Hangar 18

This movie is the first "government conspiracy" flicks I ever saw and frankly it spooked me at the time. The story about the accidental encounter with aliens and the consequent cover-up and framing of the astronauts was as eerie as any later X-Files show. Remember this movie came out in 1980, the only other movie with the concept of government cover-ups at the time was Capricorn One. I'm glad it was made in 1980, if it was done today it wouldn't have had the same punch.

Classic TV-style movie about a crashed flying saucer and a government cover-up. Gary Collins and James Hampton (how's that for two names from the illustrious past?) are two astronauts who witness the saucer from their space shuttle. On their return to Earth, they find all evidence of the saucer's existence are gone. So they go on a trek to find out what happened. Darren McGavin (yes, the Night Stalker himself!) is a government man in charge of studying the saucer, which crash landed on Earth after being struck by a satellite. It now sits in good old Hangar 18. Joe Campanella and Rober Vaughn (this just keeps getting better) are the government bad guys, intent on eliminating anyone who might know something or discover the saucer's existence. It's an election year, after all. Hokey plot, hammy acting and a great-looking saucer add up to an enjoyable hour an a half of thrills and unintentional laughs. The hairdos alone will keep you in stitches, especially Collins' Beatle bangs. No special effects to speak of, but entertaining nonetheless. And this is light years away from flying saucer films from the 1950s and early 60s.

This film was made in my hometown of Big Spring, Texas....my father is in the movie as an extra..he is one of the guys in the hanger around the ship ..look for the white dude with an afro...lol..I was going to get to be in the movie but they decided to scrap that scene for a night crash instead. If you visit the hanger on the old air base it still has the 18 on it. I love the movie. Its pretty good for being such a low budget film but its cool. The ship was sold to one of the rich people in town back then for his kid to have to have fun in. I always remember my parents telling me about Robert Vaughn, they told me that he thought he was this big time actor from Hollywood and he thought he was the coolest thing walking the earth. The other actors and a lot of the higher up towns people would have parties all get together...it was interesting.

Some parts of the film were done in Midland, Texas and Odessa, Texas...so when watching the film its like looking in my back yard.

It is common to bash this 1980 sci-fi/conspiracy movie for its admittedly not-top-notch special effects and pretty much everything else; the limited budget has a lot to do with it. But with the exception of the 1978 film CAPRICORN ONE, nobody else was trying to mix the two elements (sci-fi and conspiracy) together for the big screen. In essence, HANGAR 18 can indeed be said to presage "The X Files" by a decade and a half.

The film begins with two astronauts (Collins, Hampton) encountering a UFO in orbit while launching a military satellite. The satellite collides with the UFO, causing an explosion and killing a third astronaut in the cargo bay who had been watching the satellite's progress. But the UFO makes a surprisingly controlled landing in the Arizona desert, thus necessitating its quick removal and forcing the president's chief of staff (Vaughn, an absolutely steely performance) to concoct a cover story to avoid serious damage to his boss's chances for re-election.

Naturally, both Collins and Hampton are fingered by Vaughn and his staff for blame in the incident. This forces them to gather hard evidence to clear themselves, but it also means that they'll be pursued by government agents the entire way. Meanwhile, at Hangar 18, located at an air force base in Texas, a team of scientists, led by McGavin, are learning everything they possibly can about the UFO and its alien occupants. What they find about those aliens is how uncannily similar they are to humans.

Despite the film's technical imperfections, HANGAR 18 is still a pretty good and speculative science fiction film from Sunn Pictures, the same Utah-based film company that was known for making speculative documentaries during the 70s and early 80s. McGavin is at his usual best, as he was in the 1972 TV film THE NIGHT STALKER. In terms of plot, HANGAR 18 seems to use Watergate as a starting point and then mixes in elements of Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and Spielberg's CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. And although it is hardly on a level with those two great movies, it nevertheless works because of the approach it takes to the debate not only over UFOs in our present day but also the possibility that visitors from another world have visited Earth before.

"Hanger 18" is from Sunn Classic Pictures....a now-defunct studio that brought us some quirky, paranoid films such as "The Outer Space Connection" (a documentary that claimed ancient civilizations were in constant contact with aliens who, apparently, made their cool structures) and "In Search for Noah's Ark". I expected very, very little from a Sunn film...that's for sure. However, the longer I watched the film, the more I realized it wasn't bad at all. Paranoid...yes...bad....no.

The film begins with footage of the space shuttle that looks dated today...but was amazing stuff for 1980. Consider this...years before the creation of Pixar, the film shows a lot of high tech CGI effects of the shuttle. I didn't have any idea how Sunn could afford this. It was only in the end credits where the studio thanked both NASA and Rockwell International....and it's likely they got the footage from them, as studios of the day simply didn't have the money or HUGE computers needed for such graphics. Regardless, it was pretty good footage.

While on a routine mission to deploy a satellite, the satellite accidentally collides with a UFO...and the UFO crashes to the Earth. This portion and the scientific study of the ship...all this was very well done and interesting. But there's another plot...one which seemed too influenced by Watergate...where some presidential aids take control of how to tell...or NOT tell the public. This portion, while interesting in its own way, kept the film from being better...that is until the nice twist ending.

Overall, a solid sci-fi film masquerading as yet another lousy Sunn film. Well worth seeing and highly original.