The UFO Incident

This movie caught my eye because I remember reading about Betty and Barney Hill as a young UFO freak. They were the first famous case of alleged UFO abduction. This film is very well done, really effectively resting on the performances of the two leads. They believably portray real people under very unreal circumstances. I'd love to see it again if I could ever find it!

I first vievved this movie several years ago on a Cable television channel. I vvas so pleased vvith the acting abilities of James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons vvho play Betty and Barney Hill that I sought the movie to tape record it. I am still trying to catch it. The impression it made on me vvas a strong one. It vvas full of highly emotional drama. And it made me respect James Earl Jones all the more. Estelle Parson did a vvonderful job playing the vvife. Both characters vvere stretched and there vvas a lot of dialogue. Not too much action. But there really vvasn't need for action vvhen your glued to the screen vvaiting to hear vvhat the characters vvill say next of their tramatic experience. The dialogue and outpouring emotions vvas the action. This is a vvonderful movie. I'd really like to see it again.

I saw this movie in the 70's and it blew me away! I've seen many documentaries about UFO's that include dazzling photographs, but this dramatic recreation of the abduction of Betty and Barney Hill in New Hampshire is even more convincing. It takes supreme conceit and a touch of ignorance to believe that we are the only life forms in the universe. I have a friend named Fred who claims he was abducted by UFO's a few years ago in Vermont. His story was authentic enough that he was featured at length on a major UFO documentary produced by the Turner network. He has told me the story in detail so I have to take the subject seriously! James Earl Jones gives a great performance. Remember, these were the days before he became an obnoxious mouthpiece for Verizon. Estelle Parsons is 47 at the time she made this and I was very attracted to her in this role when I saw it in my 20's. She has a pleasant inner beauty although she isn't really pretty. She also has the New England accent down pat and calls him 'Baaaaney.' I watched it again recently and it was just as gripping the second time. I think this is a very spiritual movie and it definitely had an influence on my life and my thinking. If you see it in the tv guide, grab a tape that has several episodes of CHEERS on it and wipe them out with this tremendous film. I consider it the best made for tv movie ever. Don't look for violence or great special effects.

This movie is very closely based on the true story. I can attest to this, because I have a unique relationship to it. I was 9 years old in October, 1965, when our 4th grade math teacher rolled in the 21" TV to our classroom abruptly one afternoon, and displayed a live interview on local Boston TV with the Hills. Betty Hill described, verbatim, what the movie depicts, except she was much more detailed in the TV interview, which lasted nearly an hour. What she said was so impressive, I never forgot it for the rest of my life. She is the rarest of abductees, in the sense that she had a lucid conversation with her abductors. I believed every word she said then, and I have believed it for 45 years since, without the slightest modicum of doubt. As to the movie itself, I cannot imagine more perfect casting than Estelle Parsons and James Earl Jones. They were made for these parts. If you have ever seen the real Hills in an interview, the resemblance is uncanny. The film pays strict attention to detail and is well made. It took guts for these people to go public, and even more to make a movie that didn't distort the story to the tastes of greedy Hollywood execs. For a low budgeted TV movie, this is more like a superb documentary.

I saw this on TV when it came out- It was one of those stories that really affected me because somehow, I could feel the truth of it. This was probably the very first abduction story that I felt had any validity. Compared to other UFO stories I have read or seen movies of. I highly enjoyed "fire in the sky", but that movie was more Hollywood than actual. And, it has been partially remade in the recent movie "The Recall", which has a scene inside of the UFO craft which mirrors what was done for fire in the sky. there were other movies, "communion", but that story did not affect me as much as this one.

20 years after I watched that TV movie in 1975, I was in a halfway house. With nothing much to do, I rummaged through a library of old books and I came across something that was called "the interrupted journey". And when I touched that book- before I even opened it, I knew that this must be the book that told that original story. I had never heard of it before even though I had seen a film based upon it.

I think "the interrupted journey" is a much better name than "the UFO incident"

The film is your basic made-for-television fare, kind of the same quality as those NBC (was it NBC?) "movies of the week", or anything else that fits into the approximate One hour and 32 minutes allotted for a "two hour" television movie.

And even though it had been 20 years since I had seen this movie, I had remembered all of the details of the movie and I was very surprised that the book had been honored and that they kept to the basic story.

The book had documents and images so I was able to get a real face for the Hills. And there were things that Betty Hill had drawn and I was able to look at those.

I have not seen this movie since 1975, I hope that I am able to find it somewhere.