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.
