My god, it's full of art deco! This third-rate production concerning the government cover-up of a crashed and recovered UFO is of slight interest and some minor unintentional amusement. Performances range from middling to terrible; Vaughn makes the best of a mediocre script in a serviceable performance, while McGavin overacts as blandly as possible. The story moves along satisfactorily, in spite of plot holes that a gigantic alien mothership could easily navigate though. Highlights: violent, rampaging astronauts, the cleanest accidental beheading in interstellar history, space alien iconography and the most inept government agents ever assembled to preserve national security. This is a cut above the average TV movie and below mainstream feature fare.
a very well made little thriller about ufo's,cover ups,and what aliens may be doind here this little thriller(from sunn classic studio) is a great little movie that can also be watched by your kids. while on a mission to launch something into orbit,a space shuttle sees a ufo.when the object is launched it hits the ufo and sends it crashing to earth and kills the man outside the shuttle. to cover up, the pilot,and co-pilot are blamed for the death and a team is sent to find and study the ship. this is low-buget but the action and drama to come are all well handled and this is a fun and thought provokeing thriller.
Prophetic and forward looking, even if a bit dated I first saw Hanger 18 when it played on network television years ago. I never forgot it and through the miracle of Amazon.com I was able to get it, at the time, on VHS. This is one of the best dramatic and seriously acted presentations of several reportedly real UFO stories: Roswell, Wright-Patterson AFB, etc. In this historical-fiction account, the true life stories have been somewhat conflated to produce a composite of all of them. The film shows its age in terms of the quality, the special effects, etc, but that notwithstanding, it is still an excellent production and well worth getting.
Flawed but fun There's not much I can say about the overall plot of this movie that hasn't already been said by other helpful reviewers - shuttle astronauts accidentally collide a launched satellite with a UFO, the UFO and its occupants land in the desert, are recovered and hidden, and the death of a fellow astronaut during the collision is blamed on the shuttle crew, who must clear their names and uncover the truth.
I do have to agree that the casting seems just a bit off in some cases - Gary Collins as an astronaut? Some casting decisions were spot-on, though, such as Robert Vaughn, who seems to have been born to play a politician/bad guy in one production after another. [Fans of Vaughn and semi-cheesy early 80's sci-fi should also check out his role as the mercenary assassin Gelt in "Battle Beyond The Stars."]
The effects in this film aren't the greatest, but they're generally secondary to the story anyway. They probably could have done without the "let's-blow-up-a-tanker-truck" chase scene, though, which doesn't seem to do much more than strain the credibility of the plot. Gary Collins is an astronaut AND an expert big-rig driver?
I also have some minor complaints about the design of the UFO - it looks like a flying industrial refrigeration unit and would have been about as aerodynamic as a brick wall - but that was just the production designer and the props department at work, and who can really say what a real alien spacecraft should look like anyway? Not me, but personally, I would have gone for a more classic "UFO" look. Instead of little green men, though, we have tall pale men who look surpringly human, and for good reason. Watch the movie and find out why.
One of the aspects of this movie that fascinates me the most is the aliens' language. Although we only hear it being synthesized by a computer aboard the UFO [and sounding very much like a Cylon from the original "Battlestar Galactica" series], it's still interesting, and the more you hear it, perhaps not all that alien after all.
Overall... An entertaining and thought-provoking film marred a bit by some weak casting and a few rather unlikely plot twists. Fans of "The X-Files" should indeed like this film, and it may even have served as a bit of an inspiration for that series. Just remember that it's an old film and the art of special effects has advanced quite a bit in the past 25 years. Even its contemporaries such as "Star Wars" and "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind" had better effects, but then they were also made on much larger budgets.
I have an old VHS copy at the moment; I can't comment on the DVD release yet.
Kinda makes you wonder ... ... what our government would do if it suddenly had possession of an alien spacecraft.
For a low budget film, this is actually a fairly good movie. No special effects here, just a mysterious craft which the politicians are trying to hide. The plot is captivating if somewhat, at times, trite.
Darren McGaven turns in a fine performance as NASA's Harry Forbes ... in charge of the research team exploring the craft. Ditto for Andrew Bloch as Neal Kelso and Steven Keats as Paul Bannister. The team unwinds the secrets of the space ship and the death of the aliens on board and makes a startling discovery.
Where the film falls short is with the two 'astronauts' Steve Bancroft and Lew Price. Their part in the story is to find out why they are being set up to take the fall for the death of a third astronaut, an Air Force colonel who is decapitated by wreakage from a satilite they launch inadvertently striking the alien ship. James Hampton is a little chubby and goofy for an astronaut (Lew Price) and Gary Collins (Steve Bancroft) a little too mechanical. The casting team might have done a somewhat better and vastly improved the film.
Still, in spite of its shortcomings, this is one of those 'sleeper films' which somehow captures the imagination of the viewer. Definately worth having in your film library if you like space yarns ... and you'll love the ending.
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