UFO Kidnapped

The genius of this low-budget attempt at sci-fi was that it used the same actors and sets as the sketch comedy "You can't do that on Television" but was dead serious. The result resembled a nightmare in which everything starts out normal but then turns and becomes dark and untenably weird. It was like the writers and cast of "H.R Pufnstuf" decided to put on a production of Carmen.

It has been a long time since I've seen this movie, something like 19 years, but it was well wrought enough to stay with me. I think that the fact that the actors and sets were already so familiar to the the "You Can't do that on Television" viewer leant the movie a bizarre normalcy which circumvented the normal defense mechanisms.

I remember telling people for years that there was a show with the cast of You Can't Do That On Television, but they got abducted by aliens and put on a UFO. People were telling me I must have dreamed it or I was thinking of something else, and for some reason nobody else remembered this. I really don't remember much about it myself, but at least now I know I'm not crazy. :)

I'm relying on sheer willpower to remember this one, but it's all coming back to me in a Proustian rush. This made-for-Nickelodeon special used cast members from Nick's "You Can't Do That on Television," but it wasn't a comedy. A real attempt at science fiction, this short film fails in many ways but it has a lot of, what they call in the industry, "Heart." I think it was shot on the same low-grade video as YCDTOTV and the special effects looked like something you expect to see on your local cable access channel, but the story in which two kids are captured by aliens, has some interesting angles. Anybody else out there ever see this? Who's with me? It's too bad this team didn't attempt a few more oddball notions like this one, since at the time it was one of the few children's pieces that had any brains to it. And by the way, it doesn't have a particularly happy ending, which is always a hard sell in the kiddie-tv market.

Abducted by aliens who announce an intention to keep them as pets, two teenagers learn that the aliens might actually have other plans for them in this brisk adventure thriller from Canada. The film feels a little too cute at times (aliens that look like fuzzy bears) but there are several genuinely unsettling moments along the way, particularly a scene in which the boys wake up in what seems to be their bedroom, only without glass in the windows... or any way to get out. As it turns out, on the alien spaceship everything runs on imagination ("just think of what you want to wear") in a creative twist. Curiously enough, there is also an abducted cat burglar spends most of his time locked in a jail cell, unable to suspend disbelief and realise that he is just imagining the cell as the only place that he rationally thinks he can possibly be! Further fascinating ideas come from the aliens comparing pet human ownership to dog ownership and using the power from black holes to travel faster through space. The supporting characters are far less engaging than the teenagers though; Klea Scott plays a fellow young abductee whose only real purpose is to spell out for our protagonists how the imagination concept works, while Les Lye as the burglar is fairly one-note. This may not be high class science fiction entertainment, but is still remarkably well assembled for a low budget production. The special effects are not half-bad, the ideas at hand are often thought-provoking and two main characters are very likable as they find out in very unusual terms just how useful a good imagination can be.

Pretty much everything in my life that happened prior to 1982 is shrouded in that strange haze that gets harder and harder to push through every year. Fortunately, UFO Kidnapped I remember relatively clearly.

I even remember the promos for it (done by the narrator Nickelodeon had for years). "What's happening to Alasdair?" was pretty much all the ad said, and showed the scene where Alasdair was about to be scooped up by the alien ship---which all we knew at the time was that we could see Alasdair screaming and lots of psychedelic lights.

The show was built up over the course of at least a couple months before the premiere, and very little was revealed about it beforehand. I found it odd that Kevin and Alasdair played "themselves" just as they had on You Can't Do That On Television, with just about everyone else from the cast playing a completely different role....and this movie was largely dead serious, as in about as serious as a Doctor Who episode. Mild humor and not a great deal of it.

My guess is they wanted to give the kids a chance at serious acting, just so they could say they had the experience, knowing they'd ultimately grow up and leave Nickelodeon and might want to continue an acting career. Which, incidentally, wasn't very long for Kevin Kubecheski, I think at this point he had already left the cast of You Can't Do That On Television.

Those of you who liked You Can't Do That On Television will recall there was a video game in Blip's Arcade called "UFO Kidnapped" and in one episode, we see Alasdair entering the arcade, saying, "I can't wait to play UFO Kidnapped."