Unidentified Flying Objects: The True Story of Flying Saucers

The movie stands now mainly as an artifact of its time since the UFO fascination of the 1940's and 50's has largely faded away. In fact, younger folks may not be aware of how widespread the post-war fascination with the skies was. Viewers looking to the movie for entertainment should probably look elsewhere, such as the many entertaining space alien features of the time. Instead, the production takes pains to use only non-actors and documented content, concentrating on the genuinely puzzling instances of UFO's without speculation.

The highpoint, I expect, are the two actual films of unsolved UFO's. They're put into slow motion at the end for more careful study, but remain even then little more than moving points of light. The overall result requires some patience since the narrative sometimes lags. Nonetheless, anyone interested in the UFO phenomenon should not pass up this 1956, 90-minute review.

Interviews, footage, and recreations are combined to make the case for U.F.O.s being real, sentiently guided and likely of extra-terrestrial origin. The film is very dated and only covers the first six years of U.F.O. encounters in the US, starting with the 1947 Kenneth Arnold sighting and closing with the famous appearance of multiple mysterious flying objects over Washington, DC in 1952. The few interview and footage sequences are bridged by recreations of US Air Force press officer Albert Chop's (Tom Towers) examinations of various sightings. Real footage of the Montana and Utah sightings is shown (and examined frame by frame in the epilogue) but, after 90 minutes of portentous setup, the brief, grainy images are anticlimactic. More interesting than the U.F.O.s themselves are the reactions of the public and responses of the government (including President Harry Truman) who were genuinely concerned (although at the dawn of the cold war, the fears were as much about foreign powers as about malevolent aliens). Overall, 'Unidentified Flying Objects: The True Story of Flying Saucers' is tedious (especially the endless monotonal narration by Olan Soule) but at least is more sincere and less sensationalistic than later entries in the 'U.F.O.s are real!' genre (notably, there are no 'recreations' of saucers or aliens, just of human observers and analysts). To be fair to the film and its makers, it should be 'seen' through 1950 eyes, not 2020 eyes: more than 60 years have passed since the Arnold sighting and the entry of the term 'flying saucer' into popular culture, but despite the off-and-on hype, nothing has ever come of the claims that extra-terrestrial intelligences are visiting our skies other than a lot of great (and not-so-great) movies and TV shows, a few amusing songs, some celebrities making fools of themselves, and the memorable debut episode of 'South Park' (but, just in case, "Keep watching the skies!").

Unidentified Flying Objects: The True Story of Flying Saucers (1956)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Pseudo-documentary about reporter Albert Chop (Tom Towers) who begins to investigate several reports of UFO's and by the end of the film he's convinced that they are in fact real. This movie uses stock footage, documentary footage and reenactments to try and tell people that UFOs are real and throughout the movie we're told a few dozen times that the cases we're hearing about are true. The most annoying thing about this movie is the Dragnet-type narration that runs throughout the running time and it's just so dry and dull that by the ten-minute mark you'll be wishing that you were abducted by a real spaceship just so you can get away from this film. To be fair, it's important to note that this was released when the UFO craze was extremely high in this country and it's clear that the producers were playing this to folks who wanted to know the "truth" even if they weren't really going to get it from this movie. The reenactments are also quite annoying as they never let you actually see the spaceships and usually it's just non-professional actors opening their eyes wide to show what type of shock they're in. The majority of the cases told here are based on true stories but we're never given any clear evidence or any real facts. Instead we're just told over and over that we're supposed to take their word. Another problem with the film is that at 91-minutes it goes on for way too long and considering you really don't get to see anything until the final ten-minutes it would be a lot better skipping this "documentary" and actually watching one of the fake, low-budget films, which would at least give you something to see. I mentioned the final ten-minutes and this is when we see two "actual" UFO films, both in color. Being the early 50s on a hand-held camera, the footage is quite poor but I'm sure the film ended with many people believing that these were actually flying saucers.

This documentary features, among several incidents, the re-enactment of the 1950's flying saucer encounters over Washington DC and recordings from the Mantell crash. Very scary stuff at the time. I saw this on television when I was around 10 years old. It gave me quite a few sleepless nights thereafter. My father, who was a radar expert with the Army at the time, confirmed to me that everyone in the Signal Corps was well aware of the Washington incident. Further, he described to me their "hunting" UFO's with radar in the White Sands, New Mexico desert. He was there frequently in the 1950's. They were launching captured German V-2 rockets, doing above-ground A bomb tests, sending men into the stratosphere with ballons. THERE CERTAINLY WERE ALL KINDS OF WIERD STUFF GOING ON WITH THE ARMY IN THE SOUTHWEST DESERT. To me, at age 10, this seemed to be proof that the flying saucers were real. I spent much of my teenage years searching for the truth - What were the UFO's? Why were they here? As an adult, I've finally accepted that the aliens are NOT here, no Roswell crash, no attack on DC, no death ray shot at Mantell. I sometimes wonder WHY they're not here. In the 1950's and 60's, flying saucers were not the silly stuff of abductions and other talk show nonsense. No, in the 50's and 60's the military feared that there really was something beyond our own technology in the skys. I guess that our more mudane modern reality disappoints me. I recently captured this movie on tape. I had not seen it in 40 years. The production was certainly made on a shoestring. Still, the DC incident is gripping. It captures beautifully an important chapter in our history. one characterized by cold war paranoia, fear, but also a sense wonder and mystery. I miss it.

This is a One of Kind Documentary (with a dramatization thread) using Non-Actors and Real-Life Flying Saucer Stories from the Late Forties and Early Fifties. It is a Matter-of-Fact Investigatory Film and doesn't even Try to be Entertaining. It just lays out the Facts and Presents the Phenomenon as it Occurred.

Ufologists of Today can have a "gold mine" of a Time going Back in Time to get a Glimpse of what the First Wave of Sightings Looked Like. Nothing is Embellished or Sensationalized. It is Dry and not Distilled. It is Bare Bones and brought to You as Unfettered and Untainted as Possible.

It Capsulized the Early Days of the Flying Saucer Flap and Touches Upon the Mantel Crash, the Two-Time Fly-Over of Washington D.C. in 1952 and Screens the Montana and Utah Amateur Movie Footage in Detail, Slow Motion, and Close Up at the end of the Movie. It also includes the General Stanton Press Conference Highlights. There are Multiple Interviews with Pilots and other Professional Observers.

These are All still with Investigators Today and have Never been Explained. It is a Fascinating Time Capsule. An Historical Expose and a Commendable Effort to Make Sense of the Situation when No One could Then or Even Now make any Sense of it. There is just too much Evidence ("credible people reporting incredible things") to Ignore, yet Not Enough Evidence to make a Conclusive Explanation.

For the Non-Ufologist and Casual Inquisitor of the Subject this may be much too Academic to set through as Entertainment, but as an Educational Tool it still Holds Up quite well and is an indispensable Artifact of its Time and has Importance to this Day.

Highly Recommended for Ufologists and Mainstream Historians, Educators and Skeptics.