Space Connection

Following a disaster on a routine shuttle mission where a satellite explosion results in a crashed UFO and a dead astronaut, Gordon Cain (Robert Vaughn) an adviser for the White House arranges to keep a lid on the UFO by relocating it and creating a cover story blaming the two surviving astronauts Price and Bancroft (James Hampton and Gary Collins respectively). Both Price and Bancroft are determined to clear their names and unravel the conspiracy of what they encountered on their mission.

Released in 1980, the film was one of many films to be produced and released by now defunct Utah based film company Sunn Classic Pictures. Sunn's slate consisted of family friendly dramas as well as sensationalist "documentaries" such as The Mysterious Monsters, In Search of Noah's Ark, and Beyond and Back just to name a few. Hangar 18 is clearly inspired by the success of both Close Encounters as well as the various paranoid thrillers of the 70s, but it doesn't tackle them particularly well as much like Sunn's documentaries, it pretends these very silly and unbelievable events are real with complete seriousness.

From the get go the movie makes a terrible impression with an opening Shuttle sequence that has serviceable enough special effects given its low budget, but it's two leads whose credits include serving as a TV host and a supporting role on F Troop make them completely unbelievable for playing astronauts. Their body type in combination with their manner of speaking just feels completely at odds with the characters they're playing and you never find yourself believing who they are. The movie also has a rather flimsy pretext for why this is happening in the first place and the central "cover-up" is built on flimsy logic that doesn't account for preventable outcomes like the two Astronauts wanting to clear their names after being falsely accused. The UFO is also rather disappointing as its size is inconsistent, it's got a flimsy plastic look that looks like stacked storage bins on a disc, and the aliens in side are hairless pale white creatures that are unimaginative and unmemorable.

There's a few decent moments to be had, Robert Vaughn is good as antagonist Gordon Cain, playing a man who's not afraid to get his hands dirty and knows which strings to pull. Darren McGavin is also quite good playing the deputy director of NASA who analyzes the ship as it's stored in the titular Hangar 18, and while the visuals are underwhelming, there is a good sense of mystery and build up that is engaging during the segments inside the hangar. Unfortunately the rest of the movie outside the Hangar is very stock and lacking in engagement as we see Price and Bancroft stumble around Arizona and Texas engaging in a much less interesting investigation than McGavin's in the Hangar.

There's an interesting enough hook to Hangar 18 in showing the workings of how the government would address a UFO crash landing in the United States, and the investigative elements are reasonably okay when focused on Darren McGavin, but the other part of the movie where Price and Bancroft impotently stumble around trying to clear their name and special effects that are both cheap and unimaginative make the movie feel like an ABC movie of the week rather than something to be shown in a theater. It's a solid enough time killer, but you're not missing anything not seeking it out.

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.

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.

Ok, no, this isn't one of the greatest movies of all time by any means, but it does have some very interesting theories and suggestions, ala the "X-Files". If you were between 10-14 during the late 70's and early 80's, you'll remember the movies that dealt with such mysteries as Bigfoot, Noah's Ark, and (didn't this one just scare the be-jesus out of you!) Nostradomas, narrated by Orsen Welles. I think the movie is entertaining, even though it is "dated" by today's standards. I also don't think it's a strech to say this could have been the very birth of the X-Files as we now know it.

Consider some of the flying saucer films we have seen over the years. The occupants speak perfect English, often with American accents to boot.

In this film we never get to see the aliens; they have a kind of Satanic presence. Instead we have a control panel that displays photographs of military and civilian installations, weird hieroglyphics, and a synthesised voice that speaks an unknown language. Now that is much better than a couple of humanoids with detectable Boston accents who carry away chloroformed females to father the next generation when they get them home.

Robert Vaughn sheds his affable Man from UNCLE image and makes a vicious government agent.

This is the only UFO film that I have ever taken seriously.