Sentry
Paranormal Adept
On the April 13 Paracast listeners' roundtable, Chris O'Brien's colorful mention of Klingons eventually led into a brief discussion of the cross-pollination of UFO lore and Science Fiction. It's been noted that flying ships of all shapes (including saucers) had been imagined long before 1947, and that life on other worlds was not a new idea either. Gene pointed out instances of films influencing the UFO stories, and there's no question that the entertainment business has found flying saucers for to be a rich source of story material.
"Close Encounters of the Third Kind" blended many classic UFO stories into a single narrative, but there's a lesser film from 1977 that did the same thing, "Starship Invasions." In it, Canadian director Edward Hunt has some bad aliens defying the policy of the good aliens by exterminating man, so they can use Earth to replace their dying planet.
A friend just sent me a link to the film on Youtube, and while I saw this when it came out, had mostly forgotten about it. It's like a buffet of UFO legends rolled up into one cinematic casserole, from the opening act, which is a replay of the Vilas-Boas very close encounter! Ramses and his bad aliens wear outfits with dragons similar to the abductors of Herbert Schirmer, the android servant is a ringer for the Pascagoula abduction aliens, and the flying saucer from the Trent/Mcminnville case has a guest-starring role. My favorite shot in the movie is of the UFO scientist played by Robert Vaughn at home doing some research and case reviews.
There are also some excellent scenes of the alien girls in their functional uniforms.
Even more interesting is that Ed Hunt went on to write and direct another UFO film two years later, not fiction, but a documentary, "Flying Saucers are Real," released in the US as "UFO's are Real." As a friend described it, "The script itself is loaded with references, it feels like reading Erich von Daniken and some 'the Day the Earth Stood Still."
Stanton Friedman is there, too and was credited as co-writer, presenting the first appearance of Major Jesse Marcel's story of recovering wreckage of a flying saucer and bringing it to Roswell Army Air Field.
Ed Hunt had a hand in UFO history. There's definitely some chicken and egg cycling of ideas here!
"Close Encounters of the Third Kind" blended many classic UFO stories into a single narrative, but there's a lesser film from 1977 that did the same thing, "Starship Invasions." In it, Canadian director Edward Hunt has some bad aliens defying the policy of the good aliens by exterminating man, so they can use Earth to replace their dying planet.
A friend just sent me a link to the film on Youtube, and while I saw this when it came out, had mostly forgotten about it. It's like a buffet of UFO legends rolled up into one cinematic casserole, from the opening act, which is a replay of the Vilas-Boas very close encounter! Ramses and his bad aliens wear outfits with dragons similar to the abductors of Herbert Schirmer, the android servant is a ringer for the Pascagoula abduction aliens, and the flying saucer from the Trent/Mcminnville case has a guest-starring role. My favorite shot in the movie is of the UFO scientist played by Robert Vaughn at home doing some research and case reviews.
There are also some excellent scenes of the alien girls in their functional uniforms.
Even more interesting is that Ed Hunt went on to write and direct another UFO film two years later, not fiction, but a documentary, "Flying Saucers are Real," released in the US as "UFO's are Real." As a friend described it, "The script itself is loaded with references, it feels like reading Erich von Daniken and some 'the Day the Earth Stood Still."
Stanton Friedman is there, too and was credited as co-writer, presenting the first appearance of Major Jesse Marcel's story of recovering wreckage of a flying saucer and bringing it to Roswell Army Air Field.
Ed Hunt had a hand in UFO history. There's definitely some chicken and egg cycling of ideas here!
