UFOs Are Real (…and Other Things I Learned from the Late Late show)

Back in the good old days, when TV stations showed the late night movie instead of those rotten infomercials, one could peruse the TV Guide to find such tantalizing titles as The Legend of Bigfoot, or The Mysterious Monsters, squeezed into a 4AM time slot, made even more tantalizing by a scant synopsis that barely exceeded a sentence. And needless to say, a lot of these pictures would be fools’ gold for the curious who endured the brain’s oxygen deprivation in order to stay up and watch. In the 1970s, a cultural interest in unexplained phenomenon was on high- more than that, people wanted to believe in such things. I can still recall listening to the local radio station as a boy, and the announcer would mention receiving calls of UFO sightings out in the country (“….and they’re flying pretty low.”) A few years later, no more such announcements were being made on the air—perhaps because the aliens got bored with us, or the public interest in the paranormal was waning. But during the latter half of the 1970s, when shows like Project UFO or In Search of… were prevalent on television, and best-selling books on the Bermuda Triangle or Bigfoot (each promising “exclusive photographic proof”) were plentiful in the spinner paperback racks, movie producers made a killing at the drive-ins with inexpensive paranormal documentaries. And like those 95-cent paperbacks, these films would also promise “never-before-seen” footage of Bigfoot or extra-terrestrials, yet seldom delivered the goods.

Schick Sunn (also known as Sunn Classics) was arguably the most profitable film company in the 1970s, just on percentages alone. They would recoup their minuscule investments several times over, not just with their paranormal films, but also with inexpensive family fare that would sell tickets to people in the Bible belt who otherwise avoided movies because of all the sex and violence. Sunn also revived the long-dormant art of “four-walling” a theatre, in which they would rent out the screening facility, and take 100 percent of the box-office, while the cinemas would only make money on the rental fee and concessions. This practice harkened back to the road show days of such hucksters as Kroger Babb, who would four-wall a cinema, show a piece of exploitation masquerading as education, and skip town before anyone got wise. And despite the so-called educational nature of these paranormal films, make no mistake- they too were shameless exploitation, despite the G-rating, on the simple fact that their lurid subject would promise hitherto unseen strange things, but delivered little. In fact they would deliver less in the way of sensational thrills than the low-budget 50’s sci-fi movies so synonymous with the late-night movie experience. Although paranormal docs were popular at the drive-ins, they largely became 4 AM filler on television, and only enjoyed brief releases on home video. Ironically, these elusive movies are highly sought by film collectors. (As of this writing, very few have been legitimately released to DVD or Blu-ray.) Time has a way of re-appraising some surprising things.

While Sunn Classics may have been the most synonymous name with the production of paranormal films, many other small companies jumped on the bandwagon to make these movies. Still, the approaches to the movies were similar. Whatever the subject matter, there would be talking heads of alleged experts in the field, suggestions of media and government cover-ups in the face of such incontestable evidence as newspaper headlines, eyewitness accounts, questionable stills and blurry, shaky moving images.  For movie buffs, it was fun to see many of these films being introduced by veteran actors looking for a quick buck: Jack Palance, Peter Graves, William Shatner, Raymond Burr, John Carradine (of course), and even Grandpa Walton himself, Will Geer! Many of the Sunn films were narrated by the bearish, bearded journalist Brad Crandall, whose authoritative but soft voice lent some credibility to the speculation.

Countless documentaries were made to capitalize on the public’s interest in UFOs. One of the best is UFOs Are Real (1979), made by Ed Hunt, the man who gave us the immortal Starship Invasions. (Speaking of Ed Hunt, if you have a copy of his 1976 film, Point of No Return, please let us know!) While this film is standard issue in terms of approach (lots of talking heads and stock footage), this film becomes genuinely creepy in its climactic, lengthy exploration of the famed Barney and Betty Hill abduction in the 1960s. After being unable to account for some missing hours on a nighttime drive, it was discovered later under hypnosis that the couple had been abducted and examined by aliens. This story was turned into a TV-movie, The UFO Incident (1975), itself a late show staple back in the day.

Most UFO documentaries are quite redundant, often relying on the same stills and stock footage. As an example, one need look no further than Overlords of the UFO (1976), a deadening, though brash piece of minimalist cinema with a dreary narrator offering up any hypothesis under the sun for the existence of UFOs, and blaming the lack of information about flying saucers on “plain old government conspiracy.”  “Why have people ignored the headlines?” the narrator asks, while cutting away to shots of newspaper articles about alien encounters, making no effort to hide the fact that we are seeing a page from The National Enquirer! This film is saved from being absolute torture, thanks to some nifty animated bits by avant-garde filmmaker Jordan Belson’s piece, Space Voyage from Ummo.

Of the many “Bigfoot exposés”, perhaps the best is Bigfoot: Man or Beast (1975), not surprisingly, one of the earlier ones. This presages the familiar patterns in most of these films- an expedition into the bushes to find Sasquatch (which is the native’s name for the furry one), this one led by the hot-headed Robert W. Morgan who’s “mad as hell” that the government is covering up spending on learning more about this creature. All of the people on this exploration have had some contact with the monster at one point, and the only real experience with strange phenomenon in this film is when one woman mentions that a rock was thrown at her… naturally before the camera crew can arrive. Like most of the paranormal films, this one too becomes a non-event, as not much else of consequence happens, but this movie is a fascinating history lesson of one of America’s unsolved mysteries. It also features the famed Roger Patterson footage of 1967, which captured about a minute of the Sasquatch walking through the forest. It is played back and forth like a Michael Snow film, as these experts largely agree that this film is authentic. Bigfoot: Man or Beast also has the  formula of talking heads discussing their experiences with Bigfoot, but thankfully, the people in this film appear to be more dignified than the sketchy characters they usually dig up.

Most “documentaries” I’ve seen on Bigfoot begin as nature films, in order to pad the running time until they see the monster. Surely the most curious of these is Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot (1978). Long sought by tapeheads who first encountered this at the drive-in or on the late show, this oddball gem is now available on DVD by RetroMedia. This film predates The Blair Witch Project by two decades, in how it attempts to be an “as-it-happens” documentary about these explorers’ quest to find Bigfoot, but all of the people in the film are actors playing these so-called “real people”. Or is this supposed to be a feature-length recreation of some trip they had previously? Regardless, this scenario is padded with generous amounts of wildlife and vistas of those majestic American northwest forests. In one scene, the music even shamelessly copies Michael Murphey’s “Wildfire”, a radio hit from the day. To further confound the viewer, there are also these POV shots of the monster attacking people! But despite all of this narrative confusion, this is actually a creepy little movie. Like Just Before Dawn (1980), this atmospheric film is a good mood piece about being alone in the wilderness, and a long way from home.

And there’s The Legend of Bigfoot (1975), a completely stupefying film starring snake-oil salesman Ivan Marx (who also produced). Ivan Marx was a hustler who had alleged authentic footage of Sasquatch, yet on his deathbed in 1999, he confessed that the film was a hoax. It is not clear if the footage in question is in the feeble climax of this movie, where we see people prancing around in obvious costumes. But for most of the film, we are on a cross-continent virtual tour, as Marx (apparently hired to find Sasqutach because it’s bad for the rural economy) travels up the west coast, right to Alaska, to find the furry fella. This whole film feels like it’s a stitched together collection of random nature and outdoor footage, and in order to remind us of what we’re seeing, every couple of minutes his narration offers: “This (insert animal name here) is scared of Bigfoot!”. Otherwise there’s really no rhyme nor reason why we are watch a scene with a prairie dog carrying off its dead companion… which plays for minutes!

Some paranormal docs attempt to cross-pollinate several phenomena into one. The Bermuda Triangle (1979) for instance starts associating mysterious disappearances with UFOs and a magnetic field from Atlantis. This movie is also an example of how the paranormal films began using re-enactments in place of all those talking heads. Brad Crandall walks around beaches and shipyards filling us in about scientific data and (you guessed it) conspiracy plots, while the more dramatic moments are re-enacted. And typical of the latter Sunn films, this picture is rather wholesome in its dramatic bits, with old-fashioned theatrical acting. The special effects and miniatures are also certainly old school. In bits, one can see Roxie Roker (from TV’s The Jeffersons) and Thalmus Rasulala (from Blacula).

In one of Sunn’s last gasps in the paranormal market, In Search of Historic Jesus (1980) explores the authenticity of the Holy Shroud of Turin, purported to have covered the body of Christ. This investigation, with only a couple of strange over-the shoulder interview sequences between Brad Crandall and some experts (causing one to think that Crandall was never on set with any of these people), bookends the film, that otherwise spends an unusual amount of time chronicling the story of Jesus, from his birth to his crucifixion. I remember the trailer to this picture when it was released, spending much of the time boasting its special effects, with light emerging from Jesus’ hands when he’s healing the sick, and the spectacle of walking on the water (which is in extreme long shot). And perhaps to give the film some star power, Royal Dano and David Opatoshu are among the familiar character faces who all appear in “blink or you’ll miss them” cameos.

The paranormal craze largely ended just before the home video revolution. These films were briefly recycled as cheap filler at the bottom end of a TV schedule for the bemusement of the insomniac viewer. For the most part, they emerged as hoaxes much like those they explored. And the fact that these movies are sought out by people that caught them back in the day, they are working their shell games once again.

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Originally published in slightly different form in Vol. 1, Issue #21, “A Tribute to Late Night Television”.