The Alien Encounters (1979)

The Alien Encounters (USA, 1979) 92 min color DIR-SCR: James T. Flocker. PROD: David E. Jackson. MUSIC: William Loose. DOP: Holger Kasper. CAST: Augie Tribach, Matthew Boston, Phil Catalli, Bonnie Henry, Patricia Hunt, Gene Davis. (Gold Key Entertainment)

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I’m sure many cinephiles of a certain vintage have had this experience: catching bits and pieces of a movie while flipping channels late at night, and then wondering later, “What did I see?” This burning question could remain unanswered for years before our information highway came along. Indeed, there were two instances in my misspent youth watching the late show, in which I caught glimpses of a mysterious film that I’d long strive to find a title for. One was a good-ole boy flick that featured a scene with two old codgers talking about possum hunting (“…and before we got bit, we used to take this hot iron…”), and the other, concerning tonight’s post, was a low-budget science fiction movie.

The brief glimpse of this elusive science fiction movie occurred on the Sunday night of Easter weekend in Grade 10, showing, if memory serves, on London’s CFPL Channel 10 (which programmed all kinds of weird stuff late at night after their separation from CBC). Its subject of UFOs was reason enough to make this sci-fi nut stop and watch. All I saw before nodding off was a sequence with a man (I thought, a scientist) and a long-haired teenager out in the desert. The teen tells him he’s into “sex, drugs and hard rock”, and it seems they (and viewer alike) wait endlessly for a UFO to show up. At some point before completely giving myself over to REM sleep, I had however recalled that a flying saucer finally made an appearance over the rocky cliffs. To those younger eyes, this film seemed endless, however over the years I had wondered what exactly it was I had seen, and had wished to see the rest of it, because even though it was lethargic, at least it was unique.

After doing much research, I was pretty sure that this low-budget science-fiction film was a 1979 film, The Alien Encounters, however could not find a copy to check. Thanks to the help of a dear friend, and a friend of his, a VHS copy showed up in my mailbox, wrapped in plain brown paper to further enhance the sense of mystery. Well all right, it wasn’t enticing as all of that, but despite how excited I was to be able to see it, I knew that I wasn’t about to see the missing half-hour of The Magnificent Ambersons. (A revisit to something only experienced during our youth often brings disappointment- and the eventual viewing of a hard-to-find movie seldom lives up to those many years of anticipation.) In those nearly thirty years since my fleeting first encounter, I had seen a couple more films by its creator, writer-director James T. Flocker: the hilarious Grade-Z espionage dud Ground Zero (1973), and the terribly flawed Ghosts That Still Walk (1977), and realized that I wouldn’t be viewing a lost cinematic masterpiece.

Although I quickly scanned through to check and see if this was “that movie” (it was!), I however waited for the proper milieu in which to take in the entire thing. Thus, in one of those times when I fell asleep early and would be wide awake at 4 AM, I realized that I had found that perfect moment to view the film, in probably the equivalent time slot to which it was banished. 

The Alien Encounters is of a movement in cinema that despite only being three decades old, is largely unknown but for the most die-hard film buff. It is among the many countless low-budget paranormal-themed pictures made in the late 1970s, when public interest in such matters as UFOs and Bigfoot was on high. It is also one of the many curious films released by Gold Key Entertainment, which had the dubious ability to find the most dreary science fiction-fantasy films ever made, and sell them for television broadcast in the wee hours, when stations relied upon only the cheapest programming as late-night filler to the bewilderment of many insomniacs. Even today, many of the titles distributed under the Gold Key banner (including such sci-fi snoozers as Target… Earth? or Captive), or paranormal films in general, are extremely hard to find. Despite that we live in the age of instant information, there are still many pieces of our past pop culture that remain elusive to us, and we can debate whether or not they are worth reviving.

As such, The Alien Encounters is indicative of many Gold Key product (or other paranormal movies): glacial pacing, relentless padding and too much narration. But should it remain buried? Well, not exactly.

In the 10-minute prologue, even then relentlessly padded with dreary psychobabble narration and too much reliance upon repetitive footage, Alan Reed (Augie Tribach) is an astronomer working in an underground lab in Alaska, monitoring signals from space, when an earthquake creates an avalanche killing his wife and son. At this fateful moment however, he hears indecipherable voices in a transmission from the fabled Barnard’s Star, which may also have a planet much like our own. Flash forward to five years later, Reed is spending his time investigating psychic phenomenon in a quest to further understand what he had heard on the transmission. This eventually leads him to the family of the late author Arlyn, who had published a book Reed had read.

At first, Mrs. Arlyn (Patricia Hunt) and her snot-nosed long-haired teenage son Steven (Matthew Boston, also in Ghosts That Still Walk) are wary of Reed’s good intentions, and suspect him of being another “mib”, which is an acronym for the “men in black” who are always badgering them with questions about UFO sightings, and can be seen fleetingly in the background, stalking our hero in their threatening grey panel van. (One “mib” is played by Gene Davis, later the killer in the Charles Bronson classic, Ten to Midnight.) Before long, Steven takes Reed to the site of his late father’s Betatron project, where he was attempting to communicate with the other world by Barnard’s Star, and introduces him to his friend Wally (Phil Catalli) who found a mysterious globular object outside his house.

Structurally, Alien Encounters has a dense narrative. The film is essentially one large flashback, narrated in past tense by Reed, but has elaborate flashbacks within that flashback, illustrating for us the paranormal stories he is told. We see re-enactments of: a female reporter who descends the stairs of a creepy old inn late at night carrying a candelabrum, and encounters a “humanoid visitor from another world”; the decisive moment where Wally affirms his belief in UFOs, when he and Steven witness a space probe during a camping trip; a rancher who investigates cattle mutilations; and the moment that Wally and his friends find that mysterious globe in the backyard (culminating with a girl screaming: “A flash! A bright light right there! No, a tremendous flash! Right there!”, thus winning this film’s overacting award). These moments recall Flocker’s previous work Ghosts That Still Walk, which felt like two separate movies stitched together. Indeed, the moment of the female reporter feels like it was taken from an unreleased low-budget anthology movie.

Tonight’s film likewise suffers from too much padding and recycling of footage. Whenever Reed reflects upon his late wife and son, the filmmakers can do no better than to recycle freeze frames of his boy sleeping with a Mickey Mouse doll, and his wife making coffee.  

As a director, James T. Flocker is no Eisenstein:  the repetition of previous footage could be the sign of a low-budget or his failure to provide sufficient coverage, and the suspense is minimal- especially in the weak climax where Reed is pursued through the desert by the “mibs”, in a chase scene that is sloppily composed, poorly edited with some tinny blaxploitation music to milk it for all its worth.  

On paper, however, one suspects that Flocker has a great deal to say for himself. Despite the production limitations, there is a surprisingly intricate story, leading up to a carefully plotted “surprise” ending that doesn’t appear out of the blue once one reflects upon it. The lo-fi special effects and spacecraft miniatures are quite well done, and are low key enough so as not to stand out from the rest of the modest production.

Oh yes, the scene I watched thirty years ago. It is funny how sleep deprivation and memory plays tricks on you. Yes, Steven talks about the scene he’s into (“sex, drugs and hard rock”), but the time in which Reed sees the UFO afterwards is minimal: in fact, the way it is edited suggests that this sighting may be in his imagination.

So, finally the question lingers: did the act of finally seeing this film change my life? Well, perhaps not- however, there was an interesting duality, where as the credits rolled underneath the pink dawn sky above the television, I had solved a long mystery as did the Reed character at the surprise finale, and likewise encountered that the answer wasn’t what one had hoped.

Further, Reed’s experience could be really be equated with that of the die-hard movie fan whose interests lie in the unseen and the forgotten. In our quests to uncover the unknown, we often tend to make presumptions of films that, once they are uncovered, differ greatly from our expectations, or the mystique that we surround them with.

Not that I was expecting Alien Encounters to be a lost classic, but upon viewing this turgid but not uninteresting relic of late 70s cinema, I was forced to confront myself with the question of why I am so fascinated with these paranormal films, which are often some of the least cinematic things ever put on celluloid. These films are only over 30 years old, but many remain extremely hard to see. They have dropped out of the public eye,  after their short second lives on home video or late-night movie broadcast slots. As times and tastes have changed, these curios have been orphaned. But should they be revived?

Despite their utter lack of filmmaking, I am rather endeared to them because they often star (and are made by) unknowns, and as such offer an authenticity that one wouldn’t find in Hollywood: without the illusion of movie stars and high production values one surrenders to the possibility that, yes, otherworldly events can happen to ordinary people. But even with that in mind, watching them can still be disheartening. Perhaps my attraction to these films is simply their elusiveness. Forbidden knowledge is more enticing.

And as the sun creeps over the horizon, offering another day to pursue our craft, I am nonetheless glad I’ve solved a long-held query. Now I suppose that all one has to do is find out the name of that “good ole boy” movie. Or, should it perhaps remain a mystery?

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Edited from an original article in Vol. #1, Issue #24. This was published before I had access to online newspaper archives, which would have confirmed the film title. Oh yes. The “good ole boy” movie in question is, I believe, Delta County U.S.A., but I’ve been unable to find a copy. Can anyone help me out?