| Author |
 Topic  |
|
|
BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
 Posted - 12/16/2006 : 4:31:06 PM
|
Ah, yes, here we are again. I remember seeing bits and pieces of Hangar 18 when I was a kid. I was a lot less discriminating then, but there were parts of that movie that seemed, well, off. About ten years ago, I caught part of it on TV, and I could see it for what it was: a lame piece of sci-fi.
And now it’s on DVD. I ordered off of Netflix, more out of morbid curiosity than anything else. The image on the DVD was one of the worst I’ve ever seen; obviously no one went to the trouble of restoring this thing. It was full-screen, and the compositions of the shots, such as they were, made it impossible to tell whether it was shot in anamorphic or not. It looks like it was shot at Academy aperture, and one would conclude by the production values and the cast (okay, it’s got Robert Vaughn and Darrin McGavin, but Gary Collins and James Hampton as the leads?) that Hangar 18 was a TV-movie. But then one character says “sh!t” quite clearly.
It came as no surprise that this movie was gonna be lame, but I wasn’t prepared for just how lame it is. Roger Ebert may have coined the term “Idiot Movie,” but he might have to come up with a more fitting term for the extreme stupidity shown in this thing.
A Conspiracy of Dunces
We start with the following legend:
“In spite of official denials, rumors have continued to surface about what the government has been concealing from the American public at a secret Air Force hangar.
But now, with the help of a few brave eyewitnesses who have stepped forward to share their knowledge of these events, the story can finally be told.”
Oh, dear Lord. It’s a gubmint conspiracy! This is gonna be a long 96 minutes.
The movie proper gets off to a bad start. A starfield in the background, and the main title in a goofy font that’s barely legible. The principal actors’ names appear over some “rousing” music that’s pretty generic. And now we fade up over the Earth, as a space shuttle orbiter glides past.
We get what looks like stock footage of a NASA control room cut in with some footage of Darrin McGavin — Carl Kolchak himself — done in close-up so we don’t see he’s in a small room and not in a big command center.
Two minutes in, and we already know just how big a crock of BS this movie’s gonna be. Remember, the legend at the beginning implied this was an “actual” event. Only one problem. The space shuttle was first launched in 1981. Hangar 18 was made in 1980.
Kinda early for going into an aside, but here it is. Hangar 18 was produced by Sunn Classic Pictures, which was best known for churning out “documentaries” on Bigfoot and The Bermuda Triangle. According to the IMDb, these guys marketed this thing as a documentary that would reveal the truth about UFO’s. Is it any wonder Sunn Classic isn’t a big name like Paramount or Universal?
Anyway, we have a closeup of McGavin and some Air Force General. Wonder if the General will be a baddie? Do you think, maybe...? Anyway, we get a close up of a monitor showing a countdown to a satellite launch. Seriously, that’s all the monitor shows, a countdown. Then Kolchak calls up to the shuttle.
The interior of the shuttle has to be seen to be believed; I wish I could put vidcaps in here. It is very simple and basic, and it screams “LOW BUDGET!!!” Seriously, you guys behind the camera, the shuttle’s interior isn’t exactly a government secret; couldn’t you have found some photos of the Enterprise’s interior and TRIED to copy that?? Oops, the President is calling in. Oh, he has nothing to say, but he does provide some bad exposition: the Shuttle is performing its first-ever deployment of a satellite (now THAT’s not gonna date, is it), and its crewmembers are Steve Bancroft (and we get a close-up of Gary Collins), Lew Price (and we get a close-up of James Hampton, who looks a little pudgy to be a shuttle pilot), and John Gates (an actor whose name escapes me, but he’s a minor role). Yeah, this is the entire crew. Five minutes of checking confirms that except for its first four missions (which had two crewmembers each and were considered test flights) and two missions with four crew each, the space shuttle has NEVER carried a crew of less than five. Obviously none of Hangar 18’s budget went into research.
Because it’s in the script, the satellite has a slight malfunction right before launch, and Gates goes out to take a look. Kolchak asks the General if they should hold the countdown, and the General nixes the idea: “That satellite’s got to be launched, on time.” Maybe it’s 25 years of seeing the delays and little snags that shuttle crews have to deal with, but I was rolling my eyes and laughing here. Okay, so Lunchmeat Gates goes out to check on the satellite while Steve and Lew sit in the cockpit and look goofy. Lew wonders what the satellite’s gonna do (?!) and Steve answers, “It’ll probably flush all the toilets in Moscow.” Ha! Comedy!
Outside, Gates drifts through the model of the shuttle’s cargo bay, and I notice that his spacesuit, particularly the helmet, looks nothing like the real thing. If you don’t mind, I’m gonna just dispense with all the descriptions of the shuttle’s workings and sum it up thus: there isn’t a single shot that doesn’t look like a three-dollar bill printed on a dot matrix printer.
Anyway, Gates finishes the repairs, which take all of ten seconds, then decides to stay in the cargo bay in case something else goes wrong. Uh, Gates, I’ve never been in the shuttle, but I suspect that the cargo bay would be the last place you’d want to be during a satellite deployment.
Lew notices there’s a weird blip moving around on the radar. Remember Lucas’s radar in The Beast? This looks worse. Steve uses the shuttle’s arm to move the satellite into position. Uh, filmmakers, I think that’s a job for a specialist, NOT the commander! Lew sees that blip still moving around, and he calls it in. Everyone on the ground sees it, but they go ahead with the launch. Just before the satellite deploys, the blip stops a short distance from the orbiter. And the astronauts just so happen to see (bum bum BUM) a circular object ringed with pulsating lights right outside their window.
No one has the bright idea of scrubbing the launch. No, the satellite fires its rocket and deploys, heading straight for the UFO. What a co-inky-dink, eh? It hits, and we have a stock shot of an explosion. After panicking for a few seconds, everyone calms down. Then Lew and Steve just so happen to see — right out the window again — Gates’s body drifting away, minus the head (which is spinning like a top a few feet away).
Lew and Steve remark that Gates must’ve been hit by debris from the satellite, and it ripped his helmet off, leading me to believe that the dialogue was done, then in post-production someone decided it’d be cooler to decapitate the guy.
Kolchak — okay, his character’s name is Harry Forbes — orders that the two remaining astronauts go over the shuttle to check for any damage. No, wait. He orders them to close up the cargo bay and hightail it home. You know, maybe this thing looked a little less ridiculous back in 1980, when we all knew a little less about shuttle operations. But I doubt it.
So they start back for Earth, and we get a loving shot of Gates’s headless body — with the head still spinning nearby, causing me to giggle uncontrollably — drifting past... and I noticed that there was a black rubber flap covering the entire neck area! What did they do, get a Star Wars action figure, pull off the head, and photograph it? Actually, maybe they did.
Cut to a generic military base, and we get a title in computer font: “NORAD — 3:10 AM”. Inside, we see some generic footage of military types playing with computer consoles (one clearly labeled “General Electric”; I wonder how much GE paid for the product placement) as some dubbed-in voices inform us they’re tracking the UFO. They send some of their guys out in helicopters to intercept the UFO, and we go to...
BANNEN COUNTY, ARIZONA — 3:16 A.M. A country hick (whom no one is going to believe, of course) pulls his car to a stop when he sees a badly superimposed light UFO land nearby. He pulls up, looks at the UFO (which we don’t get a look at; the filmmakers wanted to keep us in *snicker* suspense), then... turns around and drives off. Jeez, ya see a train wreck and you’re gonna want to stop and look; this guy sees a flying saucer land, and he leaves after ten seconds! Stupid movie. And the choppers fly in to pick up their precious cargo. Note that the helicopter pilot wears an Army hat with his rank, NOT a flight helmet. Stupid movie. They call it in to the Army general, who is finally given a name: Morrison. Morrison gives a look of stunned surprise, the first believable thing I’ve seen in this movie so far. (For the record, Morrison will be one of two, count 'em TWO, characters who come close to acting like intelligent human beings here. He doesn’t actually DO it, but he comes close.)
The shuttle comes in to land, and we’re treated to some more bad model work. Down on the ground, Morrison bends Forbes’s ear and tells him about their little discovery. Morrison will inform Gordon Kane, the President’s Chief of Staff (yeah, more clunky expo), and he wants Forbes to get a team together to start looking at the UFO. Uh, Forbes is a NASA flight director, Morrison, so why are you sending HIM into this? Oh, because Darrin McGavin’s playing him. Okay.
Now it is WASHINGTON, D.C. — 6:33 A.M. We are introduced to Mr. Gordon Kane, who is played by Robert Vaughn. Morrison calls and tells him about the alien ship, and Kane immediately tells him to shut up and get to Washington. No stunned silence, no double-takes, nada.
We see some stock footage of the space shuttle Enterprise landing, and Steve and Lew are on the ground. An official tells them not to talk to Gates’s family: “The Air Force will take care of that.” Then he tells them they “have a plane to catch.” Note that this is five minutes after they stepped out of the orbiter. Also note that the orbiter is nowhere to be seen after the stock footage is done. Fellas, if your budget couldn’t allow something like this, you really should’ve made a smaller-scale movie.
Back in Bannen County (I’m going to lay off on showing every location and time they give us, but it shows up every five minutes or so), the hick leads the local sheriff to the UFO landing site... only to find there’s nothing there, and there’s lotsa shrubs growing where the flying saucer landed. Sheriff chuckles at the hick.
Back at Mission Control, Steve and Lew get Forbes to agree that something was near the shuttle. But Forbes doesn’t show them the telemetry tapes, and he reassures them that “Everything is gonna be all right. Just TRUST me.” Oh, Lord, here we go. Lemme guess. The gubmint is gonna cover it up, Steve and Lew will be left out of the loop, they’ll try and investigate on their own, and the Big Bad Gubmint will send its stooges out after them.
Back in Washington, Morrison gets together with Kane and a guy named Lafferty (Joseph Campanella). He repeats that we have a UFO in our possession, and that it’s been moved to a secret NASA facility in Texas, named Neverland Ranch. No, no, sorry, it’s Hangar 18. And here’s where the bottom really drops out. Yeah, they’re gonna cover it up. Not for defense reasons, or out of fear of causing a panic. Ready for this? The election is coming up in two weeks, and the Pres’s opponent claimed to have seen a UFO once. The Pres jumped on that, humiliating the other guy. So, if we have a report of a REAL flying saucer crash-landing on Earth, POTUS will be embarrassed no end.
WHAT?!?! Is that the reason the writers cooked up for covering this up? What, culture shock wasn’t a good enough reason for ya? Nah, I guess not, since we have to show that the Gubmint is EE-VILL!!! Sigh. Anyway, Kane wants to cover up the story for two weeks, until the election’s over.
Ahem. Two weeks? THIS is the Big Bad Military? As I recall, 2001 and Close Encounters of the Third Kind showed government cover-ups that lasted several months. And the government’s actions were shown to be understandable. Someone didn’t do their homework here.
Ah, but it gets better. General Morrison figures the cover-up could be handled without too much trouble... with one problem: what do they do with Steve and Lew? Morrison’s suggestion is perfectly logical: tell Bancroft and Price about the UFO and get them to agree to keep their mouths shut. Of course, Kane rejects this out of hand. He orders that they be kept in the dark and that they be discredited in public. Then he tells Lafferty to “keep an eye on them.” No, don’t take them into custody, just send them on their merry way.
Bravo, Gordo! Jolly good show! Leave these two guys out there, and make sure they’ll be pissed off enough to start sniffing around on their own! Well done! You just made the worst decision possible! Moron.
The next morning, Steve-O wakes up to learn from a co-worker that he and Lew have been blamed for Gates’s death. Here’s a big surprise, he ain’t happy. He and Lew look at a tape of the radar screen. Bum bum BUM! The tape doesn’t show the UFO. Steve states, “Either we imagined this, Lew, or the blip of the UFO has been erased.” Oh, gee, Steve-O, ya think so?! They go to find Forbes, only to find that he’s been re-assigned, and his location is classified. Bum bum BUM!
Forbes meets with another scientist (whose name I can’t remember; I’ll just call him Number Two), and they go onto the Air Force base housing Hangar 18. Once inside the hangar, they (and we) get a good look at the UFO for the first time.
Frankly, I wasn’t impressed. The damn thing looks like a bunch of electrical substation equipment glued onto an oval platform. Forbes comments that this is the sort of thing that people may not want to believe in, reminding the audience how dumb the idea covering the story up to help a Presidential election is. Forbes rattles off a few names of other team members coming in, then he states that the craft made a controlled landing — meaning someone is still on board. Darrin McGavin overacts this scene, but for once the dialogue (with the two guys wondering if they WANT to meet whoever or whatever’s in the ship) rings true.
Back at Mission Control, Steve and Lew are sittin’ around and doin’ nothin’. Then Steve just so happens to think of one remote station that MAY have the original tape of the radar. And whaddaya know, Lew just so happens to be a friend of one of that station’s crew. Steve says, “Why don’t you introduce us?” As they go out, Lew replies, “Okay, but he’s not really your type. He’s a lot shorter than you and a lousy dancer.” Ha! Comedy!
Back to Hangar 18. Forbes greets the rest of the team. I can’t remember their names either, so I’ll call them Bearded Doc, Lady Doc (please, ladies, no accusations of chauvanism; the movie doesn’t give her any more dimension than that, so why should I?), and Linguist; small team, eh? He tells the audience that their only contact with the outside world is through General Morrison, again giving a credible REASON (culture shock, fear of panic, etc.) why they’re not making any of this public. Then Forbes, Number Two, and Bearded Doc put on Hazmat gear and go to check out the saucer.
Again I’m reminded of how stupid the storyline involving Steve and Lew is. It would be a fairly simple matter to just sequester the two of them and make sure they didn’t talk. 2001 and CE3K dealt with this in a realistic (and non-violent) way. So why make their story the main focus (as this movie’s gonna do)? Why not just have the government deal with them quietly and talk them into going along? The obvious answer is, because then the movie would be over. But it doesn’t apply here. The thing is, the movie threatens to get interesting whenever our heroes are off screen. So WHY is their story the main one?
No reason whatsoever. Stupid movie.
Okay, back to the flick. The Three Amigos go onto the floor of the hangar, walking around the ship in a way that was meant, I think, to evoke the TMA-1 scene in 2001. The crazy thing is, it kinda works. Kinda. Bearded Doc wonders how they get in. Is there anyone out there who DOESN’T know where this is going?
A siren goes off! A magnetometer reading (or something) is going haywire! Two portals on the ship open and start belching out dry ice! The main hatch opens! Kiss comes out and starts to play Detroit Rock City! Okay, I made that last one up (though I wish I hadn’t; it could only be an improvement at this point). And our intrepid explorers go in.
The first thing you will notice about the interior of the ship is that it’s MUCH too large to fit in the thing we saw. Too bad, because finally we’re getting into something interesting. The exploration of the ship had potential; at last we get a sense that we’re in something that’s really alien. Yeah, you’re right; unfortunately, it looks like Hangar 18 is ripping off THAT sci-fi classic as well. The sense of wonder or foreboding wears off quickly, though, when Number Two says he thinks they’re in the engine room, although there’s no real evidence of that. After a goofy moment where they find a locker containing a human-shaped spacesuit, the Three Musketeers take an elevator up to the cockpit, where, in a moment that was supposed to make us jump, but instead made me giggle uncontrollably, they find two bald men in the pilot seats. One of them had, I thought, an uncanny resemblance to Larry “Bud” Melman from the old Late Night with David Letterman.
And on that note, we cut to that remote receiving station. Sure enough, Steve and Lew see an unedited radar screen, with the UFO blip showing up. They ask Lew’s buddy for a copy of it, but his buddy refuses, citing some crap that they won’t be able to even get out the door with it, and he’s risking his job just by letting them in here. Hey, doofus, you let these guys in and no one’s the wiser; you could damn well give them a copy of a tape that could make national headlines. Amazingly, Steve and Lew don’t bring any of this up. No, they just ask Lew’s fair-weather friend if he can track where the thing landed. He shows them a big-screen TV with several matted-in shots of maps of the world and the US, zooming in on Arizona. Cheap and unconvincing? Check. Eye-rollingly dumb? You betcha. So Our Heroes are off to Arizona (then movin’ to Babylonia, King Tut).
This blows another plot hole wide open. Amateur astronomers with high powered telescopes can take fairly detailed photos of the shuttle in orbit. And I would imagine there’d be quite a few of these guys who would want to get a look at the first ever satellite launch from a shuttle. Guess what they’d see along the way? The word would’ve gotten out by now that something was near the shuttle when the satellite blew. If the military is so stupid that it misses erasing one of its tapes (I won’t even get into the possibility of another tape floating around somewhere), then they’d never keep private citizens across the country from reporting — and having real evidence — that they saw an honest-to-Jabootu flying saucer.
Well, we’re on page nine now, so I guess I’d better get back into the movie. (Shudder.)
In Arizona, Hick is trying to tell people about his close encounter, and no one will believe him. Uh oh, I do believe I sees some gubmint spOOks in the car watching him, I does. They instantly teleport a picture of the Hick to Kane and Lafferty. Lafferty’s not too worried about this guy, since his credibility ain’t too good. But there’s a problem: Lafferty is worried Steve and Lew will find out about this guy. Wait a minute. How in the hell did Lafferty find out Our Heroes were truckin’ down to Arizona? It’s never explained.
In his review of Captain America, Ken Begg brought up the idea of the TOWFI moment: Take Our Word For It. I won’t repeat it here; feel free to go and check it out. But here we have our first (and not last, I fear) TOWFI moment, revealing the filmmakers’ 70’s TV origins.
Anyway, Kane tells Laffer— the hell with it, I’m gonna call them Bob and Joe. (No, I don’t know if Robert Vaughn has the nickname “Bob,” but I think he’d allow me to call him that rather than “Moron #1”.) So, Bob tells Joe to get the Hick a job working for the gubmint... and that’s the last we see of the Hick. Sheesh! As for Steve and Lew, Bob tells Joe to “Keep me briefed on them.” Hey, Bob, just pick them up and take them into custody, if you don’t want them making waves. Dumb-ass.
Back to Hangar 18. Turns out the aliens are dead. Forbes, Number Two, and Bearded Doc have concluded that it’s safe to take off the Hazmat gear (and I think this qualifies as TOWFI Moment #2), so the scientist extras all come out and descend upon the craft. They take the aliens out and wheel them to Autopsy. Inside the ship, Forbes notices a piece of damaged equipment, then a dead armadillo in a preservation jar of some sort. No, I don’t know what that means, either. He looks into a glass chamber filled with dry ice; the fog clears up a bit and he sees a young woman inside.
Forbes and Lady Doc get on the horn to the General, telling the audience that the woman is in a coma, and they need to get her to a hospital. Of course, the General’s gotta tell Bob about this.
Forbes asks Number Two to try and find any damage to the outside, since he wants to know if the aliens were dead or alive when the ship landed; he mentions a broken vial inside the ship (it didn’t look like a broken vial to me, but maybe it was just the awful video quality here). He also asks Linguist to get in the ship, since he saw a “library” in there. How did he know it was a library? That’s TOWFI Moment #3. Strike that. It’s TOWFI Moment #4, at least. Remember Lew happening to have a friend who could give them an unedited radar tape? I could probably find more if I went back, but I’m not gonna bother.
Linguist goes in to the “library.” Well, okay, I can buy the idea that this room is a library. There are several rectangles lining one wall with “alien” symbols on them. One could assume they were tapes of some sort. But did we really need an OCTAGONAL viewscreen on another wall, guys?
In the “engine room,” Number Two and an extra are looking at some of the equipment. Number Two mutters, “They sure didn’t get this stuff at Radio Shack.” Ha! Comedy! Then then try and fiddle with another piece of equipment. Uh, guys, this is an alien ship, from an advanced civilization. Isn’t this kinda like a small child fiddling with a running car...? Uh oh, the ship starts to take off! Okay, a pneumatic lift raises the thing a few inches and we get some pink light coming from beneath it, but it’s SUPPOSED to be starting to take off. Number Two quickly turns it off, and the ship settles back down. Forbes runs in, wondering what the hell’s going on. Number Two’s answer is a hoot: “If we want to find out anything, we can’t keep our hands in our pockets, we gotta DO something!” Forbes’s response: “Well, be careful.” Um, yeah, how’s about THIS response: “You opened a panel and nearly caused an alien ship to lift off in the middle of a crowded hangar! Don’t touch anything until we find the owner’s manual, dummy!”
The young woman (remember her?) is taken to an ambulance and put in. No paramedics get in the back with her. What, they couldn’t afford two extras?! As the ambulance speeds down the highway, she wakes up, screaming loudly. Cut to Bob and Joe talking about her. Joe says she’s “just barely alive.” Right after we saw that she has enough strength to sit up and give a pretty high-powered shriek. Ah well, whaddaya gonna do? Anyway, she’s been taken to a private hospital. Bob worries about all the loose ends that have been cropping up. Joe’s response: “Don’t worry. We’re keeping very tight security!”
(snort) (snerk) (snerk) (snort) (chortle) (long pause)
HAAAAAA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!! Good one, Joe Joe! And then Bob reminds us all that they have to keep things “bottled up” until after the election. Thanks for reminding us, Bob, cuz all of us viewers are at least as dumb as you.
Back in the Hangar, Forbes looks around the ship and then (oh, you gotta be kidding me) decides Number Two was right; they need to start pushing buttons. He puts his finger on a random touch pad, and a laser cannon fires, destroying a computer console outside.
Ahem cough cough.
What the hell?!?! Is every major character in this movie a complete imbecile?!?! (Answer: With one exception, yep.) Forbes goes out to look at the damage he’s done. Everyone notices how easily the laser cut through the computer console, and no one rips Forbes a new one. Seriously, it’s a miracle his stupidity didn’t get several people killed here!
In Arizona, Steve and Lew land their private plane on a little dirt strip. No, I don’t know whether one of them owns the plane or if they just rented it or something. TOWFI Moment #5. They get out and ask the airstrip owner if he has a car to rent. Nope. Can anyone rent them a vehicle. The owner says, “Yeah, me.” Turns out he has a truck to rent. “You didn’t ask about no truck. You asked about a car.” Ha! Comedy! Steve asks if the airstrip owner has heard about any crashes lately. The owner just so happens to know about the Hick dragging the Sheriff out to the landing site. He says it’s the desert air. “It dries out your brain juice so you can think straight no more!” Yeah, that would explain the behavior of this bunch of yo-yos.
So Steve and Lew go off in a rickety old pickup truck. Them gubmint spOOks is waitin’ for them right outside the airstrip, and they follow them. This would be another TOWFI bit, but since we already had one with Joe knowing Our Heroes were headed this way, I’m gonna give this one a pass.
Inside the ship, Forbes eyes a computer bank. No, he didn’t learn his lesson. Yeah, he’s gonna push buttons. Because it’s in the script, this time he manages to push one that will help them. A viewscreen lights up, showing a series of alien symbols. Then we see some stock footage of the Vietnam War, a subway, some people walking down a crowded sidewalk. Linguist and Number Two come up, and Forbes says, “Apparently, they’ve been monitoring our broadcasts.” Oh, gee, Harry, d’ya think so? The program ends with the same alien symbol that began it. Linguist recognizes the symbol and goes to the “library” to check it out. Uh oh, the movie’s threatening to become interesting again. Whew, it gets goofy right quick. Linguist spots the symbol on the wall and announces it’s a symbol for the Earth. TOWFI Moment #6. He recognizes it from somewhere else, and he leaves to do some research.
Steve and Lew talk to the sheriff, but he tells them what we already know: the Hick’s story didn’t exactly pan out, and the Hick has since dropped out of sight. He then asks for their autographs, saying they’re “not for me, they’re for my wife.” Lew asks him who to make the autographs out to, and the sheriff says, “Dwayne.” Ha! Comedy!
Steve and Lew drive out to the landing site. There’s nothing to be found, and the ground is covered with shrubbery, but they quickly realize the shrubbery was planted there in the last day or two, and they uncover the whole thing in about five seconds. No, really. Steve picks up a melted rock, then is interrupted by an eight-foot-tall knight who says “Ni!” Okay, I made that last part up, but like the Kiss intro, I wish it was in there for real. No, they’re confronted by the two gubmint spOOks who give them a story about the area being a privately-owned mine. SpOOk #1 demands that Steve hand over the rock. Note that neither of the two gubmint men draw their guns or anything. Steve drops the rock, and when the guy bends down to pick it up, Our Heroes overpower them. Yes, just like that. Some gubmint spOOks. There is one nod to reality here: when Steve gets the guy with a right hook, he hurts his hand. Of course, his injured hand will be completely healed a couple of scenes later.
They get in the truck and run for it, with the gubmint car in hot pursuit. After a thrilling and exciting laughably staged (I saw a camera shadow covering half the car hood in one shot) and boring car chase, the gubmint car goes off a bridge — in slow... mo-tion, crashes — in slow... mo-tion, and explodes. PLAAAA-BWAAAAAHHH!!! Lew stops the truck and says, “That could’ve been us, you know.”
The problem is, we don’t really have that spelled out. The gubmint guys never drew guns, and while they tried to force Our Heroes off the road, they never tried shooting them. If they WERE planning to threaten our guys’ lives, then they were truly incompetent. But that’s par for the course for this movie.
Back in Washington, Bob’s royally pissed, and rightfully so. As he says, “Two men are dead. This isn’t how we handle things! This is the WHITE HOUSE, for Christ’s sake!” By itself, maybe this rant wouldn’t seem so goofy, but in the context of this film, it was the final straw. I had to pause the DVD for a couple of minutes while I sat back and laughed my head off. Say, how did Bob and Joe find out about this so damn quick? It looks like they learned of the crash ten seconds after the fact! That’s TOWFI Moment #7. Anyway, Joe says that Steve and Lew are responsible for the two men’s deaths (and he has an arguable point), and that no one can connect the dots back to the White House. Uh, yeah, right. If I were Bob, that would be enough to convince me to find a cabin in northern Alaska to hide out in for the next few years.
Then Bob gives us another bit of Immortal Dialogue: “Look, I know we’re operating under complicated conditions, but we’ve GOT to stay on top of this.” Woo hoo, good pep talk, there, Bob! And you boys have been doing a bang-up job so far, eh?
Something occurred to me here. Except for the General and a couple of bit parts, Robert Vaughn and Joseph Campanella do not interact with ANY other characters in the movie, at least not directly, and all of their scenes are in one room. All things considered, their performances were about as good as you could expect (they knew their lines and tried to stay professional). I suspect they came in, got their parts done in an afternoon or two, then went and bought swimming pools or new cars with their easily-earned paychecks. If that’s the case, more power to you, guys.
I need a Tylenol. |
|
|
BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 12/16/2006 : 5:02:53 PM
|
I doubt the Tylenol will help; if anything, my headache’s gonna get worse over the next forty minutes. Ah well, blasny blasny. (Sorry, inside joke.)
We skip back over to Hangar 18 (with all this bouncing around, I think I know how a pinball feels), where Linguist reveals what he has found: a design carved into a plateau in Mexico matches the alien symbol we saw earlier. Oh, brother. We’re getting into face-on-Mars and crop circle territory here. He goes on to show a picture of a pyramid in Mexico, stating that symbols were found inside the pyramid, matching the symbols on the “library” wall. Bum bum BUM! Even more amazing, there is evidence that Mel Gibson was in the area, filming a surprisingly good movie— Okay, I made that last part up. That wouldn’t occur for another 26 years. Anyway, Linguist says that (1) this shows that our bald friends have been here before, and (2) the symbols in the pyramid could provide a sort of Rosetta Stone, enabling him to translate the alien writing.
Uh, yeah. I’m no linguist, but the idea that this guy could provide translations like the ones he will give us later on is utterly ludicrous. The filmmakers show their contempt for the audience, thinking we’ll actually BUY any of this. How much you wanna bet they didn’t even hire a real linguist as a consultant?
As for the alien-pyramid stuff, well, this would all be right at home on Art Bell’s radio show. I hear stuff like this, and my bullsh!t-o-meter goes into the red right quick. Still, if done right, it could be fodder for a fairly enjoyable sci-fi flick. Unfortunately, done right is a phrase you’ll rarely think of when watching this particular movie.
We get a brief scene in Autopsy. Bearded Doc and Lady Doc are just about to cut into one of the bald guys. Jeez, how long did you two wait before getting around to—? Cripes, there’s no telling whether they did this in the writing stage or the editing stage, but someone screwed the timeline up here but good. Lady Doc pauses before cutting, musing on what kind of life our low-rent E.T.’s might have lived. Uh, yeah, this doesn’t seem all that professional, does it. Interesting how the writers decided to have the one female character with a speaking role get all touchy-feely here.
Steve and Lew get back in their plane, giving the audience some more Clunky Expo. Seems Steve-O just so happens to have a professor friend who might be able to tell them something about the melted rock they found. As the Church Lady might say, How Con-VEEEEEEN-ient! TOWFI Moment #8, right here. As they prepare for takeoff, the airstrip owner looks over his truck, which now has some nasty dents due to the chase with them gubmint spOOks. Does he put two and two together and realize these guys were in a high-speed chase — involving two fatalities — that certainly hit the news (remember, Joseph Campanella’s in Washington, and HE knows about it)? Does he chase after them, demanding they pay for the damage? Nope. He mutters to himself, “Sure hope them boys can fly better than they can drive.”
All together now! Ha! COMEDY!!!
Now we bounce back to Hangar 18, and the computer font informs us it is 1:18 A.M. I have no doubt in my mind that if I went back and checked all the moments where that computer font came up, telling us the location and time, it would be truly mind-boggling. But I don’t want my brain to explode less than two weeks before Christmas (two days after New Year’s, maybe, but not before Christmas), so someone else can do that, if they dare. Anyhoo, Linguist has gotten far enough in his translation that “one word in ten makes sense.” Forbes’s response: “Well, that’s a start. I’ll come back in a couple of hours, see how you’re doing.”
He’s been on this job for less than a day, and he has deciphered one-tenth of an alien language. No, not learning French or German, or Sanskrit for that matter. An ALIEN LANGUAGE! Man, this guy is truly amazing! Are we sure HE isn’t a space alien?! Y’know, I’ve heard this guy’s proper name a couple of times here: it’s Kelso. I’m gonna give him a little respect and call him by that name; he and Lady Doc are the ONLY characters with more than two lines who don’t act like complete imbeciles.
Forbes heads into Autopsy. Lady Doc tells him that the cause of death for Baldy #1 and Baldy #2 is still unknown, and she doesn’t know the time of death either. Forbes wants to know the time of death, because he wants to know how the ship could have made a controlled landing if they died before touchdown. Um, Harry, how’s this for an answer? The ship had an autopilot. Ever hear of one of those? The autopilot was designed to take over during the landing procedure unless the pilot manually overrode it. This was done because spaceflight might be, you know, DANGEROUS, and— Look, remember that HAL-9000 was designed to fly the Discovery One if anything happened to the crew, and these guys are more advanced than that.
You can take that long-winded explanation and throw it away, because the question of how the thing could land on its own is never addressed again.
Actually, we do get something that’s mildly interesting here. Lady Doc is able to tell Forbes one thing about the aliens no one could’ve expected. They’re not just humanoid; they’re identical to humans. They have a tailbone and an appendix. I think I know where this is headed. Again, it’s BS, but it could be enjoyable BS, were this a better movie. Lady Doc doesn’t have a clue; she concludes that the aliens simply had a “parallel evolutionary course” to our own. So Kelso's on his own in the non-imbecile department here.
Forbes goes to rap with Number Two inside the ship. Number Two is in the “engine room,” and he has deduced that the engine is a fusion reactor. No real reason for that conclusion, but there you are. Number Two also GUESSES that the thing wasn’t built for interstellar travel, meaning there must be a mother ship nearby — “something bigger and faster than we can imagine.”
Bum bum BUM! Of course, if the mother ship were really big, and relatively close by, we’d be able to detect it from Earth. But never mind that, because the filmmakers don’t: the matter is dropped and never brought up again! Stupid movie.
Back in the computer lab, Kelso finishes programming his computer, says, “Here we go,” and hits a key. A printout starts up, and Kelso says, “My God, that’s it! That’s it!” Sheesh, he’s psychic, not to mention impossibly brilliant, and he’s a very fast worker. Why isn’t KELSO in charge of this bunch? He’d do a helluva lot better job than that nitwit Forbes!
Steve and Lew meet up with Steve’s professor buddy the next morning. The professor states that the rock they have is worthless. It’s just a melted rock, and it wouldn’t stand as evidence of anything. Nice job, fellas, you got into a chase that killed two people for a worthless hunk of sandstone. And that serves to make Bob and Joe look like even bigger boneheads than before: they could have Steve and Lew arrested for manslaughter and keep them secreted away, and they’re letting these two clowns keep tooling around the country lookin’ for UFO’s. The professor tells them he believes them (!) but no one else will unless they can get solid, clinching proof. Steve and Lew must feel pretty foolish; a five year-old child with brain damage could’ve told them THAT!
As they leave the professor’s office, Steve and Lew start to brainstorm, trying to figure out what the Big Bad Gubmint would do if they stumbled across a UFO. They are able to intuit that the UFO’s gotta be at Hangar 18 in exactly thirty-five seconds! That’s TOWFI Moment #9. I don’t know what’s more risible, this psychic flash, or the fact that they didn’t figure this out right from the start! Dingalings.
Say, let’s go back to Hangar 18 to see what the linguistic prodigy Kelso has found. Wow, he’s made a rough translation of the entire alien language! And whaddaya know, the aliens just so happened to have a document with them outlining a previous visit they made to Earth. Seems the aliens took some pre-humans with them, and the pre-humans acted as slaves, worshiping the aliens as gods. And some of the female pre-humans bore children to the aliens. Ever seen artists’ conceptions of what these pre-humans looked like? Them aliens must’ve had some u-u-u-u-u-gly women if they chose to, uh, mate with the female Homo Erectus. In short, we’re the aliens’ children! More Art Bell territory here, and again I found myself rolling my eyes. It COULD make for cool sci-fi, except that Darrin McGavin makes this revelation in the same tone he’s used for all of his other dialogue in the film. It’s pretty close to his performance as Ralphie’s Dad in A Christmas Story, only in A Christmas Story, he was SUPPOSED to be over the top. Say, why would a document like that (which is several hundred pages long) be on the alien ship in the first place?! Because it’s in the script. TOWFI Moment #10!
And it’s back to Washington. Bob’s feelin’ happy. They’re doing a good job of keeping things buttoned down now. Joe’s feelin’ happy, too. He reassures Bob that Steve and Lew aren’t gonna cause more trouble, and he’s gotten everything under control. Bob leaves, a-grinnin’. I couldn’t help grinning, myself. Joe, in about five seconds, you’re gonna have a big surprise coming your way.
Hey, I was right! The phone rings; it’s a gubmint spOOk who was tailing Steve and Lew. He tells Joe that Our Heroes have filed a flight plan for Midland, Texas. I’m sure Joe knows where that is, but the audience doesn’t, so the spOOk informs us that’s fifty miles away from Hangar 18. Boy, Joe Joe, there ain’t nothin’ in the world like news like that to bust yer bubble, hey? Joe mutters the s-word, because the filmmakers thought that throwing in a wordy-dird would make their TV movie a real movie movie. He tells his man to use any means necessary to keep Our Heroes away from the Hangar. This movie could be a great deterrent to conspiracy theorists everywhere. If the conspirators are THIS dense, we don’t have much to worry about.
Next thing we see is Steve and Lew driving along the highway toward Midland. You heard me, driving. I’d like to introduce the co writer/director, James L. Conway, to this concept known as continuity. Now that their trip is nearly over, Lew asks why it took so long for the rental place to get a car ready for them. (Aw, naw.) Steve answers that they were “washing the car.” <blink blink> I was just saying to myself, “They can’t be THAT dumb,” when Lew goes one better: he makes a casual comment that the car is still dirty. How in the hell did these two schmucks pass astronaut training?! Put their heads together and you’ll hear a hollow clunking sound. (Yeah, I stole that from Woody Allen. First really great line he’s written in a long time.) Oh, if you hear a “bonk bonk bonk” noise, it’s me banging my head on the wall. Oops, Steve sees a car in his rearview mirror. It could be an innocent motorist on his way to work, but.... Bum bum BUM! I noticed a cameraman’s shadow on the hood of Steve and Lew’s car, his hair whipping in the wind. Seriously. Then Steve — who has driven this car far enough to get it on the interstate — notices for the first time that the brakes are gone. He announces this in a very casual manner to Lew. I wonder if Gary Collins had gotten fed up with the movie by now and was walking through his performance?
So, the car goes careening off the interstate onto the city streets. Note that neither of Our Heroes bothers to put on his seat belt at any time. They bust into a refinery, and crash into the side of a building. And Our Heroes aren’t sweating, winded, didn’t bump their heads on the dashboard, nothin’. They’re perfectly fine, as Lew says, “But these seat covers are ruined.” Ha! Com— Would you excuse me for a second? (long moment of quiet sobbing)
So, they just sit there looking goofy for a second, then they realize them gubmint spOOks is after them. They make their escape, commandeering a gasoline tanker truck that just so happens to have the key still in the ignition. The Men In Black continue their pursuit. The car chase that follows is clearly lifted directly from Duel (they even use the EXACT SAME sound effects for the truck), with two key differences: the guys in the car are chasing the truck, and Duel was, you know, good. Lew notes that if those guys get a good shot at them, their truck, which is full of gas (kinda like the filmmakers, yes?), will go ka-boom. Actually, taking a shot at them here wouldn’t be a good idea. Handguns aren’t especially accurate, so you need to get fairly close to get a good shot. If them gubmint boys got close enough to shoot the truck, they’d probably go up in the explosion as well. They’d have to be pretty stupid— well, actually, in this movie, that’s not too far-fetched.
And then Lew gets a profoundly stupid brilliant idea how to get rid of the guys following them. He fishes around and finds a signal flare under the seat. What follows is perhaps the most idiotic scene in the entire movie, and that’s saying something.
Lew gets out of the cab and climbs up on top of the truck, then makes his way to the back of the tanker. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you James Hampton, Action Hero! (Pardon me while I giggle uncontrollably.) When he gets to the back, he turns a nozzle and starts dumping the truck’s cargo, spilling a gasoline slick all over the road. He lights the signal flare. Even if what he’s trying could work (more on that in just a sec), he would be putting any innocent motorists passing by in mortal danger, the equivalent to firing into a crowd. Stupid and immoral, a bad combination. The gubmint guys do NOT swerve to avoid the gasoline spill. Instead, one of them fires from his seat in the car (really!) and hits Lew. Mortally wounded, Lew shuts off the gas then throws the flare onto the oil slick (and I noticed tire tracks in the “just-poured” slick), setting it on fire. The thing is, three seconds pass between Lew shutting off the gas and tossing the flare. Assuming the truck is going at least 50 miles an hour, it would have gone over two hundred feet; Lew would have to throw that flare at least 70 yards for it to hit the gas (and his toss clearly clearly can't carry more than a few feet). Add to that, the car was pretty close behind; it would have passed the slick by now. But N-O-O-O-O!!! The flare travels farther than most pro football passes, lights up the slick, and the dummies pursuing Our Heroes are caught in the blaze. Their car tumbles over and over, crashing and blowing up. PLAAAA-BWAAAAAHHH!!!
Because the script calls for a laughable heart-tugging moment, Lew falls off the truck onto the ground. Steve stops the truck, gets out, and rushes to Lew’s side. A couple of passersby also pull up. Long story short (I know, too late): James Hampton should never do death scenes. After Lew croaks, Steve tells the bystanders to “take care of him,” then proceeds to steal one witness’s car! We’re supposed to feel sorry Lew’s dead, but I was thinking, one down, four to go. Seriously, I found myself wishing Forbes, Bob, Joe, and Steve would all meet the same fate. Rubbing these knuckleheads out could only serve to improve the gene pool!
Back to Hangar 18. The Docs have figured out what killed our bald alien ancestors: when the satellite hit the UFO, some glass vials broke, releasing deadly gas that killed the aliens. Seriously. Forbes says (in his usual hammy way), “Oh, how ironic. They’re light years (sic) ahead of us in intelligence, and yet they were killed because of a stupid accident.” You can make up your own joke, right? And again, no, he doesn’t remember how he wanted to find out how the ship could’ve landed on its own.
Inside the ship, Number Two has managed to figure out a way to fiddle with the ship’s radio receiver, and he is now using it to — ready for this? — kick back and listen to a local easy-listening station! Really! Forbes comes in just in time to hear a news report break in, telling of Lew’s death. Uh, would an astronaut’s death be the cause of a special report? Sure, it’d lead off the Six O’Clock News, but it’s not exactly the Challenger disaster, is it.
Forbes is righteously pissed, and he gets on the horn to the General, telling the General that if the gubmint has been up to no good, Forbes will personally blow the whistle on all of them. Ahem. Uh, Harry? Let’s go over this, shall we? You now know that the gubmint has been covering up the UFO landing and setting up Steve and Lew as fall guys, and that it probably led to one man’s death. And now you’re threatening a guy who could do a Cigarette Man and start making people disappear?! You’re telling him up front that you’re gonna sing to the press?!
Harry, you MORON!!! Idjit fool dummy dodo flip flop flip ding dang yum bum doodle-dum knick knack paddy-whack brack fricka fracka dope doofus MORON!!!
Sure enough, the General goes straight to Bob and Joe with this. Bob’s near panic; these three geniuses have painted themselves into a corner, probably looking at serious jail time. Yeah, Bob, and whose idea was it to pull this cover-up in such a shoddy and stupid manner? Amazingly, the General shows a modicum of intelligence, saying pretty much the same thing to Bob, getting him with an “I told you so.” He’s right. Joe sums up their options now: “As long as Hangar 18 exists, the problem exists.” Oh, Lord, here we go. Joe has a solution: “planes crash all the time, even into military bases.” I wonder if people found this bit of conspiracy paranoia offensive before 9/11. It sure as hell offended me now. And with that, Bob, Joe, and the General are out of the picture.
The good news is, since the story’s winding down, and most of the plot threads, such as they are, are finally coming together, we won’t be bouncing around so much. Most of the last twenty minutes will be in or around Hangar 18. Speaking of which....
Number Two goes into the ship’s library once again. In all honesty, the design of the alien ship’s interior isn’t too bad. Not great, but not bad. It’s one of the very few salvageable things about this movie. Anyway, Number Two presses a random button yet again, and of course it shows an alien recording that will be pivotal (or SHOULD be pivotal) to the finale. The tape shows a starfield, then zooms in on a vector-graphic of the Earth. It comes in closer, to North America, then to the West Coast, finally showing some stock footage of what looks like a refinery. There’s a weird voice reciting something in an “alien” language. I read one review where the reviewer stated that the filmmakers just took random passages from a Swahili phrasebook and played them through a vocoder. Not knowing anything about Swahili, I found this to be somewhat effective; at least it sounded like a real language (but the vocoder effect still sounds lame). Then there’s another stock shot, of an industrial park. Both these stock shots display a title in the alien language at the bottom of the screen.
Outside, Steve-O pulls up to the guardhouse. He waits until the guard turns his back, then plows right through the main gate. So the guard didn’t post a back-up outside while checking Steve’s ID. Jeez, when God was handing out brains, did the characters in this movie think He said “rains” and go to find an umbrella?
Steve evades the guards, who are giving chase and searching for him. He hides in a warehouse; note that he is carrying a large wrench, and it is never explained where he got it. Okay, maybe he pulled it out of the car, but the filmmakers could’ve avoided confusion by inserting a single shot of Steve searching in a toolbox or something.
We then go to what the computer font identifies as CIA INSTALLATION — LOS ALAMOS, NEW MEXICO — 10:47 P.M. Shoulda known the CIA would be doing the bidding of the Three Stooges in Washington, because we all know that the CIA is EE-VILL!!! They prep a small jet for take-off, piloting it by remote control. And they’ve planted a large bomb inside the plane. Uh, is this wise? A plane crash sans bomb would be enough to take out the hangar, I imagine. And the bomb’s explosion would be big enough to make people ask questions, wouldn’t it? Oh well, it’s no dumber than just about everything else we’ve seen. The plane takes off, and it’s....
Back to Hangar 18. Forbes and Kelso are in the library with Number Two, watching the stock footage. Let’s see, there’s Manhattan Island, an army base, Cape Canaveral, and a couple of power plants. Number Two spells it out for the blind audience members: the tape is showing “power plants, defense installations, and industrial complexes.” Forbes asks Kelso to bring his handy-dandy computer on board the ship so they can get a translation of the titles appearing on each screen. I think most people can guess what the translation will be. All in all, surprise or no surprise, it would be the one truly chilling moment in the whole film. Don’t worry; the filmmakers will blow that as well.
A couple of quick shots of them CIA baddies remote-piloting the plane, and Kelso has had his computer magically teleported into the ship. The computer is doing an amazing job; it’s got a rough translation already. Kelso’s jaw drops, and he tells Number Two to beat feet up there. Again, it’ll be no surprise what the translation’s gonna be, but this is still pretty decent, one major reason being that Kelso, the one competent character in this bunch, is the one doing the interpreting. Some more footage of Mr. CIA piloting the plane, and....
We’re back in the warehouse with Steve. Someone comes in, and we get the old shadow-on-the-floor business. Steve is ready to clobber the guy with the wrench, when he realizes it’s Forbes, who psychically figured out that Steve was there, and teleported himself in. Oh, and a camera shadow is in plain view on Forbes’s shoulder. Sheesh! Forbes’s explanation how he found Steve — Base Security said he was there — seems lame, but this is one of the few points that makes any sense. We’ll learn in a second that Security is in with Bob, Joe, and General, so they’re gonna let Forbes lead Steve into the hangar so he can be wiped out along with everyone else when that plane crashes. The interesting thing is, Steve could’ve been killed off at any time here, because he serves no purpose whatsoever to the story from here on out. Anyway, just before they go, Forbes tells Steve, “Let’s go back to Hangar 18; you’ll be safe there.” Irony Alert! Just to beat us over the head with this, the filmmakers treat us to another brief shot of the Plane of Death in the air.
Forbes leads Steve into the hangar, where Steve gets his first look at the alien ship. Steve’s reaction is a mix of righteous anger and surprise. Yes, surprise. I buy the anger part. But while he didn’t know what the ship would look like, Steve was pretty sure it’d be there. And he’s surprised?! Lenny in Memento would roll his eyes at this! Number Two pokes his head out the hatch and tells Forbes and Steve to get in there, and we are reminded that the ship’s exterior is much too small to house the interior.
The CIA baddies call the guards at the hangar and tell them to clear out. See, the guards are Air Force, and we all know the military is EE-VILL!!!
For some reason, Bearded Doc and Lady Doc are inside the ship, along with Steve, Forbes, Number Two, and Kelso. Kelso reveals what the message on the footage is: DESIGNATED LANDING AREA. This would be a nice chill-down-the-spine moment, except that the filmmakers couldn’t leave well enough alone. We have a line from Forbes dubbed in: “Oh my God, they’re coming BACK!” After all, them idiots in the audience wouldn’t get it, just seeing DESIGNATED LANDING AREA played over the stock footage, no sirree!
Then they hear the plane outside, coming in. The plane crashes into Hangar 18, and the whole thing gets blown to hell. Seriously, this is the final shot. Well, not quite.
We see the carnage as the hangar is destroyed, then the last shot shows the alien ship, undamaged in the middle of the inferno. Freeze frame. We then here a radio report saying that everyone inside the ship survived the explosion; the ship’s hull protected them (never mind that the hatch was wide open, exposing Our Heroes to deadly heat). Forbes is gonna give a press conference later that day. Looks like the cover-up’s been blown, eh?
Whoa whoa whoa, wait a minute. That’s IT?!
That’s it.
The first credit that rolls is the following:
“The producers wish to express their appreciation to the following persons and organizations:
Aerial Phenomena Research Organization
The Center for UFO Research
Ground Saucer Watch
NASA
Rockwell International
City of Big Spring, Texas”
I did a teensy bit of research (okay, I checked out Wikipedia; not the most reliable source, but better than this movie deserves). The Center for UFO Studies (not research) seems to try to keep their feet on the ground, as does Ground Saucer Watch (to a lesser degree). Well, as much on the ground as a group of UFOlogists can. But APRO lunched its credibility big time in the mid 70’s. NASA was made to look like the good guys, but I wonder if they appreciated being put on the same screen with this bunch?
Two final things: the gubmint suits are identified in the cast as — literally — “MIB #1, #2, #3, and #4.” These guys came a long way in between here and Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, didn’t they?
And in all the credits, there were no military, scientific, technical, or linguistic consultants. Gee. What a surprise.
Afterthoughts
That movie didn’t really end, did it? It seemed more to just stop. I’ve read that when the movie was shown on network TV, under the title (I can’t believe I’m about to type this) Invasion Force, the ending was changed. The thing is, I remember seeing it on network, and the ending was exactly as it is on the DVD.
Here’s what I suspect really happened. In the original version, the plane hit, Hangar 18 blowed up real good, all of Our Heroes were killed, The End. The filmmakers realized too late that audiences would be put off by this ending (if they hadn’t walked out in disgust already). They couldn’t reshoot the ending, because none of the cast was willing to come back on the production. So they threw in the radio broadcast, and that was the “changed” ending.
My dad and I used to love to watch The X Files when it was on TV. While I enjoyed it, I liked the one-off stories much more than their main storyline. Here’s what I could make of its main story (and if anyone knows different, feel free to write in and correct me): aliens have been working on a plot to take over the Earth for literally thousands of years. For some reason, a group of gubmint types on Earth are aligning themselves with the aliens in return for the aliens not enslaving them. They go so far as to try and wipe out all opposition, including one Fox Mulder, an individual who could “ruin our plans.” If that’s close to the main story, it’s incredibly stupid. No one bothered to ask these conspirators what could stop the aliens from stabbing them in the back and enslaving them along with the rest of Earth. And if Mulder — one man — could “ruin everything,” wouldn’t it make sense to get behind him and show the aliens their plot, such as it is, may not be so foolproof?
Hangar 18 tries to give a reason for the cover-up, but the reason is a knee-slapper. Defense reasons? Nope. Panic? Nope. A Presidential election? Sure! Why not? But it’s not too surprising when you look at the actions of most of the characters in this movie. The Idiot Plot runs amok here; it’s truly staggering to tally the number of dumb-ass moves made by this crowd. You have to wonder if THEY are the aliens; it’s hard to explain any of this behavior as human nature.
The thing is, while the aliens-are-our-parents bit and the old ancient symbols-on-pyramids business are fodder for Coast-to-Coast AM, they COULD make for good sci-fi. If handled carefully, they could, at worst, be an enjoyable B-movie.
But Hangar 18 seems to coast on its writers' and director's delusion that its premise is brimming with originality. Its filmmakers seem to have no clue that at least two movies — the aforementioned 2001 and CE3K — covered this ground before, and they handled it seriously, intelligently, and realistically. They took a B-movie premise and turned it into heavyweight A-movie material (and ended up being two of the best films ever made). So you have to wonder what the filmmakers were thinking. Most likely, they weren’t thinking at all.
The TV-movie production values are no coincidence. A quick look on IMDb confirms that every major member of the production crew has their resumé almost entirely on the small screen. James L. Conway got his start directing that earlier Sunn Classic crap, then he went on to television. A few of them made some low-budget horror stuff, but most of them stayed away from the silver screen after Hangar 18.
Thank God for small blessings. |
 |
|
|
Altair IV
Preeminent Apostolic Prelate of the Discipleship of Jabootu
Japan
110 Posts |
Posted - 12/17/2006 : 09:58:26 AM
|
Oh yes. This is one I remember. The seventies were full of UFO/bigfoot/ancient astronaut stuff, and my father was really into it. And he passed the interest on to me (don't worry, I later grew out of it).
So when this movie came out, and it promised to be a "real" UFO story, I couldn't wait to see it. I cajoled my mother into taking me to see it on opening night. Unfortunately, we arrived a few minutes late, and the theater was PACKED. We had to sit way down at the front. This wasn't one of those small strip-mall theaters either, but a big full-size cinema.
Well, what I got for my efforts was not a conspiracy-blowing masterpiece. It wasn't even a well-done rehashing of "known" UFO details. It was a rather trite and clichéd sci-fi flick. I can't say I was too disappointed because I was just 13 at the time and didn't develop my movie crap-o-meter until much later. But I do remember being a little confused at being fed a line of BS about the true nature of the film. To this day, the only thing that I really remember about my inital viewing are vague impressions of the ship itself (I love the power station converter impression--so true), and the floating, spinning lego-head that they were just too lazy to even bother to edit out. It SHOULD'VE been a much better movie.
On the other hand, I'm not too insulted by the poor shuttle depiction. Sure, they should've done more homework and put more effort into it, but nobody was really sure just how they were going to be used at that time and there are plenty of other movies from the same era that had imaginative depictions of shuttles in use (i.e. Moonraker). I'm willing to cut them a little slack on that one.
BTW, you may or may not be aware of this, but Hanger 18 was one of the movies the fledgling Mystery Science Theater 3000 did in it's first season at KTMA. As such, it will probably never be available commercially, but you can get yourself a copy from any decent file-sharing system or from the [url="http://www.dapcentral.org/"]Digital Archive Project[/url]. So-so quality, but very worth it. Now if you'll please excuse me, I've got to go watch my copy of it again. |
|
|
|
BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 12/18/2006 : 6:28:42 PM
|
I may have given the bad shuttle set a pass, if that were the only haphazard thing about this movie. As it is, it's just the first in a long series of incredibly bad decisions on the filmmakers' part.
I heard that MST3K gave this thing a once-over. Thanks for the heads-up on the video. For some reason, I can't download it from the site you described, but I did track down a site selling DVD's of the old show. Poor video quality, maybe, but six bucks isn't a bad price to pay for getting ninety solid minutes of good laffs. |
|
|
|
Altair IV
Preeminent Apostolic Prelate of the Discipleship of Jabootu
Japan
110 Posts |
Posted - 12/19/2006 : 12:45:55 PM
|
Sorry. I guess I should've mentioned that the DAP doesn't offer downloads as such. They have their own dedicated edonkey server which members can log into for access to the stuff they have to offer. They're a bit strict on how you can go about it though. It's all explained in their [url="http://www.dapcentral.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=FAQ&file=index"]FAQ[/url].
I've found that you can usually find most of their stuff on the regular networks as well, but it often takes more time to get, since the sources are less dedicated. Saves having to muck about with their rules and registration though.
I'm not sure I'd be willing to trust someone selling DVD's of the thing. I'd be willing to guess they're just hawking burned copies of the DAP project. I hate it when (unauthorized) people attempt to profit off stuff that's being offered up elsewhere for free, and I have ever since my anime tape trading days. But then again, I suppose you could say they're offering a value-added service by converting them to ready-to-use DVD format for you. Hmm.
The KTMA episodes are generally not as outright funny as their later stuff. They were still trying to get the formula down, obviously, and they were on a really low budget, but also they didn't really prepare ahead of time for the movies. They pretty much just winged it, and it shows. But it's really worth watching just to see how they started out (in spite of their insistance in the Amazing Colossal Episode Guide that you don't want to).
This one is one of their better attempts though, as it's one of the later episodes and they were getting into their groove. Unfortunately the mad scientists don't make an appearance here for some reason. It's just Joel and the Bots. You'll have to check out one of the other episodes if you want to see what they were like in the early days as well. |
|
|
|
BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 01/21/2007 : 10:47:32 AM
|
Well, I went ahead and got a copy of MST's riffing on this thing. And I was amazed that these guys were saying a lot of the stuff I was thinking while watching the movie. Their two descriptions of the flying saucer were better than mine, I thought: first, they said it looked like someone welded three Marshall amps to a platform (very true). Then they said it looked like the head of a Kirby vacuum cleaner. Also quite true.
The DVD was, indeed, a port from an old home videotape of the original show. They even showed the station logo and local temperature a couple of times! The joke is, the video quality wasn't much worse than that of the "legit" DVD. And this one also had chapter titles and three stills of the original movie posters. You know your movie's in bad shape when your official release is one-upped by guys who are showing your movie just to laugh at it. |
|
|
|
Altair IV
Preeminent Apostolic Prelate of the Discipleship of Jabootu
Japan
110 Posts |
Posted - 01/26/2007 : 12:22:47 PM
|
I'm quite sure that most every copy of most of the early shows has come from the same source. Almost nobody recorded the first shows, so there are usually only one or two low-quality VHS copies available. Hangar 18 comes from one of the better recordings. Some are much worse. And no copies have ever surfaced of episodes 1-3.
It does sound like you got your money's worth though, if they went to the trouble of putting a few extras on the disc. Reminds me of the early days of DVD when "extra features" often meant it had chapter breaks and the movie trailer. |
|
|
| |
Topic |
|
|
|
Hangar 18
Forum Locked