Hangar 18 | |
---|---|
Directed by | James L. Conway |
Screenplay by | Ken Pettus |
Story by |
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Produced by | Charles E. Sellier, Jr. |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Paul Hipp |
Edited by | Michael Spence |
Music by | John Cacavas |
Distributed by | Sunn Classic Pictures |
Release date | July 1980 |
Running time | 97 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Box office | $11 million [1] or $5.8 million [2] |
Hangar 18 is a 1980 American science fiction action film directed by James L. Conway and written by Ken Pettus, from a story by Thomas C. Chapman and Conway. It stars Darren McGavin, Robert Vaughn, Gary Collins, James Hampton and Pamela Bellwood. [3]
Hangar 18 is about a cover-up following a UFO incident aboard the Space Shuttle. A satellite, just launched from the orbiter, collides with an unidentified object, which, after being spotted on radar moving at great speeds, had positioned itself just over the shuttle. The collision kills an astronaut in the launch bay. The events are witnessed by Bancroft and Price, the astronauts aboard. After returning to Earth, they are stonewalled when they try to discuss what happened. Harry Forbes, Deputy Director of NASA, simply tells them that "everything is going to be all right".
After it makes a controlled landing in the Arizona desert, the damaged alien spacecraft is taken to Wolf Air Force Base in Texas and installed in Hangar 18, where scientists and other technicians, headed by Harry Forbes, can study it. Due to an impending presidential election, government officials are anxious to prevent any public knowledge of the event.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Forbes, the Air Force puts out a news story blaming Bancroft and Price for the death of their colleague and for the destruction of the satellite. The men know that they can prove their innocence by viewing the telemetry tapes which recorded the UFO; but when they view them, all evidence of the object has been erased. Through a friend who works at a remote tracking station, they see the real telemetry and discover where the alien craft landed. They set out to expose the cover-up and clear their names.
In the hangar, investigators enter the ship and find its two crew members dead. They determine that, during the collision with the satellite, chemicals were released in the craft that produced a short-lived toxic gas. They find a human woman in a stasis chamber, who later wakes up, screaming. They realize that symbols on the control panels match those used by ancient Earth civilizations. Video on the ship's computer shows extensive surveillance of power plants, military bases, industrial plants and major cities worldwide. Autopsies performed on the aliens show that they and humans had similar evolutionary processes. A scientist deduces that the ship could not have reached Earth on its own, but must have been launched from a much larger, faster and more long-ranged mother ship.
In their pursuit of the truth, Bancroft and Price get closer to Hangar 18 but are targets of government agents. They elude one team, who are killed during a high-speed chase. Later, they find that the brakes on their rental car have stopped working, and after careening along roads, they come to rest on the grounds of a gas refinery. Agents begin shooting at them, so they drive off in an oil tanker. With the agents in pursuit, Price climbs onto the tanker, lets some gas out of the truck, lights an emergency flare, and tosses it. Their pursuers crash and are killed, but Price is fatally shot. When Forbes learns of Price's death, he demands the Air Force to take Bancroft to Hangar 18, or he will go to the press with the truth. Their cover-up and careers now threatened, government officials decide to remotely fly an explosives-filled plane into Hangar 18 to destroy all evidence of the event.
The researchers have determined that the aliens have been to Earth before and that human beings are, in fact, their descendants. Further examination of the video footage reveals that the industrial and military sites are "designated landing areas", suggesting that the aliens are preparing to return.
When Bancroft arrives at the base, he crashes through the base's security gate and, hiding in a warehouse, is discovered by Forbes, who takes him to Hangar 18 and the alien craft. Just as a researcher reveals that a translation of the aliens' language indicates that they are about to return, the plane crashes into Hangar 18, creating a huge explosion.
The next day, a news report says that Bancroft, Forbes and their group of technicians survived the blast, shielded inside an alien spacecraft. Forbes schedules a press conference for that afternoon.
Parts of the movie were filmed in Midland and Big Spring, Texas, and at the former Pyote Air Force Base, as well as the former Webb Air Force Base.[ citation needed ] Filming also took place in Salt Lake City, Utah. [4]
The title is believed to stem from hoaxer Robert Spencer Carr, who in 1974 named Hangar 18 as the storage location of bodies from the 1948 Aztec UFO hoax. [5] [6] [7]
When the film was released, The New York Times film critic Vincent Canby dismissed the film, writing: "Hangar 18 is the sort of melodrama that pretends to be skeptical, but requires that everyone watching it be profoundly gullible ... It stars ... Robert Vaughn as the ruthless and fatally unimaginative White House Chief of Staff ... In the supporting cast is Debra MacFarlane, who plays a beautiful female specimen found aboard the saucer, a young woman who looks amazingly like a Hollywood starlet. But then, I guess, she is. The flying saucer itself looks like an oversized toy that might have been made in Taiwan." [8]
Christopher John reviewed Hangar 18 in Ares Magazine #8 and commented that "Hanger 18[ sic ] is the perfect Sunday evening movie for television. If you watch closely, you can even see the spaces they planned for the commercials." [9]
The film was released by Sunn Classic Pictures, an independent U.S.-based film distributor notable for presenting what TV Guide called "awful big-screen 'documentaries' [like] In Search of Noah's Ark and In Search of Historic Jesus ". [10] Sunn Classic's library is now owned by Paramount Pictures. Hangar 18 was released on Blu-ray on June 25, 2013. [11]
Hangar 18 was released in US theaters in July 1980.[ citation needed ] The film was released in Ireland on March 13, 1981.[ citation needed ]Hangar 18 was one of the very few American films to be theatrically shown in the Soviet Union.[ citation needed ] It premiered on the TV channel 1 on the New Year night of 1982.[ citation needed ] Because of the general unavailability of films with elements of science fiction and the action genre, it achieved enormous popularity among Soviet youth.
In May 1989, Hangar 18 was featured in an episode of the movie-mocking television show Mystery Science Theater 3000 [12] during the KTMA era.
A version with an alternate ending was televised as Invasion Force. Leonard Maltin's 2015 Movie Guide says that the new ending undermines the whole film. [13] [14]
Hangar 18 was rated PG in New Zealand for low level violence.
Director James L. Conway later revisited the concept when he filmed the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Little Green Men". In that episode, characters travel to 1947 Roswell where their ship is stored in Hangar 18. [15]
UFO conspiracy theories are a subset of conspiracy theories which argue that various governments and politicians globally, in particular the United States government, are suppressing evidence that unidentified flying objects are controlled by a non-human intelligence or built using alien technology. Such conspiracy theories usually argue that Earth governments are in communication or cooperation with extraterrestrial visitors despite public disclaimers, and further that some of these theories claim that the governments are explicitly allowing alien abduction.
George Adamski was a Polish-American author who became widely known in ufology circles, and to some degree in popular culture, after he displayed numerous photographs in the 1940s and 1950s that he said were of alien spacecraft, claimed to have met with friendly Nordic alien Space Brothers, and claimed to have taken flights with them to the Moon and other planets.
The Roswell incident is a collection of events and myths surrounding the 1947 crash of a United States Army Air Forces balloon, near Roswell, New Mexico. Operated from the nearby Alamogordo Army Air Field and part of the top secret Project Mogul, the balloon's purpose was remote detection of Soviet nuclear tests. After metallic and rubber debris was recovered by Roswell Army Air Field personnel, the United States Army announced their possession of a "flying disc". This announcement made international headlines but was retracted within a day. Obscuring the true purpose and source of the crashed balloon, the Army subsequently stated that it was a conventional weather balloon.
The extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) proposes that some unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are best explained as being physical spacecraft occupied by extraterrestrial intelligence or non-human aliens, or non-occupied alien probes from other planets visiting Earth.
Taken, also known as Steven Spielberg Presents Taken, is an American science fiction miniseries that first aired on the Sci-Fi Channel from December 2 to 13, 2002. Filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, it was written by Leslie Bohem, and directed by Breck Eisner, Félix Enríquez Alcalá, John Fawcett, Tobe Hooper, Jeremy Paul Kagan, Michael Katleman, Sergio Mimica-Gezzan, Bryan Spicer, Jeff Woolnough, and Thomas J. Wright. The executive producers were Leslie Bohem and Steven Spielberg.
The Flying Saucers Are Real by Donald Keyhoe, was a book that investigated reports of UFOs by United States Air Force fighters, personnel, and other aircraft, between 1947 and 1950.
The Invaders is an American science-fiction television series created by Larry Cohen that aired on ABC for two seasons, from 1967 to 1968. Roy Thinnes stars as David Vincent, who after stumbling across evidence of an in-progress invasion of aliens from outer space—the aliens disguising themselves as humans and gradually infiltrating human institutions—tries to thwart the invasion despite the disbelief of officials and the general public, and the undermining of his efforts by the aliens. The series was a Quinn Martin production.
Little green men is the stereotypical portrayal of extraterrestrials as little humanoid creatures with green skin and sometimes with antennae on their heads. The term is also sometimes used to describe gremlins, mythical creatures known for causing problems in airplanes and mechanical devices. Today, these creatures are more commonly associated with an alleged alien species called greys, whose skin color is described as not green, but grey.
Earth vs. the Flying Saucers is a 1956 American science fiction film from Columbia Pictures. It was produced by Charles H. Schneer, directed by Fred F. Sears, and stars Hugh Marlowe and Joan Taylor. The stop-motion animation special effects were created by Ray Harryhausen. The storyline was suggested by the bestselling 1953 non-fiction book Flying Saucers from Outer Space by Maj. Donald Keyhoe. The film was released as a double feature with The Werewolf.
Many works of fiction have featured UFOs. In most cases, as the fictional story progresses, the Earth is being invaded by hostile alien forces from outer space, usually from Mars, as depicted in early science fiction, or the people are being destroyed by alien forces, as depicted in the film Independence Day. Some fictional UFO encounters may be based on real UFO reports, such as Night Skies. Night Skies is based on the 1997 Phoenix UFO Incident.
John Grant Fuller, Jr. was a New England–based American author of several nonfiction books and newspaper articles, mainly focusing on the theme of extraterrestrials and the supernatural. For many years he wrote a regular column for the Saturday Review magazine, called "Trade Winds". His books include We Almost Lost Detroit, The Ghost of Flight 401, Incident at Exeter, and The Interrupted Journey.
"Little Green Men" is the 80th episode of the American syndicated science fiction television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the eighth episode of the fourth season.
The Atomic Submarine is a 1959 independently made, American black-and-white science-fiction film directed by Spencer Gordon Bennet and starring Arthur Franz, Dick Foran, Brett Halsey, Joi Lansing and Jean Moorhead, with John Hilliard as the voice of the alien. The film was produced by Alex Gordon and distributed by Allied Artists Pictures Corporation.
The Aurora, Texas, UFO incident reportedly occurred on April 17, 1897, when, according to locals, a UFO crashed on a farm near Aurora, Texas. The incident is claimed to have resulted in a fatality of the pilot. The pilot was "not of this world" and was said to be an alien. The pilot was buried at the Aurora cemetery. A stone was placed as a marker for the grave, but has since been removed.
A flying saucer is a descriptive term for a type of flying craft having a disc or saucer-shaped body, commonly used generically to refer to an anomalous flying object. The term was coined in 1947 but has generally been supplanted since 1952 by the United States Air Force term unidentified flying objects. Early reported sightings of unknown "flying saucers" usually described them as silver or metallic, sometimes reported as covered with navigation lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly, either alone or in tight formations with other similar craft, and exhibiting high maneuverability.
Starship Invasions is a 1977 Canadian science fiction film directed, produced and written by Ed Hunt and filmed in Toronto, Ontario. It was re-released in the United Kingdom as Project Genocide.
The Aztec, New Mexico UFO hoax was a flying saucer crash alleged to have happened in 1948 in Aztec, New Mexico. The story was first published in 1949 by author Frank Scully in his Variety magazine columns, and later in his 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers. In the mid-1950s, the story was exposed as a hoax fabricated by two con men, Silas M. Newton and Leo A. Gebauer, as part of a fraudulent scheme to sell supposed alien technology. Beginning in the 1970s, some ufologists resurrected the story in books claiming the purported crash was real. In 2013, an FBI memo claimed by some ufologists to substantiate the crash story was dismissed by the bureau as "a second- or third-hand claim that we never investigated".
The Bamboo Saucer is an independently made 1968 Cold War science fiction film drama about competing American and Russian teams that discover a flying saucer in Communist China. The film was re-released in 1969 under the title Collision Course with an edited down runtime of 90 minutes.
UFOs: Past, Present, and Future is a 1974 documentary film that examines several prominent UFO sightings from the post-war to contemporary era. It was re-released in 1976 and 1979 under the title UFOs: It Has Begun to coincide with renewed interest in the subject due to the release of Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It is based on the book UFOs: Past, Present, and Future by Robert Emenegger.
In UFO conspiracy theories, "Hangar 18" is the name given to a building that allegedly contained UFO debris or alien bodies. The name was popularized by conspiracy theorist Robert Spencer Carr in 1974, who claimed the hangar was located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio; in actuality, no such building exists.