UFO-Contactee Movies

[lpetrich]

I wasn't sure whether this belongs here or in Pseudoscience, so here goes.

Film Status Update | They Rode the Flying Saucers Patrick described how he has been working on his film for nearly 9 years.

I have completed a rough cut and am on the way to a finished second cut of the film. While it is still too long for the average person to sit and watch, it’s getting there.

But there are a number of steps yet to accomplish: animation and graphics, music, sound mix, rights and clearances, acquisition of stock footage, etc.

At the beginning of this year, Patrick hoped to complete it by November 20, the 65th anniversary of George Adamski's alleged meeting with his ET friend Orthon in the southern California desert a little north of Desert Center. That is now becoming less and less likely, he concedes.

The good news is, I suspect most of the production will be accomplished by then. It is just a matter at that point of the various hurdles of securing distribution, fundraising, etc., to get this all finished and off to the races.

It should be nice to see, this documentary about alleged close encounters of the friendly kind.

 

[lpetrich]

Hollywood has done some more-or-less contactee-themed movies, like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Carl Sagan's Contact, even if not as many as about villainous ET's. In CE3K, the arriving ET's act like nasty pranksters for much of the movie, and they implant images of Devil's Tower WY as where to go to. At that geological structure, they then give everybody a spectacular light show with their flying chandeliers. In Contact, we Earthlings receive an interstellar radio broadcast, then discoverer Ellie Arroway goes on a trip through some wormholes and visits the ET's. She comes back with no independent evidence. It is all erased, and she seems to say that believing in her trip is a matter of faith. I didn't like that erasure in the book -- it seemed too contrived -- and I've never seen the movie because of that. IMO, she ought to have grumbled about how the lack of independent evidence for what may seem like a preposterous tall tale. "It makes me look like crackpots and fakers like George Adamski and Billy Meier."

 

[lpetrich]

Adamski The Movie: Life of 1950s Flying Saucer Contactee Heading for Big Screen - YouTube

Plans for a Hollywood version of the life and times of 1950s flying saucer contactee George Adamski are underway in 2017.

Adamski Foundation Director, Glenn Steckling, has revealed he is currently in discussions with unnamed parties in Los Angeles, who are interested in bringing the true facts about Adamski to cinema audiences worldwide

I've thought that a biography movie about him might be nice. I've even thought a bit about how some of it might go.

It might start with GA riding in a flying saucer above Los Angeles, chatting amiably with his ET friends, and looking at the constellations of stars above and the constellations of city lights below. Then his birth in Bydgoszcz, Poland, then Bromberg, Germany, in 1891. His family soon emigrated to the United States, settling down in Dunkirk, NY. His family's poverty forced him to curtail his formal education, and when he grew up, he enlisted in the US Army. He served on the Mexican border, and over the 1920's, he did a variety of jobs. In the early 1930's, he settled down in southern California and got involved in its alternative-religion scene. He founded an alternative-religion study group called the Royal Order of Tibet, allegedly channeling ascended Tibetan masters. He even wanted to found a monastery, and the movie could include some video of his plans.

The ROoT was never very successful, and he and some of his followers moved to the slopes of Mt. Palomar, home of that famous observatory. After trying farming, they ran a roadside diner, and GA had his first contacts during this time. His first one was in the southern California desert, and he got some of his followers to drive him there. They saw a big cigar-shaped spaceship, or so it seemed, and GA went into the hills and met Orthon, an angelic-looking gentleman with long blond hair and wearing a dark brown jumpsuit. His flying saucer was nearby. They then conversed about a lot of things with gestures and telepathy. Like Orthon warning about how horribly destructive nuclear bombs are. At the end, Orthon went aboard his flying saucer and flew off.

Then another encounter. This time, GA went to a Los Angeles hotel, and he found two gentlemen who seemed to know who he is. He went into their car, and they drove off into the desert. They met Orthon and his flying saucer, left their car behind, and flew off in it. They soon saw a huge cigar-shaped mothership, and went aboard that spaceship. After going past machinery and a control room, they arrived in a lounge, where some very angelic-looking crewwomen were waiting for them. They had some very nice conversation before GA had to go some hours later.

GA made some more such trips, and he became very famous. Famous enough to go on a world tour, complete with meeting Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. He became rather erratic in his later years, once thinking of doing some fortunetelling and once claiming to have gone on a trip to Saturn. The latter was almost too much for some of his followers. He died in 1965.

 

[lpetrich]

The movie could end with mention of SETI efforts, and the hopes of some SETI supporters of finding ET's as friendly and as talkative as the ones that GA claimed to have encountered.

GA wrote some books about his adventures, like his part of Flying Saucers Have Landed (1953: him and Orthon), and Inside the Spaceships (1955: going aboard his friends' spaceships).

What GA learned on his alleged trips was a sort of cross between Star Trek and some very batty woo-woo -- his ET friends lived in a sort of United Federation of Planets of the Solar System.

But there is a little problem. In ItSS, GA's good friend Desmond Leslie wrote

The latest book to appear concerning the planet Mars has been written by Dr. Hubertus Strughold (This Green and Red Planet). It proves that if our instruments and their information are correct, intelligent organic life as we know it could not last ten seconds on Mars. But Strughold ends by admitting that perhaps we have overlooked “some crucial factor” and really the only way to be quite sure is for us to travel to the other planets for ourselves and find out firsthand.

We have done that, sending spacecraft across the Solar System, and the results have been most disappointing. Venus, Orthon's homeworld, turns out to be a "hell planet", superhot with a superthick atmosphere. Here are some reconciliations:

• GA adventures are figments of his imagination.
• The CIA or whatever did some fakery to make GA seem to have his adventures.
• Our spacecraft were miscalibrated, giving erroneous readings.
• GA's ET friends live in enclosed colony cities.
• They live on the moons of the outer planets, and are referred to as from those planets as shorthand.
• GA's ET friends are ethereal entities, not subject to the harsh physical conditions of the rest of the Solar System.
• "Venus" and "Mars" and "Saturn" and the like are codenames for their true homes.
• GA's ET friends showed themselves in human form for his convenience, like in Contact.

Finally, I'm concerned that Hollywood might butcher it in some way, like having GA's ET friends have some brawls with Men in Black, or showing some spaceship crewwomen in gratuitous states of undress.

 

[ZiprHead]

It's been a long time since I've been probed.







I'm married...

 

[lpetrich]

It's been a long time since I've been probed.

I'm married...

???

If you are referring to UFO abductions, this isn't about those alleged events.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Hollywood has done some more-or-less contactee-themed movies, like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Carl Sagan's Contact, even if not as many as about villainous ET's. In CE3K, the arriving ET's act like nasty pranksters for much of the movie, and they implant images of Devil's Tower WY as where to go to. At that geological structure, they then give everybody a spectacular light show with their flying chandeliers. In Contact, we Earthlings receive an interstellar radio broadcast, then discoverer Ellie Arroway goes on a trip through some wormholes and visits the ET's. She comes back with no independent evidence. It is all erased, and she seems to say that believing in her trip is a matter of faith. I didn't like that erasure in the book -- it seemed too contrived -- and I've never seen the movie because of that. IMO, she ought to have grumbled about how the lack of independent evidence for what may seem like a preposterous tall tale. "It makes me look like crackpots and fakers like George Adamski and Billy Meier."

I always saw it differently. She doesn't get to do the pod thing initially because she didn't have faith in what others believed. Now she was again being persecuted because the original persecutors didn't have faith in the experience she reported. She didn't need faith to believe in what she saw, she saw it. It was about everyone else and their failure of faith and trust to believe.

Whether that was the author's intent, I don't know, but that is how I saw it. The rampant hypocrisy of people with faith in god.

 

[Opoponax]

Adamski, in terms of contactees, is a fuckstick.

There's never been a decently budgeted movie made about Betty and Barney Hill. Same with those four guys in the canoe on the lake. They should get a big budget flick before that fraud Adamski. "Fraud" in this particular context means someone who is especially full of shit. Adamski is the Trump of UFO contactees.

There's lots of reasons to disbelieve these people. Indeed, I don't believe them. All of it's too inconsistent and fishy. However, at least with the Hills and the canoe guys, you could get an intriguing movie ala Fire in the Sky.

 

[lpetrich]

Adamski, in terms of contactees, is a fuckstick.

There's never been a decently budgeted movie made about Betty and Barney Hill. Same with those four guys in the canoe on the lake. They should get a big budget flick before that fraud Adamski. "Fraud" in this particular context means someone who is especially full of shit. Adamski is the Trump of UFO contactees.

What do you find so horrible about George Adamski? How is he much worse than (say) Truman Bethurum, Daniel Fry, George van Tassel, Elizabeth Klarer, Reinhold Schmidt, Billy Meier, ...?

As to Betty and Barney Hill, there was a TV movie made about them in 1975: The UFO Incident (TV Movie 1975) - IMDb. There are plans for a theatrical movie release: Alien Abduction Story ‘Captured’ in the Works as Movie | Variety

The four men in a canoe? That seems like the Allagash abduction incident.

There's lots of reasons to disbelieve these people. Indeed, I don't believe them. All of it's too inconsistent and fishy. However, at least with the Hills and the canoe guys, you could get an intriguing movie ala Fire in the Sky.

Fire in the Sky? That's the Travis Walton abduction incident.

 

[lpetrich]

Here is a comparison table:
[table="class: grid"]
[tr]
[td]What[/td]
[td]Contacts[/td]
[td]Abductions[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Appearance[/td]
[td]Good-Looking[/td]
[td]Neutral to Ugly[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Friendliness[/td]
[td]Friendly[/td]
[td]Neutral to Hostile[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Communication[/td]
[td]Talkative[/td]
[td]Silent[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Reporter's Travels[/td]
[td]Voluntary[/td]
[td]Involuntary[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]
Here, contacts are close encounters of the friendly kind.

To illustrate the difference further, I will quote from George Adamski's book Inside the Spaceships:

I was delighted when I saw [spaceship crewwomen] Ilmuth and Kalna coming forward to greet me warmly. “Did anyone tell you about the surprise we have for you tonight?” Kalna asked, and without waiting for a reply continued enthusiastically, “A certain promise made to you will be fulfilled!”

It was to be taken to the Moon. Crewwomen Kalna and Ilmuth look like angelic-looking Earthwomen. Is there anything close to that in any UFO-abduction account?

 

[lpetrich]

Angelic? Let's see... From Flying Saucers Have Landed (1953) about Orthon:

1. His trousers were not like mine. They were in style, much like ski trousers and with a passing thought I wondered why he wore such out here on the desert.

2. His hair was long; reaching to his shoulders, and was blowing in the wind as was mine. But this was not too strange for I have seen a number of men who wore their hair almost that long.

... it was however a friendly feeling toward the smiling young man standing there waiting for me to reach him.

...
The beauty of his form surpassed anything I had ever seen. And the pleasantness of his face freed me of all thought of my personal self.

...
The flesh of his hand to the touch of mine was like a baby’s, very delicate in texture, but firm and warm. His hands were slender, with long tapering fingers like the beautiful hands of an artistic woman. In fact, in different clothing he could easily have passed for an unusually beautiful woman; yet he definitely was a man.

...
His hair was sandy in colour and hung in beautiful waves to his shoulders, glistening more beautifully than any woman’s I have ever seen. And I remember a passing thought of how Earth women would enjoy having such beautiful hair as this man had. As I said before, he wore no protection over it and it was being blown by the winds.

His clothing was a one-piece garment which I had a feeling was a uniform worn by spacemen as they travel, like Earth men in various types of work wear uniforms to indicate their occupations.

A jumpsuit.

From Inside the Spaceships (1955):

The one who had brought me the water was about five feet, three inches in height. Her skin was very fair and her golden hair hung in waves to just below her shoulders in a beautiful symmetry. Her eyes, too, were more golden than any other color and held an expression that was both gentle and merry. I had the feeling that she was reading my every thought. Her almost transparent skin was without blemish of any kind, exquisitely delicate, though firm and possessed of a warm radiance. Her features were finely chiseled, the ears small, the white teeth beautifully even. She looked very young. I judged that she could not be much over twenty years of age. Her hands were slender, with long, tapering fingers. I noticed that neither she nor her companion wore make-up of any kind on their faces or fingernails. The lips of both were a natural deep red. They wore no jewelry of any description. Indeed, such adornment would have served only to detract from their own natural beauty.

Both women wore draped garments of a veil-like material which fell to their ankles, and both robes were bound at the waist by a striking girdle of contrasting color, into which jewels seemed actually to be woven.

The garment of the little blonde was of a pure light blue, and her tiny sandals were golden in color. Later, I learned that she was a citizen of the planet we know as Venus. Kalna is the name I shall give her.

Ilmuth, my name for the other woman, was taller and a rich brunette in coloring. She also wore her hair in a cascade that fell to just below her shoulders, and it was a beautiful wavy black with highlights of reddish brown. Her large eyes were black, luminous, with flashes of brown. They held the same merry expression as those of her companion, and I felt that she, too, could read my innermost thoughts. In fact, this is an impression I have received from every person that I have met from worlds beyond our own. The color of this lovely brunette’s robe was a pale, rich green, and her sandals of a copper hue. Ilmuth, like Firkon, was an inhabitant of the planet Mars.

When on duty, these two ladies, like other crewwomen, wear jumpsuits just like their male counterparts. Better than ST:TOS, I must note.

 

[lpetrich]

Another one: Howard Menger. How was George Adamski much worse than him?

In From Outer Space To You (1959), he described his first contact:

But one day in 1932, when I was ten, I saw something even more beautiful than the surroundings.

There, sitting on a rock by the brook, was the most exquisite woman my young eyes had ever beheld!

The warm sunlight caught the highlights of her long golden hair as it cascaded around her face and shoulders. The curves of her lovely body were delicately contoured—revealed through the translucent material of clothing which reminded me of the habit of skiers.

I halted in my tracks, and for a moment my breath stopped. I was not frightened, but an overwhelming wonderment froze me to the spot.

She turned her head in my direction.

Even though very young, the feeling I received was unmistakable.

It was a tremendous surge of warmth, love and physical attraction which emanated from her to me.

Suddenly all my anxiety was gone and I approached her as one would an old friend or loved one.

She seemed to radiate and glow as she sat on the rock, and I won*dered if it were due to the unusual quality of the material she wore, which had a shimmering, shiny texture not unlike but far surpassing the sheen of nylon. The clothing had no buttons, fasteners or seams I could discern. She wore no makeup, which would have been unneces*sary to the fragile transparency of her Camellia-like skin with pinkish undertones.

Her eyes, opalescent discs of gold, turned their smiling affection on me with a tranquil luminescence.

Elizabeth Klarer in Beyond the Light Barrier (1980), describing her ET lover:

The tall man sat beside me and held my hand in both of his hands. The firm warmth and reassurance of his touch caused me to relax com*pletely, and I leaned back against the soft bench.

"My name is Akon," he said. "I am a scientist, and my research takes me to many planets beyond our home system. Sheron, who greeted you as we came in, is my pilot, and he is also a scientist. Our home system is beyond—far beyond—this small star with its family of planets. We come from a double star system."

With wonder, I looked into his eyes—those fantastic, compelling eyes. He smiled at me in his gentle way, and then his whole face lit up for a fleeting moment. I was fascinated by his strong and fine appearance, tall and strikingly handsome with a force of character unknown to me. His ascetic face was. grave but tender, and his golden hair shone white at the temples as he moved his head to glance at the viewing lens. It was a most striking face, with aquiline features, high cheekbones and light gray eyes slanting up to the temples. His forehead was high and his skin golden and fair, with no vestige of suntan. There were humor lines around his eyes and deep lines down his cheeks. He was an older man, well past middle age, with a strong and lithe body just under two meters in height.

His hair was straight and long, behind his ears and to the nape of the neck, and he wore a plain, close-fitting garment that shimmered with a silvery sheen. It was all one piece, light and comfortable like a shiny nylon, and very soft. The trousers narrowed down to the ankles and covered his feet like a soft glove on which he walked. Long sleeves closed tightly around his wrists, and a high round neckline fitted him like a polo-neck sweater. Only his hands, face and head were exposed, and I noticed gloves and a head covering of the same shiny material lying on the other bench. The head covering looked tight-fitting and had slits for the eyes slanting upward and slits for the mouth and nose.

 

[lpetrich]

TRUMAN BETHURUM
The Iron Skeptic - Truman Bethurum
From the first link,

Suddenly a “mumbling around the truck” awakened him. The mumbling was unintelligible. Bethurum looked out the window and saw “eight to 10 small men, all about 4 feet 8 inches to 5 feet high.” They were not dwarfs but fully developed men, said Bethurum. ...

... Bethurum shook hands with all the “friendly” men and asked if their captain was around. The spokesman for the group volunteered to escort Bethurum to the captain, and led him toward the parked space ship. Meanwhile, Bethurum looked around and saw the short men were “Latin types,” that is, with complexions “something like Italians.” All were neatly dressed in uniforms similar to those “worn by Greyhound bus drivers.” All had coal black hair and dark eyes. They had beautiful skin---skin which contained no wrinkles or blemishes.

Then,

Going inside he met the woman captain, Aura Rhanes. He described her as having a “slender” Latin- type face. She wore a “radiant red skirt, black velvet short sleeved blouse and a black beret with red trim.”

I can't help but think "Where's her jumpsuit?" Truman Bethurum also described Aura Rhanes as "tops in shapeliness and beauty".


Here is an abduction account from 1957 in Brazil, before the Hills' abduction: Abduction and Sexual Encounter of Antonio Villas Boas (NSFW -- close encounters of the sexual kind). One of his captors raped him and made him feel like a "stallion".