Betty and Barney Hill UFO-Abduction movie in the works

[lpetrich]

Betty and Barney Hill movie in the works | Doubtful News noting Gotham/Principal And Stellar Partner On Alien Abduction Pic ‘Captured’ | Deadline

The film will follow Betty and Barney Hill, an interracial couple from Portsmouth, New Hampshire who claimed to have been abducted by a UFO in 1961. The Hills claimed to have been studied by extraterrestrials, then returned to their lives with missing memories that were later retrieved under hypnosis. The film will examine the birth of modern UFO lore, and place the events in a context of both Cold War paranoia and the country’s struggle over race relations.

This case introduced several features of many later UFO-abduction cases, down to the appearance of the "Grays", as they later got called.

The Doubtful One continues:

The film will be based on the book written by Stanton Friedman and Kathleen Marden called “Captured! The Betty And Barney Hill UFO Experience: The True Story Of The World’s First Documented Alien Abduction”.

The screenplay is being written by Bryce Zabel who has penned such cinema classics as “Mortal Kombat: Annihilation” which is considered to be one of the worst movies ever made, with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 3% and a 3.6 star rating on IMDb. He also wrote for the TV series of “The Crow: Stairway to Heaven” and “Lois and Clark”.

Let's see how that turns out. I don't know how much of a movie that they can get out of the abduction itself. But they plan to take on some of the social context, like race relations, it seems. Back in 1961, several states had still outlawed interracial marriage.

The Cold War connection would presumably be how the Communists are out to get us. But the Hills were involved in the Unitarian church, and that suggests that they were likely left-of-center politically, at least by American standards. So they would not likely be Red-under-the-bed anti-Communists. However, many other Americans had such fears.

I think that it would be interesting to do a movie about George Adamski, the first well-known UFO contactee, and the most famous one before Billy Meier. He led a busy and interesting life, including his alleged close encounters of the friendly kind.

That one also has a Cold War connection, concern about how destructive a nuclear war would be, and concern about the recklessness of continuing to build more nuclear bombs despite seeing how devastating they are.

 

[thebeave]

There was a made for TV movie about this in the 70's I remember seeing as a kid. James Earl Jones was Barney, back in his pre Darth Vader days.

Not surprised that they have to make this a race thing, given today's toxic environment. Probably they'll say the aliens were being racist in picking out a black guy for abduction. Or committed a microagression by asking him, "Take me to your leader", thus suggesting he must be some subservient slave to a white master.

 

[James Brown]

There was a made for TV movie about this in the 70's I remember seeing as a kid. James Earl Jones was Barney, back in his pre Darth Vader days.

The UFO Incident

 

[Horatio Parker]

I remember reading this story as a kid in the doctors office in one of the big magazines of the day, Life or the Post.

It was an absorbing tale, but then again I was like 8-10 years old. Maybe not as absorbing as talking bunnies or flaming superheroes, but you could do worse for a movie idea.

 

[lpetrich]

As to the race issue, I've seen the theory that Betty and Barney hoped that their abduction story would make them such big celebrities that nobody would want to hurt them, let alone lynch them.

... It was an absorbing tale, but then again I was like 8-10 years old. Maybe not as absorbing as talking bunnies or flaming superheroes, but you could do worse for a movie idea.

Some other UFO abduction accounts have been made into movies:

• Travis Walton -- Fire in the Sky
• Whitley Strieber -- Communion

We could also do that with Betty Andreasson.

As to UFO contactees, Howard Menger might also be nice to make a movie about. His story can start with something dramatic: when he was 10 years old, encountering a woman sitting on a rock in a forest near his home. She addresses him by name and then she tells him that he has a great destiny ahead. But there are some things that she can't tell him at the moment, and she predicts big wars ahead (this in 1932).

Another good one might be Reinhold Schmidt. He actually made a move about his extraterrestrial escapades, "The Edge of Tomorrow". It's hard to find, however. But a movie about him ought to include his trial for fraud, a trial where Carl Sagan made his first public appearance.

I'm not sure how much one can do for (say) Orfeo Angelucci or George van Tassel.

A bio movie for George Adamski would have a lot of interesting incidents to cover. It would need a dramatic hook to start with, and I propose a bit from Inside the Spaceships. He and three ET friends are amiably chatting inside a flying lampshade, er, flying saucer that is flying over Los Angeles at night. Two of them look like youngish men in business suits, while the third one is another youngish man with long blond hair and wearing a jumpsuit. He's the pilot, and he announces "We're over downtown LA now. We should reach the mothership in about 15 minutes."

It would be treated as a dream sequence, with fuzzy edges, and it's intended to show what a big contrast it is with UFO-abduction accounts -- friendly and talkative ET's.

Then his being born in what's now Poland in 1891, and being taken to the US by his parents, with them settling down in Dunkirk in upstate NY. He did not get much education because he had to go to work to support his family, and he served in the US Army on the US-Mexico border during World War I. After that, he worked at various odd jobs, like in Yellowstone National Park, an Oregon flour mill, and at California construction sites. He settled down in the LA area and got into the alternative-religion set there. In 1934, he founded a Theosophy-ish cult called the Royal Order of Tibet, and he had plans to found a monastery.

Then a dream sequence of what that monastery would have been like.

But it failed, and George and his followers moved to the base of Mt. Palomar, where they did some farming. They weren't very successful, so they moved uphill and founded the Palomar Gardens Cafe. After WWII, flying saucers became big news, and he started seeing a lot of them and wishing that he could meet their pilots and ride some of them. Late in 1952, he suffered a mysterious impulse to go out into the desert, and he and his friends went out there. He went up ahead, and we have a dream sequence of him meeting a UFOnaut and conversing with him with gestures and telepathy. He had contacted George because he was very concerned about humanity's development of nuclear bombs and how devastating they are.

He doesn't go aboard then, but he goes aboard later, and we see those trips as dream sequences.

Then, the reaction. Some of his fellow UFOlogists dismiss him as a crackpot whose wild stories hurt the credibility of UFOlogy, including such assertions as the US Air Force covering up what it knows. He goes on a world tour, and he meets with Queen Juliana there, complete with outrage from journalists and officials. He goes off the deep end with such antics as going on a trip to Saturn and wanting to do fortunetelling, and some of his followers desert him. He recovers a bit, but he dies in 1965. He gets buried in Arlington National Cemetery on account of his military service.

The film could have an epilogue about the discovery of how hostile the Solar System is, and then SETI efforts, with their hope that there are some ET's that are as friendly and talkative as George's.

 

[Colonel Sanders]

Fine idea for a film. I'm a sucker for stuff like this.

But the people making it will almost certainly screw it up. Bummer.

 

[lpetrich]

Thanx.

The easiest of George Adamski's books to find are "Flying Saucers Have Landed" (1953) with Desmond Leslie, and "Inside the Spaceships" (1955). I confess that I have something of a soft spot for ITSS -- I got a copy of it long ago, and I was rather intrigued.

The first 2/3 of FSHL are DL's contribution, and it's a rather typical sort of book on UFO's, describing and discussing sightings of these entities. The remaining 1/3 is GA's contribution, some background on himself, and also his first encounter with one of his ET friends.

That ET looked like a somewhat androgynous young man with long blond hair dressed in a dark brown jumpsuit, and he was near his flying saucer. GA learned that he came from Venus in a big spaceship that he departed from in his saucer, that human(oid) life exists all over the Solar System and outside it also, that we get reincarnated and that he spent some past lives on the Earth, among other things.

ITSS has GA's further adventures, like this:

Acting on another strange implulse, GA went to a LA hotel, and he met two mysterious business-suited gentlemen there. He discovered that they had some connection with that ET that he'd met earlier, and he let the two drive him out into the desert -- Firkon from Mars and Ramu from Saturn. He met that first one, Orthon from Venus in a jumpsuit again, near his flying saucer, and the three ET's flew off with GA in that vehicle.

Then the opening scene again.

Then the saucer approaching a huge cylindrical spaceship that GA and his friends had seen the first time around. The saucer goes inside and all four depart from it inside this mother ship or carrier ship. They visit some workshops and a control room that looks like something out of Star Trek, and then they step into a sumptuously decorated lounge. Two youngish women get off of a divan to meet GA, Kalna from Venus and Ilmuth from Mars. They are dressed in long pastel-colored dresses made of veil-like material, dresses with jeweled belts. Also metallic-looking sandals. They introduce themselves as some of the spaceship's pilots, one of them gets a drink for GA, and the other one kisses him on the cheek.

All five ET's have some enlightening conversation with GA, explaining their society and their technology -- it's a sort of Star Trek United Federation of Planets in the Solar System. Ilmuth goes on duty for a bit, dressed in a jumpsuit, and she invites GA to visit her pilot station. GA accepts, and he even gets to look at the Earth from outer space.

They also meet a spiritual master on board, someone who looks as aged as GA, someone who explains cosmic evolution and stuff like that. A lot of stuff that sounds like Theosophy.

 

[lpetrich]

As to Hollywood butchering a George-Adamski movie, the first thing that comes to my mind is adding gratuitous action scenes. Like some of GA's ET friends brawling with Men in Black. The next thing is gratuitous undressing of the women in that movie, women like GA's followers Alice Wells and Lucy McGinnis and his ET friends Kalna and Ilmuth.

GA himself didn't mention the MiB very much, but he claimed that he was opposed by a "Silence Group". He even claimed that it was headquartered in Zuerich, Switzerland, because it's a big banking center.

Who might we cast? I'm thinking of people who've had a history in science fiction and fantasy.
George Adamski - Zachary Quinto
Orthon - Chris Pine (would need a blond wig)
Kalna - Sarah Michelle Gellar
Ilmuth - Zoe Saldana