Based on actual incident in 1961, Richard A. Colla’s “The UFO Incident” is widely considered to be one of the most frightening films ever made about the topic of alien abductions.

Although never officially released on any format, the film has become somewhat of a much sought after cult classic in the underground video market. The reason is simple; the film does not accept a mocking pose when discussing the material it is presented with, in fact, it’s rather stark in its presentation. The other reason is, well, the actual incident, the thing that befell Betty and Barney Hill on the cool September night in 61, is about as interesting and frightening a story as any ever told. The fact that radars did indeed track something strange in the sky that night, and that Betty had actual proof in the form of residue and a star map, which she remembered, and later drew -- a map that featured stars in various clusters which were unknown to astronomers until 1969 - it's something that cannot be dismissed out of hand.

Okay, since then, plenty of revisionist sceptics have come out of the woodwork to explain away the incident, the most common being that Betty and Barney Hill were simply delusional and making it up. Of course they were. They happily forget the fact that radars picked it up and that the Hill’s were far from crazy. In fact they were community leaders and Barney even sat on the local board of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. Forget that folks cause, as the sceptics like to point out, the Hills were crazy and delusional. Unlike the sceptics, however, the Hills had no agenda when they first came out, although I’m sure a sceptic could certainly dig one up if given enough time and imagination.

Before I continue any further with the review, I have to point out something that happened to a friend and me on the night of July 17, 1996. No, I wasn’t abducted, nothing that dramatic, it was more like a sighting, a sighting nonetheless that forever changed my perspective regarding the existence of UFOs.

On that night, Mark, my best friend from grade school and resident plane expert and I, were out on his porch, drinking coffee and pulling an all-nighter. See, we had to baby-sit a dog (yes, a dog) the next day for my aunt who was leaving for Canada’s Wonderland and didn’t want the mongrel to be home alone. I reluctantly agreed, the knowledge that I could use her pool for the day and eat her food, made the whole baysitting thing more enticing. Mark and I were still a couple of years away from our first drink, so we weren’t inebriated, so you can count that out right away. We decided that staying up all night would be fun and neither of us were tired anyways, so what the hey. It was a picturesque Canadian night, tranquil and warm, and not a cloud in the star filled sky.

Our chatter about high school, the future and girls was interrupted at around 3:30 a.m. when I personally spotted a star that appeared to be, well, falling from the sky. Barrelling down through the rows of stars, this small light seemed to be on a rapid trajectory toward Earth. Jokingly, I looked over at Mark, a guy who grew up in Trenton, Ontario, Canada all his life, a guy who has dragged me to countless air shows over the years, a guy who purchases plane magazines as quick as they come out, a guy who wanted to be an air force pilot for about as long as he’s been breathing, and a guy I consider to be somewhat knowledgeable about objects that might be moving in the sky, and I asked him, “What kind of plane is that?” hoping that he was explain it away. He peered up, noticed what I was watching and just as he was blurting out “It’s probably a falling sta…” the object suddenly stopped dead in its tracks. Yes, it just slammed on the brakes right there in the sky directly above us and sat there for an agonizing amount of time, as if it was observing us. Stumped, Mark muttered, “Well, that’s not a plane.” I agreed, muttering, “Then what else could it be?” Suddenly we were both shocked to our core when the object started gyrating in a bizarre circular pattern so fast that neither of us could believe what we were seeing. This thing was terrifying. At that point, we both jumped off the porch and ran out into the street to watch this thing as it moved across the sky while not conforming to any recognizable flight pattern. Simply put, this thing was all over the place. We watched it until it moved out of our line of vision. Afterwards, we were both very upset and the hair back of our neck was standing straight up. We also felt chilled to the bone, even though it was a comfortably warm night. The next morning, at about 6:00 a.m. we ran to his uncle’s house and told him our story to which he rolled his eyes, laughed and then added, “Did you guys hear about that TWA plane exploding in the sky last night over New York?” Of course, we hadn’t. The TWA tragedy, as terrible as it was, however, did help to give a date to my sighting. It’s something that I’ll never forget for as long as I live. It’s something that I know I saw, and even when I’ve tried to think of explanations for what it could have been, I’m reminded not of what it could have been but what it was. I know what I saw and I know that I didn’t imagine it. Mark and I commemorate that night every year by getting, what else, sloshed out of our minds. From that day forward, I’ve felt a desire to always keep an open mind and to never smugly dismiss people who speak of strange phenomenon. I’ve grown deeply interested in the UFO topic over the years as well, as most people who encounter such phenomenon often do. Every once in awhile, I’m greeted by garbage like the Discovery Channel’s “World's Strangest UFO Stories”, a show, in keeping with current ugly pro-conservative climate, that cherry picks its presented information, in order to prop up its ridiculous agenda. Thankfully, there are films like “The UFO Incident” which treats the subject matter with the respect it deserves.

Following a title card that asserts the film is based on a true story; the film quickly introduces us to a typical American couple Betty (Estelle Parsons) and Barney Hill (James Earl Jones) and their pet dog, as they travel some winding forested back roads in search of something important. As the sun sets in the distance, the murky skyline looks blood red and ominous. Interestingly, this plain loving pair isn’t on a hunt for the place they first kissed nothing that syrupy, no, they are searching for something more sinister – the place where something terrible might have happened to them. “It’s crazy to keep coming back here,” Barney growls, suggesting that these trips are taking a toll on them and their relationship. Encountering a group of boys cavorting on the side of the road, Betty becomes hysterical, and suddenly we flash back to another night, that night, when she saw ‘men’ on the road. “It was a dream,” Barney tells her, hoping to calm her down. “I saw the men on the road,” Betty stresses. This startling opening segment does a great deal to illuminate what is in store for the audience, and the argument about what is real and what is imagined, that continues to this day.

 The scene quickly flash-cuts to the office of a psychiatrist, Dr. Benjamin Simon (Barnard Hughes), as the pair discuss what happened to them on that night in September 19, 1961, beginning with a sighting of a strange light in the sky and an odd beeping noise. As voice-over by Hughes introduces us to the couple, the scene flashes back to the night in question, as the pair arrives several hours behind schedule from the trip back from Canada. They don’t notice the missing time at first, but the both are exhausted for reasons neither understands. As the visits to the psychiatrist increase, the pair begins to seriously question what happened to them on that night. Barney grows more and more sceptical, that is until Simon, also very sceptical, suggests they use hypnosis to try to uncover what occurred in those missing hours in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. What they unearth in those sessions seems to alarm Simon as much as the couple. At first Simon senses that the experience is a fabrication of the mind, created by Barney’s own inner-struggles with race, something of which manifests itself during an awkward dinner scene and, later, during a heartbreaking bedside chat with Betty. He senses that Betty has somehow nurtured Barney’s fear and paranoia by appending imaginings into what might have been nothing more than a bad dream. Of course, that dream was the basis for the UFO abduction claim they are making. Simon is at odds with what they say but is willing to hear them out, and this is where the heart of the film lies. Watching as Estelle and Jones create wonderful suspenseful moments from the actual audiotapes that the real life couple made.

Simon’s digging eventually uncovers a nightmarish scenario, which involves the couple being forcibly taken from their vehicle by some creatures, lead through a forest to an odd-looking saucer shaped craft. Aboard the craft, the couple have experiments performed on them by these strange looking creatures. The pair’s heartfelt terror and emotion explodes forth in each session, leaving the good doctor not quite sure what to make of the whole thing. A short beachfront meeting with an old friend, an army general named James Davison (Dick O'Neill) who, off the record, admits that there are a small number of cases that simply cannot be explained conventionally, leaves him a sceptic tested.

As I said earlier, the real heart of the film involves the actual sessions where the pair recounts their experience. You can practically feel their terror as they talk about being taken aboard the craft. One powerful instance involves Barney describing how he grabbed his binoculars and ran into a clearing to get a better look at the object, only to be confronted by what appeared to be figures aboard the craft, observing him through a row of windows. One of the creatures aboard the craft watches Barney with strikingly sinister eyes. Barney likens himself to a bunny about to be pounced on, and jumps out of his office chair in horror trying to get his gun, forcing Simon to physically restrain him. Equally powerful is Betty’s tear-filled testimony about how some strange ‘men’ were standing in the middle of the road while above the craft hovered in the sky, lighting up the area. She becomes nearly hysterical as she describes how the creatures advanced toward the car and took them. Good luck watching either of these scenes and not becoming totally ensconced the moment. The actual on-board sequences aren’t as terrifying as one might expect as Betty’s inquisitiveness gets the best of her, asking about a star map she spots on a wall – something of which will figure into the film’s final shocker of an ending.