U.F.O. (1993)

A Classic 1950's UFO Documentary/Movie...
This marvelous black-and-white 1956 film has long been considered a "classic" UFO documentary-movie by those who are interested in the UFO phenomenon. The movie is based on the real-life experiences of Al Chop, a former journalist for the "Dayton Daily News" in Ohio. After World War Two he was hired as the Public Information Officer for Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, and in that capacity he became intimately involved with the UFO mystery. If you're interested in seeing an historically-accurate account of how the UFO phenomenon started in America, then this film is easily the best one you can buy. It starts out by recounting the first widely-publicized UFO sightings in America in 1947 and 1948 - from pilot Kenneth Arnold's sighting of nine "flying disks" over Mt. Rainier in Washington State to the "Mantell Incident" in January 1948, in which a veteran fighter pilot was killed while chasing a UFO over Ft. Knox in Kentucky. It also describes how UFOs quickly became a popular "fad" and national craze. We then follow Air Force PR man Chop as he becomes involved with UFOs, first by answering numerous requests for information from pesky newspapermen about recent UFO sightings and what the Air Force knows about them, to his discussions with military officers and scientists. In the process Chop steadily changes from a UFO debunker (he tells one reporter at the beginning that "It's a lot of bunk") to being convinced that UFOs are real. Finally, he is sent to Washington DC where he becomes the press spokesman for the Air Force's famed "Project Blue Book" investigation into the UFO mystery. During his tenure as Blue Book's PR man, Chop got to know most of the famous figures in the early history of the UFO phenomenon, such as Air Force Captain Edward Ruppelt, who was Project Blue Book's most famous supervisor, and Major Dewey Fournet, who was Blue Book's liason at the Pentagon. Under Ruppelt's leadership Project Blue Book enjoyed its "golden age" from 1951-1953. Instead of debunking and dismissing every UFO sighting, Ruppelt insisted that his staff keep an open mind when investigating UFO reports and he wasn't afraid to label a case as "unknown" when he couldn't find an adequate explanation. This film shows several of the most famous UFO cases of the late forties and early fifties. Among these are the 1950 Montana UFO film, which was taken on an old home-movie camera by the manager of the Great Falls minor-league baseball team, and the 1952 UFO film taken by a Navy photographer near the Great Salt Lake. Both films are extensively analyzed in this movie, and both are judged to be films of "real" UFOs. The film's climax happens in July 1952 during the great "Washington Invasion", when dozens of strange lights were seen over the nation's capital and were detected by radar at two airports. Chop was a central figure in this historic UFO event, and his account leaves no doubt that he believes there were "unknown objects" over Washington that night (the Air Force later claimed that the radar traces were "temperature inversions" and the eyewitness sightings were "mirages"). Although it's true that some of the UFO cases portrayed in "U.F.O." have been "solved" over the years, there are still enough "unsolved" cases in the movie to make it worthwhile viewing. There is one warning that I should give you about this movie, which is that it's very much a film of its time - the 1950's. The acting is very stiff and wooden (the "actor" playing Al Chop is Tom Towers, a reporter!), some of the "actors" are clearly reading their lines from cue cards held just off-screen, and the women all look and act like something out of "The Stepford Wives" - especially the zombie-like actress playing Chop's wife. In this sense the film bears a strong resemblance to fifties sci-fi fare such as "The Day the Earth Stood Still" or "Them", with poker-faced military types grimly facing a serious, unknown threat. The dialogue is also forced and outdated, such as when Chop's old boss at the newspaper in Dayton tells him "Oh, but we've got BLOND copy girls to help you out now...". (My guess is that the guys at "Mystery Science Theater" would have a field day with this film). However, as someone who loves old fifties movies I found the acting and dialogue to be a hoot, and I wasn't watching the documentary for Oscar-calibre acting anyway. To sum up, if you're interested in the early history of UFO sightings in America, then you should definitely see this historically-accurate "docu-movie". And, if you love old fifties sci-fi movies, with their wooden acting and "dead-serious" dialogue, then you'll like this film too. Recommended!

The Truth is Out There -- and this film prove it!
This movie -- amazinglhy enough -- is like a real-life version of "The X-Files". Los Angles report Al Chop does what FBI agent Fox Mulder did in the famous TV show, seeking the truth that he knows is out there.

The fact that this film is based on facts which are verifiable through the government and various respectible agencies makes the movie very interesting and enjoyable to watch.

Well worth the meager price -- and the time it take to watch a film that dares to tell us the facts about things we are afraid to know.

A UFO documentary made with government cooperation!!
Trivia question for sci-fi fans: name the 1956 film that featured the talents of Les Tremayne (the general in `War of the Worlds' and the opening narrator of `Forbidden Planet'), Marvin Miller (the voice of Robby the Robot in `Forbidden Planet'), Olan Soule (who had a supporting role in `The Day the Earth Stood Still' and `Captain Midnight'), and Harry Morgan (Colonel Porter of `M.A.S.H.'). Here's a hint: Harry Morgan plays an Air Force pilot whose plane is surrounded by six flying saucers above the Washington, D.C.

If all this sounds too good to be true, take a peak at this drama-documentary, based on the experiences of Al Chop, a reporter who served as press liaison for the Pentagon during its investigation of UFO's from 1947 to the early 1950s. Miller, Soule, and Tremayne provide the voices for the narrated portions of the film. Although the movie contains only two brief film clips to serve as photographic evidence of UFO's, the producers build a good case based on the credibility of certain UFO witnesses (airline pilots, military personnel, radar operators, etc.).

On a more subtle level, director Winston Jones pulls off a clever trick; he begins the film as a pure documentary, but he gradually modifies this approach and focuses on reporter Al Chop's personal involvement in the UFO investigation. Chop slowly changes from UFO skeptic to UFO believer (and so will you). The climax is a gripping reenactment of a true incident which occurred in 1950, when a group of UFO's cruised above Washington DC for several hours. The voice of Harry Morgan is heard over the radio as an Air Force pilot whose plane is literally surrounded by UFO's, during which Al Chop and a group of bewildered military men cluster around the radar scope, watching in wide-eyed wonder. Dramatically speaking, this scene is far superior to its counterpart in `Close Encounters of the Third Kind'.

The most amazing thing about this film is the fact that it was made with the full cooperation of the United States government, and every scrap of evidence it presents was made available to any and all scientific agency who wanted to examine it. Watch it and make up your own mind about UFO's -- but you'll loose some sleep over it before you do. Note: Some reviews mistakenly identify the star of `Unidentified Flying Objects' as Tom Powers, a co-star of `Destination Moon' (1950). The star of `UFO' is actually a Los Angles newspaper reporter (not a professional actor) named Tom Powers, who portrays the real-life reporter Al Chop.