those who saw this even then were convinced by the picture's events, and at 90 minutes with so much described rather than seen it bogs down quickly and never really takes off, despite its apparent sincerity (Bigfoot inspired far more cash-ins during the 70s).
old style recreations
SnoopyStyle27 September 2020
This is a faux-documentary of various sightings of UFOs. It proports to have military experts with real experiences. It's presented as a news report with recreations even with a reporter named Al Chop. It's interesting that audiences of its time must have taken this as truth and it's been a basis for many UFO conspiracies. As a movie, it doesn't really stay compelling for that long. The style is too stuff and very 50's procedural but it does has the veneer of news programming with the non-actors. Some people must have taken this for the truth back in the day. There are a couple of real footage at the end but mostly it's recreations and fictionalized reality.
Indispensable
Inclusive
Impressive
Insightful
LeonLouisRicci6 May 2014
This is a One of Kind Documentary (with a dramatization thread) using Non-Actors and Real-Life Flying Saucer Stories from the Late Forties and Early Fifties. It is a Matter-of-Fact Investigatory Film and doesn't even Try to be Entertaining. It just lays out the Facts and Presents the Phenomenon as it Occurred.
Ufologists of Today can have a "gold mine" of a Time going Back in Time to get a Glimpse of what the First Wave of Sightings Looked Like. Nothing is Embellished or Sensationalized. It is Dry and not Distilled. It is Bare Bones and brought to You as Unfettered and Untainted as Possible.
It Capsulized the Early Days of the Flying Saucer Flap and Touches Upon the Mantel Crash, the Two-Time Fly-Over of Washington D.C. in 1952 and Screens the Montana and Utah Amateur Movie Footage in Detail, Slow Motion, and Close Up at the end of the Movie. It also includes the General Stanton Press Conference Highlights. There are Multiple Interviews with Pilots and other Professional Observers.
These are All still with Investigators Today and have Never been Explained. It is a Fascinating Time Capsule. An Historical Expose and a Commendable Effort to Make Sense of the Situation when No One could Then or Even Now make any Sense of it. There is just too much Evidence ("credible people reporting incredible things") to Ignore, yet Not Enough Evidence to make a Conclusive Explanation.
For the Non-Ufologist and Casual Inquisitor of the Subject this may be much too Academic to set through as Entertainment, but as an Educational Tool it still Holds Up quite well and is an indispensable Artifact of its Time and has Importance to this Day.
Highly Recommended for Ufologists and Mainstream Historians, Educators and Skeptics.
Ufologists of Today can have a "gold mine" of a Time going Back in Time to get a Glimpse of what the First Wave of Sightings Looked Like. Nothing is Embellished or Sensationalized. It is Dry and not Distilled. It is Bare Bones and brought to You as Unfettered and Untainted as Possible.
It Capsulized the Early Days of the Flying Saucer Flap and Touches Upon the Mantel Crash, the Two-Time Fly-Over of Washington D.C. in 1952 and Screens the Montana and Utah Amateur Movie Footage in Detail, Slow Motion, and Close Up at the end of the Movie. It also includes the General Stanton Press Conference Highlights. There are Multiple Interviews with Pilots and other Professional Observers.
These are All still with Investigators Today and have Never been Explained. It is a Fascinating Time Capsule. An Historical Expose and a Commendable Effort to Make Sense of the Situation when No One could Then or Even Now make any Sense of it. There is just too much Evidence ("credible people reporting incredible things") to Ignore, yet Not Enough Evidence to make a Conclusive Explanation.
For the Non-Ufologist and Casual Inquisitor of the Subject this may be much too Academic to set through as Entertainment, but as an Educational Tool it still Holds Up quite well and is an indispensable Artifact of its Time and has Importance to this Day.
Highly Recommended for Ufologists and Mainstream Historians, Educators and Skeptics.
Interesting Capsulized Review
dougdoepke9 January 2012
The movie stands now mainly as an artifact of its time since the UFO fascination of the 1940's and 50's has largely faded away. In fact, younger folks may not be aware of how widespread the post-war fascination with the skies was. Viewers looking to the movie for entertainment should probably look elsewhere, such as the many entertaining space alien features of the time. Instead, the production takes pains to use only non-actors and documented content, concentrating on the genuinely puzzling instances of UFO's without speculation.
The highpoint, I expect, are the two actual films of unsolved UFO's. They're put into slow motion at the end for more careful study, but remain even then little more than moving points of light. The overall result requires some patience since the narrative sometimes lags. Nonetheless, anyone interested in the UFO phenomenon should not pass up this 1956, 90-minute review.
The highpoint, I expect, are the two actual films of unsolved UFO's. They're put into slow motion at the end for more careful study, but remain even then little more than moving points of light. The overall result requires some patience since the narrative sometimes lags. Nonetheless, anyone interested in the UFO phenomenon should not pass up this 1956, 90-minute review.
Fantastic Stuff...
goodwinbernard7 October 2012
If you have the slightest interest in the UFO phenomenon then this is a must see. In many ways the word 'fiction' in relation to this movie does it a disservice. Sure everything is re-staged and re-enacted but only to highlight what Press Officer Albert Chop insists really did happen. From a social history point of view it's a little goldmine too. There appears to have been so much respect in American society throughout the 1950's and it oozes through here.
For the serious UFO enthusiast the inclusion of the original Tremonton and Grand Falls UFO footage makes it an invaluable movie from a research point of view.
For the serious UFO enthusiast the inclusion of the original Tremonton and Grand Falls UFO footage makes it an invaluable movie from a research point of view.
The "lost" 1950's science fiction film -- that isn't FICION!
Bruce_Cook17 August 2001
It would seem that hardly anybody has seen this remarkable film: those who have seen it don't soon forget it. It's kind of like a 1950's science FACT film that tops most of the 1950's science FICTION films which thrilled so many young viewers during that magic decade.
The movie begins and ends by naming a daunting number of professional and government agencies who authenticate the claims which UFO makes. If the viewer keeps in mind the strict accountability this motion picture holds itself to, the remarkable events the film documents are impossible to doubt. There is absolutely no attempt at sensationalism. These are the facts about unidentified flying objects -- and the facts are very disturbing.
I recognized several familiar voices among the narrators, people whose talents were closely associated with the sci-fi movies of the 1950s. In terms of my enjoyment of the film, this proved to be some very sweet icing on the cake. It was a fond tie-in to great movies like `Forbidden Planet', `War of the Worlds', and other classics from that Great Age of Curiosity -- the 1950s.
A prerecorded tape is available through Amazon.com. I'm going to get it. So should you.
The movie begins and ends by naming a daunting number of professional and government agencies who authenticate the claims which UFO makes. If the viewer keeps in mind the strict accountability this motion picture holds itself to, the remarkable events the film documents are impossible to doubt. There is absolutely no attempt at sensationalism. These are the facts about unidentified flying objects -- and the facts are very disturbing.
I recognized several familiar voices among the narrators, people whose talents were closely associated with the sci-fi movies of the 1950s. In terms of my enjoyment of the film, this proved to be some very sweet icing on the cake. It was a fond tie-in to great movies like `Forbidden Planet', `War of the Worlds', and other classics from that Great Age of Curiosity -- the 1950s.
A prerecorded tape is available through Amazon.com. I'm going to get it. So should you.
Old Sci-Fi Cries For Lovers
jackhayslett18 April 2005
I have this movie on Video, tped in VHS in 1994 from broadcast from Atlanta (hint.) I picked it up from a man running a little memorabilia shop / museum in downtown Roswell0. That Roswell! Other Sci-Fi movies I like include these: Every time I drive by an old Drive-In Movie site or an old Theater, I am reminded of the many "B" movies that played during my childhood. found a liking for sci-fi. Early in the 20th century, Jules Verne stirred the imagination with books about fantastic adventures. Some of those books spoke of the Earth, the Moon and creatures from outer space. When I started watching this new and most often scary stuff, the Sci-Fi craze was barely upon us. The very first film I saw was "The Thing,"starring James Arness (Matt Dillon of Gunsmoke fame) as a gigantic cabbage man who had crashed his flying saucer in the Arctic, and the Army Air Force found him in a large block of ice. When the Thing thawed out he ravaged the polar post, killing sled dogs and any other creature in his path. It was the trip home after the movie that literally scared me to death. When I walked home, all the shadows were concealing the huge green man. As I sprinted home up Ninth Street, I ran from light post to light post on alternate sides of the street, to keep out of the dark shadows. Boy, how I wished mom or dad would come along to snatch me into the car and deliver me from this evil.
Scared the Pants Off Me 40 Years Ago
XPDay16 June 2001
This documentary features, among several incidents, the re-enactment of the 1950's flying saucer encounters over Washington DC and recordings from the Mantell crash. Very scary stuff at the time. I saw this on television when I was around 10 years old. It gave me quite a few sleepless nights thereafter. My father, who was a radar expert with the Army at the time, confirmed to me that everyone in the Signal Corps was well aware of the Washington incident. Further, he described to me their "hunting" UFO's with radar in the White Sands, New Mexico desert. He was there frequently in the 1950's. They were launching captured German V-2 rockets, doing above-ground A bomb tests, sending men into the stratosphere with ballons. THERE CERTAINLY WERE ALL KINDS OF WIERD STUFF GOING ON WITH THE ARMY IN THE SOUTHWEST DESERT. To me, at age 10, this seemed to be proof that the flying saucers were real. I spent much of my teenage years searching for the truth - What were the UFO's? Why were they here? As an adult, I've finally accepted that the aliens are NOT here, no Roswell crash, no attack on DC, no death ray shot at Mantell. I sometimes wonder WHY they're not here. In the 1950's and 60's, flying saucers were not the silly stuff of abductions and other talk show nonsense. No, in the 50's and 60's the military feared that there really was something beyond our own technology in the skys. I guess that our more mudane modern reality disappoints me. I recently captured this movie on tape. I had not seen it in 40 years. The production was certainly made on a shoestring. Still, the DC incident is gripping. It captures beautifully an important chapter in our history. one characterized by cold war paranoia, fear, but also a sense wonder and mystery. I miss it.
Not sic-fi, sci-fact! ~!!
Bruce_Cook13 November 2001
I ordered a prerecorded tape of this movie based on the recommendation provided by other viewers, and I was extremely impressed by the movie. The tape is great, and the movie is very impressive.
Get this one if you have the slightest interest in sci-fi movies of the 1950s. This is a factual treatment of the very concepts which the films from that magical decade dabbled in so imaginatively.
Plan on watching it as a double feature with `Earth vs. the Flying Saucers'. You won't be disappointed . . .
Get this one if you have the slightest interest in sci-fi movies of the 1950s. This is a factual treatment of the very concepts which the films from that magical decade dabbled in so imaginatively.
Plan on watching it as a double feature with `Earth vs. the Flying Saucers'. You won't be disappointed . . .
Dull Narration Sinks Documentary Film
Michael_Elliott13 January 2012
Unidentified Flying Objects: The True Story of Flying Saucers (1956)
* 1/2 (out of 4)
Pseudo-documentary about reporter Albert Chop (Tom Towers) who begins to investigate several reports of UFO's and by the end of the film he's convinced that they are in fact real. This movie uses stock footage, documentary footage and reenactments to try and tell people that UFOs are real and throughout the movie we're told a few dozen times that the cases we're hearing about are true. The most annoying thing about this movie is the Dragnet-type narration that runs throughout the running time and it's just so dry and dull that by the ten-minute mark you'll be wishing that you were abducted by a real spaceship just so you can get away from this film. To be fair, it's important to note that this was released when the UFO craze was extremely high in this country and it's clear that the producers were playing this to folks who wanted to know the "truth" even if they weren't really going to get it from this movie. The reenactments are also quite annoying as they never let you actually see the spaceships and usually it's just non-professional actors opening their eyes wide to show what type of shock they're in. The majority of the cases told here are based on true stories but we're never given any clear evidence or any real facts. Instead we're just told over and over that we're supposed to take their word. Another problem with the film is that at 91-minutes it goes on for way too long and considering you really don't get to see anything until the final ten-minutes it would be a lot better skipping this "documentary" and actually watching one of the fake, low-budget films, which would at least give you something to see. I mentioned the final ten-minutes and this is when we see two "actual" UFO films, both in color. Being the early 50s on a hand-held camera, the footage is quite poor but I'm sure the film ended with many people believing that these were actually flying saucers.
* 1/2 (out of 4)
Pseudo-documentary about reporter Albert Chop (Tom Towers) who begins to investigate several reports of UFO's and by the end of the film he's convinced that they are in fact real. This movie uses stock footage, documentary footage and reenactments to try and tell people that UFOs are real and throughout the movie we're told a few dozen times that the cases we're hearing about are true. The most annoying thing about this movie is the Dragnet-type narration that runs throughout the running time and it's just so dry and dull that by the ten-minute mark you'll be wishing that you were abducted by a real spaceship just so you can get away from this film. To be fair, it's important to note that this was released when the UFO craze was extremely high in this country and it's clear that the producers were playing this to folks who wanted to know the "truth" even if they weren't really going to get it from this movie. The reenactments are also quite annoying as they never let you actually see the spaceships and usually it's just non-professional actors opening their eyes wide to show what type of shock they're in. The majority of the cases told here are based on true stories but we're never given any clear evidence or any real facts. Instead we're just told over and over that we're supposed to take their word. Another problem with the film is that at 91-minutes it goes on for way too long and considering you really don't get to see anything until the final ten-minutes it would be a lot better skipping this "documentary" and actually watching one of the fake, low-budget films, which would at least give you something to see. I mentioned the final ten-minutes and this is when we see two "actual" UFO films, both in color. Being the early 50s on a hand-held camera, the footage is quite poor but I'm sure the film ended with many people believing that these were actually flying saucers.
See also
Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews
