Cutting Deep into Horror | Fire in the Sky (1993) — Alien Abduction, Trauma & Small-Town Panic - Weekly Spooky: Scary Stories for Halloween

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Greetings Earthling. Oh, I am Valdemar, of the planet Valdemar.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
So you're named after the place or what is.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Your earth name? Is it Valdemar?

Speaker 3 (00:31):
No?

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Why are you laughing? Why do your people laugh? Why
do they love? Answer my question?

Speaker 3 (00:42):
I mean the why do we love? Though? That like,
that's part of the human experience.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
This is too hard. Yeah, I'm going to just cut
into your eyeball with a needle instead.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
Please tell much easier, No, please stop.

Speaker 4 (01:00):
This podcast is about why horror scares us, what deep
dark secrets scary cinema shines a light on. The discussions
are frank and involve conversations about abuse, trauma, and mental health.
There are also spoilers, so keep that in mind too. Now,

(01:21):
sharpen your machetes and strap raisers, because this is cutting
deep into horror.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Hello, my spookies, and welcome back to Cutting Deep into Horror.
I know it's been a while, but great sequels are
worth the weight, Like Freddy versus Jason. That's the only
example I have of a horror sequel. I waited a
really long time. Well, okay, phantasm five.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Yeah, that's a good one though.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
That's debated, but is so is Freddy versus and everything
is debated with horror movie fans anyway.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
That's why we're here, that's true.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
So for those who are new to the program, I'm
of course you're your host, Enrique Kuto here with my
co host Rachel Ridolfi. Hi, everybody, and we love to
talk about the deeper side of scary cinema. That's that's
my favorite, one of my favorite pastimes.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
Yeah, well, we do it for fun, so why not
record ourselves.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
I don't do anything for fun? How dare you?

Speaker 3 (02:30):
That terrible allocation?

Speaker 1 (02:32):
Landeris statement. But we've talked about a lot of great
horror movies, and sometimes we don't. We go off the
beaten paths. Sometimes we stick to things that are a
little bit more mainstream. This one feels like it's a
little bit of both. Actually, yeah, if you think about it,

(02:54):
because it was a theatrical film. We're talking about tonight,
Fire in the Sky from nineteen nine three, and if
you've never seen Fire in the Sky by Robert Lieberman.
Oh man, I thought I had the info. It's streaming.
It's got to be streaming somewhere for free. I apologize,
I thought I had that ready, but I only had

(03:14):
the Wikipedia page. I ruined it, okay, So it's available
to stream right now on Pluto TV, so you can
watch it for free with ads there as my computer
tried to just do that instead of lamecy. It's also
available to rent on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Fandango at

(03:35):
Home and things like that. So but Pluto TV is
where you can get it absolutely free with commercials. We
try to pick films that people could sit down and
watch right before the program and hopefully it doesn't cost
you anything. But you know, shit happens when you party naked,
as I like to say so. But Fire in the
Sky is an alien abduction film that had a why

(04:00):
theatrical release but then didn't do super well theatrically. But
an entire generation, myself included in that generation, were scarred
by the film. I don't like how like how happy
you are by me say I was scarred by the flavor.
It's like, yes, yes, pain, I know, but no it was.

(04:22):
It was a very terrifying film to watch because most
alien movies, and there are exceptions, but most alien films
are not about the horrors of aliens in that way.
They may be about the horrors of conflict or the

(04:42):
horrors of intergalactic war. But they're not shown to you
like The Exorcist, you know, they're they're shown to you
like Terminator. Yeah, it's not quite gonna keep you awake
at night because you watched it, which is bizarre when
you think about it, because aliens are really a scary concept,

(05:03):
especially alien abduction. Yeah, the idea of an unknown being
taking you from your home in the middle of the night,
taking you into a craft that you don't recognize, and
doing scientific experiments on you was actually really really scary,
But we don't see it depicted as that scary that often. Particularly,

(05:26):
we don't see alien abduction in films very often. If
you think about it, it's a really strange lack a
lack of that phenomena in movies.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
Well, because after we had watched this, we were discussing
it and we were like, you know, there's movies like
Independance Day, there's movies like Enemy Mine. There are sci
fi movies where, you know, the Avatar series, there are
sci fi movies that heavily feature you know, extraterrestrials, but

(05:59):
it is kind of presented in this like Hoorah, Go
Earth kind of way sure, Well.

Speaker 1 (06:06):
Because it's generally the realm of science fiction, and generally
science fiction is in the realm of action adventure exactly. Yeah, but.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
Horror and science fiction also go. You know, there are
two great tastes that taste great together, and this one
definitely blends that very very expertly.

Speaker 1 (06:27):
Well. Unfortunately, it also maintains the trope that horror and
science fiction going together. It doesn't really hit at the
box office. Yeah, because Event Horizon, we both adore Event Horizon,
one of the scariest movies there is. That's a space
horror movie, and it did not do hugely well box

(06:47):
office receipts, but then very very well loved after the fact,
much like this film.

Speaker 3 (06:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
So that's where it gets tricky, because you know, you
can't if you make a movie with the goal being
to be a cult hit, you're that's a dangerous, dangerous
idea for investors. Yeah, they don't like caring like it'll
be a cult hit. That means it will fail initially. Well,
failure is common enough. We don't need help getting to failure, okay.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
Yeah, yeah, so we do not need a guarantee.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
No, no, very few things are guaranteed in life, but
science fiction horror. And there have been other attempts. There
was like that Apollo was it Apollo fourteen or Apollo fifteen,
the Alien on the Moon movie. I mean there have
been and they were pretty scary, because that's the other
friggin thing. Space is scary, Space is terrifying. Hence Alien. Yeah,

(07:37):
Alien is a great example of a science fiction horror
movie that's well loved. It was really successful, but everything
it's spawned afterward was pretty much action. Yeah, so and
I get why. I mean, science fiction is a whole
other world to play in, so you know, guns and
spaceships and yeah, there's a lot to play with. So

(07:58):
I could see why that becomes that became such a
common trope. But the horror of the unknown is the
number one horror trope that there is, because no matter
what you say, you can turn into the horror of
the unune. Well, it's about a guy with the hockey mask.
It's about how we don't really know how evil people

(08:18):
can be. You see, It's always about what you don't know.
And what I don't know is what I'm going to say.
After this quick break, All right, we're back, and I

(08:40):
do want to mention that there has been when it
comes to the realm of alien abduction horror, there has
been a bit of a boon in the last twenty
years fifteen years that there hadn't been before. Twenty thirteen
was Dark Skies, which was actually a Blumhouse production early
in the bloomho cycle when they were still doing a

(09:01):
lot of their quote unquote first run stuff that went
directly to streaming. It didn't do big theatrical but from
Dark Skies, which was a kind of like an alien
alien abduction story, but it was like I saw it,
so I'm like trying to go off my brain and said,
just reading the bullshit online. But it was like a
haunting but it was aliens, you know, like it was

(09:23):
like Poltergeist, but it was aliens because the aliens were
causing all the crazy shit to happen in the house
and terrorizing the people.

Speaker 3 (09:28):
Ooh ooh, I like that.

Speaker 1 (09:31):
Yeah, it was really fun. I highly recommend that one.
And then was Oh An Extraterrestrial from twenty fourteen, which
was directed by the same guys who did Grave Encounters,
and it's kind of like a Cabin in the Wood
slasher movie, but the killers are aliens and it's gory,
mean spirited, really weird. And I did enjoy that one.

(09:52):
The fourth Kind from two thousand and nine, which was
a fake documentary kind of found footage dramatization thing and
fly hypnosis and real cottage a quote unquote of alien abductions.
A lot of people didn't love that one, but I
thought it was definitely trying to be scary and I
respect that, and I thought I thought it was at
least a little scary.

Speaker 3 (10:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:11):
Then, of course this is the one that I realized, like,
I went, oh duh when I saw this list Altered
from two thousand and six that was directed by Eduardo Sanchez.
I love that you made that face like you were
gonna go I, oh yeah, And you don't know who.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
That is, but for some reason I recognized that name.
But I'm just insane. Well.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
Altered from two thousand and six was a bound footage
horror movie. I believe it was found footage. Yeah, it
was about aliens attacking people, and Eduardo Sanchez was one
of the two directors on the Blair Witch Project.

Speaker 3 (10:41):
That's why I recognized that.

Speaker 1 (10:42):
Yes, okay, maybe so I'm just insane. I mean, they're
all good options. So, but those are all very recent
examples of people leaning into that yeah that space And
then wasn't that was the film we watched on Hulu?

Speaker 3 (10:56):
Is it no One is? No One Will Save You?
No One? Yeah? I think it was No One Will
say yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:01):
No One Will Save You from twenty twenty three, which
had like one line of spoken dialogue the entire film.
It's currently on Hulu, and I do recommend it. It's
pretty fun and scary.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
It was very scary and just dripping with with uh suspense,
suspense and the mood. Yeah, suspense. Is that what you
tryun to stand him?

Speaker 3 (11:22):
Mike?

Speaker 1 (11:23):
Yeah, no, no, no, no it is. It was really
really fun, really scary. So that all being said, yeah,
science fiction and horror. I think I wish it would
merge together more often, but I could see why often
it doesn't, at least not in big, big movies. But
Fire in the Sky became an incredibly known movie to

(11:43):
older millennials and younger Gen xers because they would be like,
what was that movie that, uh, my dad rented a
blockbuster and then I was Afraid of the Sky forever? Yeah,
and then and then you because somebody asked you that
one time they said, like, I saw a movie once.
It freaked me out, and I was like, yeah, it
was like it had aliens And I was like, was
it fire in the sky And they're like, I don't know.

(12:04):
But they tie him to a table and they put
this weird thing over fire in the sky. It's fire
and talking about yeah. Oh, And to hit home the
fact that it left me modestly traumatized when we rewatched it,
this was your first time watching it. This was my
first time rewatching it as an adult. Most of the movie,

(12:26):
I mean, I think the movie's really solid. It's a
really interesting movie with great characters. The writing makes sense.
I didn't remember Jack shit of any of that. All
I remembered, like I would watch it and be like, oh,
I kind of remember that. Oh I kind of remember,
like him in that truck and then them getting a fight.
But then once he's in this, they show him in
the spaceship and they're like getting ready to dissect him.

(12:48):
I was like, Okay. Then they put him on the table,
then they put the thing over him, then they open
up the slit over his eye, then the thing comes
down to his eye, then the thing goes in his
bad I remembered all of it.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
Yeah, yeah, you were giving me like a play by
play as it was happy, like I remember this part
and this is going to happen.

Speaker 1 (13:03):
Instantly, I was like, Okay, there's where all the trauma lies. Yes, no,
without a doubt. So yeah, that was That was the
That's the the level of memorability that you get with
Fire in the Sky. So before we jump into it,
I'll give some pertinent details. Fire in the Sky from

(13:24):
nineteen ninety three. It was directed by Robert Lieberman. The
screenplay was written by Tracy Torment. Robert Lieberman had done
a lot of television. This was one of his few
forays into film like feature films. Before that, he was
most known for All I Want for Christmas, the romantic
comedy with Tom with That's in that I thought I

(13:48):
could remember off the top of my head, with Thora
Birch and Leslie Nielsen. Those are the two us to remember.
Then he did D three The Mighty Ducks right after
Fire in the Sky. But then he'd stuff like Net Force,
which was a TV movie, Second String which was a
TV movie, The Dead Zone TV movie. He was mostly
a TV movie and television guy. He directed episodes of

(14:09):
the X Files. Later in his career he directed episodes
of Gabriel's Fire, a lot of stuff, so he was
mostly a TV director, but he did dabble in feature films,
and this was one of his dabblings that I thought
turned out really well. And I almost guarantee that's what
got him on X Files was that he directed Fire
in the Sky because it just what a freaky movie.

(14:32):
So it is based sort of on a true story,
very sort of, well.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
It's based on a true account.

Speaker 1 (14:43):
It's based on a book, yeah, the Walton Experience, written
by Travis Walton about his experience he claims of being
abducted by aliens. And the movie is a very highly
dramatized and highly altered version of the book. And the
name are all at least Travis Walton, isn't it. There's
a character Travis Walton. But I will say the book

(15:07):
is not nearly I looked into it. The book is
not nearly as scary. Aw it is scary, but the
book is mostly about meeting aliens, the experience and how
it changes you, how people treat you differently. And I mean,
and I assume the other thing you would learn if
you wrote the book was what kind of money a
book can make you? Ah, yeah, could be a lot,
could be a little. I don't know on this one.

(15:28):
But but yeah, So he was not like it was
not the way the movie was. It was not at
all that way. It was very, very different. The aliens
in the book were described as like Nordic blonde white people.

Speaker 3 (15:43):
Uh huh.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
And in this film, the way the aliens are depicted,
I think is brilliant and truly scary.

Speaker 3 (15:48):
It is so.

Speaker 1 (15:49):
But in the book, yeah, they're not like that at all.
They are they are considered like this oddly Nordic, super
blonde human humanoids from space kind of thing, right, uh huh.
Don't read enough serious UFO literature if you think that's strange,
because the people have been saying that forever. It's like,

(16:09):
and then you have like the proto humans.

Speaker 2 (16:11):
Oh I know, well I've read some of it, and
it's fascinating because there is like a there is kind
of a method to the madness, and it's just fascinating
to think about.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
Well, and and I think we're going to have to
have a somewhat expansive conversation about aliens. But first this break.
So we're back and talking a little bit more about

(16:48):
aliens as we take a look at fire in the sky.
But I've always been fascinated by aliens. I mean since
I was a little kid, and I mean it was
kind of aliens and ghosts. It was just like that's
what you liked if you were a total loser nerd.
And I'm talking elementary school. I'm talking like way young

(17:10):
to be caring about this stuff. I knew by the
time I was nine or ten years old. I knew
about Project Blue Book. I knew all about like Roswell,
I knew all about groom Lake. I knew all of
this crap because I would check out books from the
library about it. And that was probably the funniest part
was there were two UFO books, two in the whole library.

(17:31):
We're talking elementary school library. And I know your homeschool too.
You're like, I don't know what that means, but it's smaller,
like the people, the kids are smaller, the.

Speaker 3 (17:39):
Books are small.

Speaker 1 (17:39):
There's less books. Yeah, but there were two UFO books
and I checked them both out, and I was the
only name on the cards, like nobody else the little
checkout cards. Nobody else had ever checked them out just
me so and then there was a ghost book too
that was really interesting because that's when I learned about
what a poltergeist is supposedly, and and and one of
my favorite explanations for poltergeists, which was many mistake poultergeists

(18:05):
for ghosts when in reality it's simply as a misdiagnosis
of psychokinetic activity.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
And I was like, oh, so you.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
Thought it was the sasquatch, but it was actually the
Lockness Monster. Like okay, that's an explanation that makes sense,
Thank goodness, right, yeah, Like you might think it's a unicorn,
but it's actually a leprechaun.

Speaker 3 (18:25):
Thank goodness. We sorted that out.

Speaker 1 (18:28):
So but I would read about UFOs and UFO abduction
all the time, of course, and I think, I don't
know if I've mentioned on this show, but I've mentioned
it on like Monthly Spooky and stuff. But I suffer
from sleep paralysis, m h. And that's made me very
aware of UFO stories and stuff like that, because the
theory is a lot of people who believe they've been

(18:48):
abducted by aliens are probably suffering from sleep paralysis, so
they're waking up and being unable to move, and there's
an intense sense of paranoia you get during the initial
fit as well. And that's also why a lot of people,
you know, think they're ghosts and stuff that they can't move,
they're frozen and panic and they can't really understand what's

(19:09):
going on around them. Very scary feeling. And I could
see that being you know, related to UFOs and aliens
and alien abduction. But what about you? Were you like
an alien kid?

Speaker 3 (19:20):
What were you? What was your thing? Well?

Speaker 2 (19:23):
I wanted so badly to be but you know, aliens
aren't Christian, so like, yeah, you have to go up.

Speaker 3 (19:33):
There and proselytize to them. You've got to spread the
word of God.

Speaker 1 (19:37):
But the al that's in the book, they can't be
Christian until you convert them. That's that's the whole coin.

Speaker 3 (19:44):
That's the thing.

Speaker 1 (19:45):
That's like saying they they don't believe in Africa because
because they're not Christians, like you're supposed to go there
and tell them about it.

Speaker 2 (19:53):
But so my my guilty pleasure probably around like nine
ten eleven, is I would I would watch on like
Discovery and the Science Channel and on the Sci Fi Network.
There would be you know, like educational shows about space
and I could like sneak it where I would watch

(20:15):
programming that would verge onto like talking about aliens.

Speaker 1 (20:20):
And my entire start my starting point was not the library.
My starting point was the History Channel and Discovery Channel. No, No,
That's what made me want to get talk about aliens
was I listened to them talk about aliens and Hitler
that was about it.

Speaker 2 (20:35):
It's pretty pretty much all it was at that point. Basically,
that's all there was to talk about. So yeah, I
you know, and it would definitely fascinate me. I mean
one of my one of my earliest memories of being
scared of a movie was watching way too young, watching
the movie Enemy Mine and getting totally totally terrified, uh

(20:57):
you know, from from some of the violent scenes with
the like pincer grabby alien that.

Speaker 1 (21:05):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, And those were more like
alien animals. They weren't even like alien, they weren't alien
humanoids or whatever they were. They were like they were
like alien versions of hyenas and exact stuff and things
that could hurt you in the woods, and.

Speaker 3 (21:21):
That was terrifying.

Speaker 2 (21:22):
It was like, but the wild animals on Earth are
bad enough, You're telling me there's planets with worse.

Speaker 3 (21:26):
Wild animals out there. That's bad, that's terrifying wild.

Speaker 1 (21:31):
If it was just like on alien planets, everything was different,
but the animals were always exactly the same. So like
they could breathe totally different gas, and like the aliens
could look could be like giant blobs of purple protoplatah.

Speaker 3 (21:43):
But here's the Mars.

Speaker 1 (21:44):
But there's just a dog. It's just there's just a shnoodle,
just like dagging its tail waiting to catch a space frisbee.

Speaker 3 (21:54):
I like this. I know you do.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
I mean, of course you do so, but no, yeah,
I yeah. Aliens were always something I was really interested in.
And when I saw Fire in the Sky it scared
me really badly. It would have been probably ninety five
after it came out on VHS and everybody was talking
about how scary it was and how it was based
on the true story and blah blah blah. So it

(22:17):
freaked me out pretty good. And yeah, what were your
first thoughts you know after watching it?

Speaker 2 (22:23):
Well, the first thing. The first thing was because you
and I, you and I had again, we talked about
it before we watched the movie, and you were telling
me like, this is one of the few This is
one of the few sci fi movies that verges onto horror,
but it's still specifically about alien abduction and like what

(22:44):
we think of as like aliens circa the early nineties,
late eighties. And after we got done watching it, I
realized the reason no one else has tried to make
a movie dealing with that that kind of broad genre
of aliens is because Fire and the Sky did it
so perfectly that like, how.

Speaker 3 (23:07):
Could you made no money?

Speaker 1 (23:09):
Yeah, for the record, like Jaws made a shark movie perfectly,
and then a thousand people made worse shark movies to
make money.

Speaker 2 (23:16):
Yes, but yeah, like as not necessarily as a filmmaker,
but as an investor, like how would you justify being like, Wow,
Fire and the Sky did it perfect and they spill
still made no money? Like you're not gonna want to
invest in it. But as a filmmaker, it's like, why
would you want to Why would you want to copy

(23:38):
what someone's already done, Because that's what people are going
to feel that you're doing. Is if you try to
make a movie, people are going to be like, yeah,
but they're just trying to be firing the sky because
in the end, wouldn't I mean, it's it's like the
it's like the archetype of the terrifying alien abduction movie
now because it did it so perfectly.

Speaker 1 (23:57):
But with all that being said, it's actually a surprisingly
it's a surprisingly, pardon the pun, down to earth story
about small town life and what happens when ordinary people
experience extraordinary circumstances. Because most of the film is not
about the guy being in a spaceship.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
No, and that's a relatively small amount of the movie.
Is actually the scene that everyone thinks of when they
think of Fire in the Sky.

Speaker 1 (24:28):
Yeah, it's the big payoff is at the end to
really like stick its point. And we'll talk all about
that and go fully into Fire in the Sky right
after this. So we're back, and now we're finally gonna

(24:53):
talk a little bit about the specifics of what really
makes Fire in the Sky so scary, because it's not
just alien needles and eyes and milky white liquids. There's yeah, yeah, yeah,
well that's a lot of it, but there's a lot
going on in Fire in the Sky to be scared of.

Speaker 3 (25:12):
Well, I the first thing that struck me.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
As the movie opened because when the movie opens. It
does a great job of really building the suspense right
from the get go, because it starts with this pickup
truck full of guys speeding through the woods and like

(25:38):
barely missing trees, and they lose a mirror and they
pull into a bar, and it immediately starts building an
atmosphere because from the way it's filmed, from the way
the guys pile out of the truck and get into
the bar, from the way everyone looks at them, you
immediately get the store worry of. This is a small

(26:01):
town where everybody knows each other, everybody knows each other's business,
they know what they're up to, and something very strange
has just happened. And the movie is really good at
building up that atmosphere, and it builds it masterfully until
it finally pays off and we get you know, what

(26:23):
we've all been waiting for. Because you don't go into
this movie, especially now since it's been out for you know,
twenty years, you don't go into this movie without knowing
like this is about alien abduction. So every piece that
they give you as the story develops holds you over
and piques your interest more and more until they finally

(26:44):
give you that that big payoff in the third act.

Speaker 1 (26:48):
Thirty years by the way, damn it. So you're right, Well, specifically,
it opens with them driving their truck through these rough
terrain and they're clearly speeding through like a bat out
of hell, like devastating the truck as they're zooming around. Yeah,
they're all screaming and yelling. And then when they get

(27:12):
to this local watering hole, like the nearest place where
people are to call for help, they pull up and
the truck is is smoking, and they pulled up like psychos,
like the guy is sitting on the porch or just
like what on earth. Then they all get out and
they're dead quiet.

Speaker 3 (27:32):
Yeah, not a word.

Speaker 1 (27:34):
Yeah, And I found that to be extremely memorable about
the film, that they they're just quiet. They go inside,
they call the police, and they wait for the police
to arrive. That alone does such a good job of
making you go, hey, what the hell is happening? Like

(27:56):
okay shit, and that that really hooked me immediately, even
though I did, you know, remember the massive alien payoff
later on. Then they also they had a lot of
fun with imagery to kind of keep this mentality of
you don't know what's coming. I mean, you think you do,

(28:18):
but you don't because you don't see an alien ship.
You see some strange lights very briefly, and that's it
to start for the most part. Then they show that
federal officer or the state officer coming down to investigate,
and at one point he looks up and they have
these big red lights like flying over his windshield and

(28:39):
reflection looks like a UFO. Yeah, and then they cut
and reveal it's just the little the bar lowering because
a train, Yeah, at a train crossing.

Speaker 2 (28:49):
And I felt that was a great fake out. And
again that's a beautiful way that they built this anticipation
and this tension because they know, you know, you're there
for aliens, and they're playing with that expectation the whole time.

Speaker 1 (29:06):
Absolutely. Yeah. And and of course once the police arrive,
they recount their story and it's very simple there. We
get a lot of the and and rightfully so, we
get a lot of who the characters are that they're
you know, normal people. But before we get all of that,
we start with just if I'm remembering correctly, we start

(29:27):
with just the recounting of the incident. Yeah, So they're
in the woods. They're driving back. They've been logging, well,
they're cleaning brush for the for the state, and they're
getting there heading back and they see a giant amount
of red light in the sky and then somebody says
there must be a forest fire, and they're like, well,

(29:50):
I guess so. So they're driving along and all of
a sudden they just get really like what the hell
is going on? And they basically say that their friend
got abducted by They basically say that he got hit
by a beam of light, flew up into the air,
fell on the ground, which was a really wild scene
to watch, and that when they came back, they ran

(30:11):
off afraid and when they came back to get him,
he was gone. Yeah, And the cops are just kind
of like, right, it becomes immediately obvious that they're thinking, oh,
you you killed this guy, or this guy died in
some way, and you guys are trying to cover it
up or protect yourselves or something like that. That's the

(30:33):
immediate thought process. And they start poking at all these guys,
these guys you barely get, you barely know. Yet one
of them is named Dallas, and he's clearly a he's
not a vagrant necessarily anymore. But he was a vagrant.
He was a drifter, a hobo, I mean, like by
the literal sense, because this takes place in nineteen I

(30:54):
want to say, seventy five.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
Yeah, seventy three, seventy five, something.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
Like that, So I think it was nineteen seve five,
chibble checking, seventy five, yep. And so back then, hobos
were still a pretty normal thing. And for those who
don't know, a hobo is not a homeless person. That's
become what people believe hobo means. But hoboes were just
traveling workers. They had no home, and their thing was

(31:20):
going from town to town to get work to make money,
and usually they would mail at home or whatever. So
this guy is clearly a hobo. He has a record.
People have pointed that out, you know, that he seems
like he doesn't trust police, things like that, and that
just raises even more red flags, and we as the audience,

(31:41):
are starting to wonder what could have happened. They start
placing doubt in us really quickly to make us wonder
what exactly is going on, and hopefully we'll figure that out.
After this, we're back talking all about the fire in

(32:08):
the sky and we just finished hearing about how their
friend was shot up into the air from strange lights.
He disappeared. But the detective on the scene, not the
local sheriff, who even he's pretty bewildered, but he knows
these guys for the most part. He's immediately just thinking

(32:28):
of if any of these guys got a record, and
that Dallas guy definitely has a record.

Speaker 2 (32:35):
That was it was very interesting. You know, again, the
the movie plays with your expectations and one of the
themes that was kind of woven throughout because again, the
actual abduction scene that we all think of is very short.

(32:55):
It comes either at the end of the second act
or beginning of the third act. Toward the end of
the movie, I.

Speaker 3 (33:02):
Would say it's the beginning or middle of the third act.

Speaker 2 (33:06):
Okay, yeah, so, but it's still uh, the movie still
builds up the whole atmosphere, just telling the story through
the lens of the townsfolk and the loggers who experienced this.
And then the other person on the scene is this

(33:27):
Detective Waters or Lieutenant Waters, who is the guy from
the state, and it's very interesting. They play with this
expectation of aliens or things that are not from here,
coming here, ending and examining things. And here we've got
this detective coming into this crime scene and examining things,

(33:49):
and he's kind of poking around where he doesn't really
know what's going on. Uh. And it's very interesting the
way he in around with the loggers versus the way
the local sheriff who like knows these guys and like
Rogers even beseeches the sheriff at one point and says, like,

(34:11):
you know me, You've known me for my whole life,
Like why can't you believe me when I tell you
that this is what happens. Whereas you know, with with Waters,
because he's not from around here. Everyone they treat him
with respect, but they also treat him very much like
an outsider.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
Well, there's a lot to be said in the positive
and negative for having law enforcement that is a part
of the community. Yeah, you know, generally speaking, it's a
benefit because they kind of understand the world they're in,
They understand the people, They understand the lifestyle of the people,
you know, so they can generally police them better. But

(34:53):
sometimes that can cause, you know, the policing to be
a little too soft or a little too favorited.

Speaker 3 (34:58):
Or what have you.

Speaker 1 (35:00):
And that's really bad. That's you know, when you need
an outsider to come in and kind of look everything
over and be like no, no, no, yeah, this is
not right. So at first, you know, we get a
little taste of that, but you're right, Like eventually everybody
starts to agree with the out of town detective. Yeah,
and the people, the townspeople are already in their sewing circles,

(35:22):
just going on and on about you killed this guy,
and it's worth mentioning too. I forget the name of
the foreman, the guy who was hiring everybody.

Speaker 3 (35:32):
I believe that was Rogers.

Speaker 1 (35:35):
And let's see, yeah, Mike Rogers. I don't know if
we I don't think we covered. But like, on top
of all of that, he and Travis were very good friends,
very good friends. I mean, these were people that were
being hired to do day labor. Basically they were all
working on a contract from the state. But Travis was
also dating Mike Rogers' younger sister and intending to marry her,

(36:01):
so they were pretty close. But also, anything happening to
Travis is like doubly affecting Mike rogers life because it
was his friend and his sister's boyfriend. So now his
sister is a mess, a basket case on top of
everything else. That makes things pretty challenging.

Speaker 2 (36:19):
And on top of that, Mike Rogers and his wife
are it's very plain from the get go that their
relationship is not in the best shape and also like
their finances are in terrible shape.

Speaker 1 (36:35):
Now that's why I think took this odd. I think
that's why their relationship isn't in a very good shape.
Is they're struggling to pay their mortgage and he's got
this government contract that pays pretty well, but they have
to get the job done on time. That was because
that was already something they were talking about and stressing about,
was that they weren't getting the work done on time,
that they were goofing off too much. Yeah, so the

(37:00):
townspeople have pretty much decided that Travis was murdered and
that these guys are all covering it up by playing
everybody as idiots by saying this crazy alien abduction BS story.
That's the vibe I get is that, oh yeah, pretty
much the entire town, aside from maybe you know your
own mother thinks you did this.

Speaker 2 (37:22):
Yeah, And Mike Rogers' wife even like that's one of
the fights that they have is she's talking about, like
people avoid me on the street, and our daughters like
they can't even go to school because everyone's talking about
how their dad murdered his best friend and is trying
to cover it up. So again, the movie, while it's

(37:47):
you know, it's, while it's about aliens, it is also
about what happens in this town and what happens to
these people after this experience that nobody, nobody but them
can believe because it's so outlandish.

Speaker 1 (38:02):
Well, have you ever heard the term small towns with
big secrets or small towns with big problems?

Speaker 3 (38:08):
I have?

Speaker 1 (38:08):
Yeah, I mean, it doesn't get much bigger than outer space.
I don't really think, No, not really. So, and we'll
dig into that small town terror and trauma right after
this and we're back. We've talked a little bit about

(38:39):
the small town's reaction to this whole event, and at
this point, they've combed the woods by where they say
he's went missing multiple times at first with the guys
who were there to point where it was, but of
course each of them seems to remember a different place. Yeah,

(39:00):
but human memory is very inaccurate, So that's just especially
in the middle of the night when.

Speaker 2 (39:05):
You're after a long day of hard work.

Speaker 1 (39:08):
That was like a twelve hour day of cutting down
trees and gathering brush. Yeah, it'd be pretty hard to
concentrate on much of anything.

Speaker 3 (39:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:17):
We also start to find out that Dallas had a
problem with Travis, that they were constantly getting into fights
at squabbles.

Speaker 3 (39:25):
Yeah, that's not helpful and.

Speaker 2 (39:27):
It looks really bad to the investigator from the state.

Speaker 1 (39:32):
I'm assuming that they were. He was starting to believe
Dallas had done something to Travis and that the others
were covering it up in order to maintain their work,
something like something like that, trying to or to absolve
themselves of any implication or something like that, something along
those lines, some kind of you know, cop gymnastics, but

(39:56):
which have you ever watched the cop gymnastics? It's excellently
How you could do that land and your gun stays
in the holster incredible so so but no, So we've
talked about the small town reactions. We've talked about you know,
the lady and the diner, and and there are people
in this town that are hinted at that they seem

(40:17):
to empathize or sympathize, like, for instance, the waitress of
the diner, who's just like who you know, when somebody
starts saying like, oh you over there, you know, you
know he kills somebody she's watched. Just do you need
more coffee? You know, he's trying to like stop this,
trying to keep this peace.

Speaker 3 (40:34):
Like diffuse it, because it.

Speaker 1 (40:35):
Sounds like overall this is a very peaceful community, you know,
I mean, albeit small and albeit a bit economically depressed.
It's a small town in the desert, you know, they
they there are lots of them, especially because you know,
people would come and go for gold and some people
would stay. Yeah, so I do like seeing that those

(40:57):
little bit tidbits here and there where it's like, this
is a small town in the peace. People do try to
care for each other. It's just they're all human and
well until this but a bum But so we've talked
about that. Now let's talk a little bit about the
fact that this is going bigger. Yeah, it's going beyond

(41:18):
this little town that I'm trying to remember the name
of Snowflake. Snowflake, thank you so much. I was struggling
with that one. Some of this information is not as
readily available as I would like. Yeah, but this small
town of Snowflake has now become national news. Major newspapers
are starting to pick up the story. And again, remember

(41:39):
this is nineteen seventy five, so this is just after
the Civil rights movement had really like gone full tilt
and boogie. You know, we've landed on the moon, which
has made people look up to the skies a little
bit more. And in a lot of ways, this is
the height of the alien comic book movies. They were

(42:03):
kind of you know, they they were huge in the fifties,
but there was another boom after the moon landing. Yeah,
so people are thinking about these things. And of course
the red herring pun intended, which is the Soviet Union
is still up and kicking. So people are they're tense. Yeah,
they're worrying, even in small town America. And then we

(42:24):
get introduced to this nebbish gentleman with a with a
camera and a pair of round rimmed glasses from an
organization called Afar, which the first time when he first
walks in and says I'm whatever, you know, I'm so
and so from Afar or I'm from Afar, I was
like like, so you traveled along the way. That's pretty funny.

(42:48):
My first thought was like, just say, you know, just
say New York, Like just say, like, don't say you're
from AFAR. Like these people they have why are you
making it weird? They have maps here, dude, I know
they're far into the desert, but like they know there's
other places they don't think of, just like here and elsewhere.
But AFAR stands for Aerial Phenomena Research. No, it doesn't,

(43:10):
see this keeps trying to fool me. It stands for
American Foundation of Aerial Research, which was a stand in
for the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization or APRO, which is
the actual UFO organization that was involved in the Travis
Walton case. Yes, and he's basically like he walks up

(43:30):
to Rogers and he's like, I believe you, and I
think that, and I want to get as much information
as I can from you to see how it compares
to people who've been in your situation before. But of
course he does come off because he kind of is
as like a weirdo. Yeah, so he doesn't really want
much from him, but he does take his business card

(43:50):
because that's.

Speaker 2 (43:51):
The first person who has in it, because even his
wife won't believe him.

Speaker 3 (44:00):
This is the.

Speaker 2 (44:00):
First person, the literal first person that did not experience
this that says I believe you.

Speaker 1 (44:08):
I wouldn't go that far. It seems like some people believe,
but this is the first stranger, Yeah to believe him,
like bar none. Anybody who doesn't know him at all
is like that guy killed him, like just immediately. So
to have somebody completely from from Afar show up and
say like I believe you, yeah, that's huge, massive, massive thing.

Speaker 3 (44:30):
Again, to have anybody you know that.

Speaker 1 (44:33):
Isn't your mom believe you is that's a big win
in this situation. So and we because there's so much
that happens as far as the human drama. Rogers is
now living in a hotel, a motel down the road,
which also hinted at the circus that was coming, because
he comes in there to get a room and they're like, yeah,

(44:54):
we're full of Oh. He tells him that tomorrow they're full.
Like today they have rooms, but tomorrow they're completely booked,
which tells you that people from newspapers all over America
are coming, and they are, and they're chasing him around
with film cameras and microphones and asking rogers to give
his statement, to give his side, which is extra crazy

(45:17):
because technically there is only one side you can get
because if there's a victim, he has not given his side,
So you have the investigator's assumptions and inferences, and then
you have their side. Yes, but you know how the media,
you know, can friensify very quickly. They love a good

(45:39):
narrative that's easy to follow, you know, men go into
woods kill man, lie about it, you know, say it
was UFOs. That's very easy to turn into a headline
or twelve. If the news is slow, you know, if
Khrushchev hasn't done anything exciting lately, then at least you
could talk about the yocals killing a guy. Yeah, you know,

(46:01):
and and national news was a big deal back then. Yeah,
so it's it's the circus is really I think one
of my favorite parts, especially the second act, seeing the
town kind of changing. Yeah, and and and these guys
realizing that, like they've told what they could and they

(46:22):
just need to keep going with what the police want
because what else can you do. Yeah, Like it really
is starting to happen where people don't trust them and
think they've committed a horrible crime.

Speaker 2 (46:32):
Well, and and it builds so excellently these two things
together because the the guys have to comply. Basically, the
guys have to comply with what the police want them
to do or else it's it's inferred as being admission

(46:54):
of guilt.

Speaker 3 (46:55):
Well by the public, by the public.

Speaker 1 (46:58):
That's a really important But that's of public opinions completely, right,
that's kind of that was kind of what I was
getting at. But you put it a little bit better.
Is they're realizing that public opinion is the only court
they're going to be in for a very long time. Yeah,
because nobody's been charged with anything. Nobody's there and they're
technically accused.

Speaker 2 (47:16):
Yeah, and there's like there's no evidence, like there's no
there's no way for the police or any law enforcement
to even like do anything beyond the vague questioning that
they've done, which is why it's brought to the table
of like, Okay, you need to take a lie detector test,

(47:37):
because again, like the lie detector test is not going
to absolve you. All it's going to do is put
one token, yeah, in the public opinion that will stand
up for you.

Speaker 3 (47:54):
That's that's about it.

Speaker 1 (47:55):
Yeah, the lie detector test. All it will really do
is give you a little hint of mercy from the public. Yeah,
that's what you can hope for. Yeah, And they're all
reticent to take it because lie detector tests are inadmissible
in court. They can be wrong, they can be fooled.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
And Dallas is really upset because he doesn't want to
be hooked up to those machines. Man, and it starts
raising questions because we know about his criminal past, and
it makes you wonder like is he saying this out
of personal experience?

Speaker 1 (48:31):
And there is one other element that we might have
glossed over that really helps sow the seed of doubt
in us the viewer that I think about a lot,
and you'll find out after this. So what I teased

(48:59):
before was not It wasn't a trick. It wasn't a
trap this one time. Throughout this movie so far, there
have been little moments where the guys are talking to
each other and they've mentioned keeping their stories straight, that
they've been little, tiny things, but like they slowly get

(49:20):
more and more where it seems like they're hiding something
mm hmm. And that has definitely helped make the audience
wonder are these guys to blame.

Speaker 2 (49:32):
Because it it's it does start to feel like that.
And it's not only it's not only seeds of doubts
specifically against Dallas. It's you start to see how all
of the other guys kind of interact with each other,
and you start to see like it not only not

(49:55):
only are they trying to protect you know, themselves as individuals,
but you really start to see like they are definitely
trying to protect each other. And Dallas is kind of
like that. I wouldn't call him a weak link. He's
more of a wild card that they have to rein in. Yeah,

(50:15):
and they have to tell him like, you're the one
that if any it, you're the crack. You're the crack
that they're all looking at, and if you do anything,
it reflects poorly on us. And I think that's kind
of interesting again, because everybody in this town really knows
each other. Dallas, you know, he's been there, but he's

(50:38):
a hobo. He hasn't been there as long. He's living
on the outskirts of town, and you really start to
feel like that otherness between him and the townsfolk, and
then him and the other guys, and I think that
was a very interesting way that they they played that off,
and it really culminated in the scene leading up to

(51:03):
and the scenes around doing the light detector test, and
then it's kind of revealed that after the light detector test,
all of the guys seem to be telling the truth.
The only person that they really can't get a beat
on is Dallas.

Speaker 1 (51:21):
Well, Dallas's test came back inconclusive. Yeah, but here's this
is the part where you buried the lead just a little. Though.
The great thing about the lighte detector test sequence is
it's just as tense as you would expect a lie
detector's sequence to be. I mean, I think I think
most people would rather not take a polygraph test, Yeah,

(51:44):
because it's uncomfortable. You're being challenged, you're being asked tons
of questions, you don't know what the questions will be
mm hmm, and you don't know when they're going to
ask a serious question versus when they're going to ask
a question because they're trying to surprise you to get
a baseline to understand how your body reacts to things. Yeah,

(52:05):
but a big element of polygraph tests is they're more
voodoo than they are science.

Speaker 3 (52:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:12):
In fact, if you look into polygraph tests, one of
the most powerful tools a polygraph I don't know what
the testers are called, but a polygraph tester has is
to convince you that the polygraph test works. Because generally
people don't get in trouble or don't get busted for

(52:35):
a failed lie detector test. That's just on Mari Povich.
In real life, when people take polygraphs and get busted,
they confess, yeah, because they ask them like, is there
any reason why this reading would be off? Or is
there any reason why you might be might be might
be confused, or why might why it seems like you're

(52:57):
lying here? They get you to confess. That's really the
power of the lie detector test is to convince them
that it works. It's the same way with a lot
of those those drugs that are supposedly they make it
impossible for you to lie. Truth serum truth serums Exactly,
they're mostly bunk. It's mostly about they're mostly barbituates. And

(53:18):
you convince somebody that they're not capable of lying if
you give it to them, and then you give it
to them.

Speaker 2 (53:23):
It's like murder party, very much like.

Speaker 1 (53:25):
Murder party, but also another great episode. But also it's
it's an important element to keep in mind because it's
all manipulation, Yeah, to keep people on their toes, to
get them to confess or what have you. It's an
interrogation technique, that's really what it is. All it measures
is your blood pressure and heart rate and stuff. Yeah, nobody.
There's no guarantee that somebody, like, if you have a

(53:47):
full blown sociopath, it's never gonna work. Yeah, it's never
gonna work. And full blown sociopaths are hard to catch.
So what's the lie detector for for the guy who's
like visibly sweating and like, you know, preying under his
breath as he's to you, Come on, dude, you know so.
And that's why polygraphs are in admissible in court, but
they do affect public opinion, which is why most people

(54:08):
refuse to take one. Because it's important to keep in
mind that in the American justice system, you cannot be
held accountable for refusing to incriminate yourself, Like that's not allowed.
If if you if somebody says, like, why why is
this gun in your car? And you refuse to answer,
a lawyer can't go well, they can, but they'll be
thrown out. You can't go to a judge and say,

(54:31):
you know, we asked him and he refused to answer.
The judge would be like, that's not an admission of guilt.
Silence is never an admission of guilt. It's the Fifth Amendment. Yeah,
it's the Miranda rights. You know, you have the right
to remain silent. Yeah, and that's but that's really important.
But in the realm of public.

Speaker 3 (54:46):
Opinion, that doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 (54:48):
You look guilty, if you deny, you look guilty. If
you're quiet, you look guilty. If you fail all I
detect your test.

Speaker 3 (54:53):
Mm hm.

Speaker 1 (54:54):
That's just the.

Speaker 3 (54:55):
Way it is.

Speaker 1 (54:56):
Yeah, yeah, and and and but the part I meant
to I was what I was saying about you burying
the lead. What I meant to say was they show
that the scene and it's super tense, and you see
the machine doing its thing and the guy making his markings,
and when he's talking to the cop, to the sheriff
and the UH and the detective from out of town
waters when he's talking to them and he seems just

(55:18):
perplexed and like shocked. That's my favorite part because he
seems like I just I they're all except Dallas's was inconclusive,
but the rest of them, they seem pretty pretty dead
on they didn't do it.

Speaker 3 (55:33):
That is my favorite party entire part.

Speaker 1 (55:36):
Is that they build it up like that and then
it's like, no, they're confused and shocked that the guys
passed the polygraph about seeing the alien and not killing
their friend, except for the one guy who it was inadmissible,
probably because he was taking drugs or clenching his sphincter,
which is one of the ways you can fool the polygraph. Yeah,

(55:57):
so we were talking, well, you could throw it out
really yeah, I mean, you have to be really good
to give it. But the number one way I've heard
is you take like a real you take like a sedative,
and then answered like when they ask a question, you
think of a different question and answer it. And if
you get really good at it, you can pass, at
least according to the shield, which I take all of

(56:18):
my life advice from the cops.

Speaker 3 (56:20):
Show the shield.

Speaker 2 (56:21):
I don't see why would why you shouldn't.

Speaker 1 (56:24):
So now they've the polygraph test hasn't really been hasn't.
I don't believe they ever published it. But the cops
are all are befuddled because they all really believe they
didn't do it, and things are starting to calm down
in the town a little bit. But also some bad news,
like Rogers, they lost that contract. It's over, so now

(56:45):
for real, how is he going to pay? How's he
gonna pay the mortgage? How are they gonna get by?
But on top of that, they're being accused of murder
without any charges yet, but they're being accused. All of
that is happening. But Rogers, on the positive side, is
starting to connect with wife again. She is starting to
realize like he needs her as much as she feels,

(57:05):
you know, betrayed, that she needs him to pay the
bills and take care of the things he said he would.
She's realizing like this is a really big thing and
he needs our support because he also has two daughters,
and all the scenes with them are really really cute. Yeah,
speaking of the two daughters, though, he's now on the
couch watching television kind of zoning out, and the phone rings.

(57:30):
I wonder, I wonder. I guess we'll find out right
after this. So the phone rings, but Roger's wife, he's like,

(57:53):
she's like, oh, we get prank calls.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
Yeah, we've been getting they've been increasing and it's a
good fake out. It's a good play with your expectations
because we've been seeing around town, you know, all the
upologists and all of the different reporters and everyone, and
like Mike's been getting stopped in the street. People have

(58:16):
been talking to him, like the the courthouse or whatever
department where they conducted the light detector tests, like it
was like a paparazzi shit showt trying to get in
and out of there. So to us, we think, like, Okay,
they must be getting calls from reporters or whatever. And

(58:39):
so she says, like it's been getting worse, and now
they're starting to call in the middle of the night
and it's always like the same person.

Speaker 1 (58:46):
Well, and she said they were pranking. Yeah, these are
prank calls. And I want to mention because not only
are there a lot of journalists and stuff in town,
but we're also noticing a small contingent of the town
that is just getting really frustrated that these guys aren't
getting charged already, that they're still walking around like it's
it's pissing them off, it's making them feel unsafe, it's

(59:07):
making them feel like their kids and are unsafe in
this little this little uh hamlet.

Speaker 3 (59:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:12):
So that's worth mentioning too, is that people are getting
getting pissed off.

Speaker 3 (59:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:18):
But this phone call, which sounds like a crank call,
Rogers answers it, and the voice on the other end
of the line is very weak, very weak. But the
moment he hears the voice, he lights up and he
says it's Travis. Yeah, and we smash cut to to

(59:40):
the pickup truck and a few of the guys, not
all of them, I don't think, but a few of
the guys are all in the truck and they're and
his younger sister and the younger so of course because
she's she's been staying with Travis's family through this whole thing, Yeah,
because which I believe is just her brother, his brother,
but like because she's you know, very upset and worried
about Travis. So they're driving in the rain, which I

(01:00:01):
love the rain. The choice of rain was perfect for
this sequence. They're driving in the rain and they're trying
to figure out, like what is going on? Yeah, And
as they're driving along, they're just looking for payphones because
they didn't get any information other than.

Speaker 2 (01:00:19):
He's at a payphone, and he's specifically Mike says, all
he said is he's near a gas station. So they're
driving past all the gas stations, not just in town,
but around town. I think they said they're like miles out.

Speaker 1 (01:00:37):
Yeah, there's several miles into the I forget the next
town over is. But they were like almost in the
next town over. But they're driving past, seeing empty phone booths,
and they keep driving and driving past and seeing empty
phone booths. But eventually, as they're starting to say like
this is stupid, like you know, you did all this
over a prank call, he says, like, I'm pretty sure
there's one more. There's another gas station on this road.

(01:01:01):
And as they go up, he's like, look, I was right.
He's like, yeah, you're right that there was a gas station.
But like we're wasting our time. And then all of
a sudden they noticed that it looks like there's somebody
near the door. And now the place is closed, there's
somebody near the door, crouched down buck ass naked.

Speaker 2 (01:01:18):
Yeah, just like huddled there in the rain.

Speaker 1 (01:01:20):
They jump out of the car and run to check
on him, and it is Travis. He looks pretty rough.
He looks like he has not been having a very
good time, and he's confused.

Speaker 3 (01:01:32):
Yeah, totally disoriented.

Speaker 1 (01:01:33):
And they tell him it's been what five days or
four days?

Speaker 3 (01:01:37):
Five days? I think four or.

Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
Five days hadn't been super long, but it had been
a while. And they tell him like, you've been gone
this long, and he's barely comprehending it, and he just
asks for water, and then they smash cut to him
in the bathroom of this gas station, just suck sucking
down water straight out of the faucet, yes, gulping it,

(01:01:58):
big massive, And that's what you realize. That's one of
the reasons he was speaking so weirdly is he was
like he was parched completely, like he just and as
they're trying to talk to him, he's not really responsive
at all. The a far gentleman person. Turns out, they
they gave him a heads up when they found him,

(01:02:19):
and he's adamant, like, I need to ask him questions
like how long were you up there? Did they speak
in English? He's like asking all these questions and they're like, dude,
you got to give him space. He's like, no, we
have to ask these questions now. Before he forgets them
like we have this is the key time to find
out information about what they're doing and what they want,
which I love because I mean, sure that makes sense,
but it also gives him like a little bit of

(01:02:40):
a manic like are you insane? Yeah, kind of like
a mad scientist vibe. Yeah that he's like, he literally
says like we want to know what they want. It's like, oh, okay, yeah, mito.
So they they eventually humor the guy and let him

(01:03:01):
ask questions as long as he doesn't crowd Travis too much.
But eventually they're like, all right, you're done. He's not
answering your questions. And they take Travis to a hospital. Yeah,
and he's in his hospital bed, but then Rogers goes
to talk to him, sneaking in because visiting hours are over,
and they specifically didn't want him to visit Travis because

(01:03:24):
they're afraid that he might be coercing him or trying
to give him another story. And that's when we start
to realize that when they were talking about getting their
stories straight, they really meant they didn't want to accidentally
incriminate themselves, because they all kind of felt like it

(01:03:44):
was their fault because they left him after he had
been flung in the air. They thought he was dead,
but no one, no one would get out of the car.
And that's something I did mean to mention earlier. But
we just we were flying, but Travis out of the
truck to get a better look at the lights yea,
as they changed from red to green.

Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
And everyone was screaming at him like.

Speaker 1 (01:04:07):
Get back in here, like you a psycho, Like are
you insane?

Speaker 3 (01:04:11):
You're gonna get killed.

Speaker 1 (01:04:13):
So when they came back and he was gone, they
all got this sense of guilt to where the reason
they wanted their stories to be straight was they were
afraid that if somebody expressed how that went down differently
than somebody else, it would implicate them or make it
look like it was bullshit. Yeah, and I love that

(01:04:35):
that is what the reality was. That they weren't hiding anything.
They were just trying to make sure they all told
the truth. But they were afraid that they would be
blamed anyway, even though they saw aliens.

Speaker 2 (01:04:47):
Basically yeah, because in their mind, it's almost like the
best case scenario was like, okay, great, everyone believes us
that there are aliens, and we left our friend there
to die. The hand, which to them, they're like, well
that would still be murder. So yeah, best case scenario
is everyone believes us and we're still held liable for

(01:05:10):
our friend's.

Speaker 1 (01:05:11):
Order, or we're just known as the assholes. Yeah, you know,
the horrible, horrible people who would do that. So, now
that Travis is back in the hospital, he's starting to
feel a little bit better and he's starting to remember
a little bit and he has that little heart to
heart with Rogers that doesn't go exactly the way Rogers

(01:05:32):
was hoping, but you know what is going the way
I was hoping. This commercial break, so as Rogers starts
talking to Travis and just kind of saying how glad

(01:05:55):
he is that he's okay, Travis actually has something to
say himself.

Speaker 3 (01:06:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:06:00):
Yeah, he doesn't remember much, but what he does remember
is that after he got flung into the air by
the light, they just left him there. They peeled off,
and he even manages, you know, he's he's in bad shape,
but he even manages to kind of like croak croak out,

(01:06:21):
like you left me, and Mike, you know, tries to
explain and he tries to say, like, no, it's not
not necessarily that we left you. It's just like I had.
Nobody wanted to get out of the car. Everybody felt
they were in dangers.

Speaker 3 (01:06:36):
We were scared, so like.

Speaker 2 (01:06:38):
I yeah, like I drove away, but then I came back,
which fair. But yeah, to to Travis, like they all
just abandoned him.

Speaker 1 (01:06:52):
There they did, and they did. Granted they didn't know
for sure he was dead, but they did.

Speaker 3 (01:06:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:06:59):
I mean they saw him thrown by nothing like eleven
or twelve feet in the.

Speaker 3 (01:07:03):
Air, Yeah, and then fall to the ground and not move. Yeah.
I mean it's pretty conclusive.

Speaker 1 (01:07:08):
It's a pretty startling situation.

Speaker 3 (01:07:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:07:12):
And and of course obviously Mike is like, no, you don't.
You don't understand. Like I came, I came back, I
looked for you, and you were gone. Like I had
to take the guys away, and when I came back,
you were gone. So I wasn't like trying to leave
you there.

Speaker 1 (01:07:29):
But in his defense, I mean, they had driven to
two minutes away from him.

Speaker 3 (01:07:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:07:34):
When finally Rogers was like, I'm turning around right now.
If you guys don't want to come with us, you
can just start walking and I'll pick you up on
the way back.

Speaker 3 (01:07:42):
Mm hm.

Speaker 1 (01:07:43):
So I mean he only had that, you know, that
failing judgment or that failing loyalty for a very short
amount of time. Yeah, before he realized like I didn't
know that he was dead for sure, Like why.

Speaker 3 (01:07:53):
Did I need to go back and back?

Speaker 1 (01:07:55):
But then the moment they were all screaming and yelling
and yeah and scared and saying go go get us
the hell of you, We're all gonna die, like.

Speaker 2 (01:08:02):
Yeah, and and there is a it is kind of implied,
like Mike does kind of say like you're the one
who got out of the car or got out of
the truck, like we all said don't get out of
the truck and you did anyway, which is you know,
obviously not very well received by Travis. Uh So he

(01:08:24):
kind of turns away like he doesn't he doesn't even
want to talk to his friend anymore. He doesn't, you know,
can't stand him. And then the nurse kind of bursts
in and like you can't be here. Visiting hours are over.
And I think that the the whole hospital sequence is
great because we start getting little tiny flashes as Travis

(01:08:47):
is being examined by the doctors, We're getting little flashes
of his memories of what happened while he was gone,
and that makes it even more effective when we do
finally get to the big flashback reveal, because there's there's
more context to it, and it does make the final

(01:09:09):
feeling of being like surgical and you know, being being
examined even worse because then you see like, oh, wow,
he got examined by the aliens, and then the first
thing that happens when he gets back to Earth is
he gets examined the same way, in this very clinical
way by all the doctors. It's very upsetting and unsettling.

Speaker 1 (01:09:30):
Yeah, it reminds him of of what had just happened
to him. And those little sequences, those little flashbacks, which
you know are obviously instigated by him being pulled into
a hospital, people surrounding him, looking at him, shining lights
on him, they're they're combined with these memories he has
of being in some kind of cave and being covered

(01:09:52):
in these weird this weird liquid. I mean, we see
so much happening so fast as far as the recall
he's experien operiencing mm hmm, and it's very very creepy
and unsettling. And this is when they're starting to really
give the audience like, no, he was abducted by aliens, kids,
and it is far scarier than you imagine, because I

(01:10:17):
really do love that this movie is like a small
town mystery that turns into an alien abduction thing. Like,
this movie would be so insanely effective if you didn't
know any if you like, if you didn't even know
the title referenced aliens, yeah it would, but why would
you watch it? But if you happen to watch it anyway,
you'd be like, holy crap.

Speaker 2 (01:10:39):
It would It would feel almost like a crime scene investigation.

Speaker 3 (01:10:43):
Movie because that's basically what it is.

Speaker 2 (01:10:45):
Yeah, yeah, which I love and I know you do
as well, and it's it's one of those great lessons
in kind of using tools from a cinematography cinematog cinematographic
toolkit that's or cinemagraphs cinematic cinematic toolkit. Yeah, there we go.

(01:11:08):
That's the word cinematic toolkit that is slightly different, So
you know, having it lean heavily into a crime drama
thriller space and still maintain these sci fi horror aspects
throughout is very effective and it makes the storytelling even

(01:11:31):
stronger because it's not relying just on the one note
of this is this scary alien movie. It's this is
a scary and alien movie. And here's how that would
play out in the real world.

Speaker 1 (01:11:43):
And here's how it did sort of sort of. Well,
a lot of that stuff, I know was based somewhat
on truth. I mean, he disappeared for days on end. Yeah,
people thought he had been killed by his friends. A
lot of that was real. I mean, that really did happen,
which and it would make sense people would not assume
that you're telling the truth if you say, freaking aliens
did it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:03):
Yeah, They're just gonna be like, right, sure they did, Buddy.

Speaker 1 (01:12:06):
Oki Doki pokey. So that's that's worth pointing out too.
And I think that's why I like the way they
tell the story is the way it would have went
down for the people involved, not the abducted one. Because
Travis is he is he is a main character, but

(01:12:27):
he's a main character in a in a in a
not a non narrative way, but in a non sequential way.
He's a main character, but he's never in the main
timeline until they find out he's not dead. Yeah, so
up until then we see Travis all the time, but
strictly in flashbacks. Yeah, we never see him during the

(01:12:47):
current time of the main story plot, the main plot,
so he's just a memory again and again and again
and again. So we don't get to find out what
happened to him or how it happened to him until
he rejoins the main storyline because all we're doing is
going by I mean, really, the entire film of that

(01:13:09):
night is told via memories. Yeah, and his memories can't
be recounted because he's not shown up yet.

Speaker 3 (01:13:14):
Yeah, he's not.

Speaker 1 (01:13:15):
There to share it, which is very poetic because the book,
you know, no matter how little or much inspiration they took,
was his personal recounting, and I guess his friend's recounting
I would assume of what had happened. Yeah, so it
kind of it kind of adds up.

Speaker 2 (01:13:35):
I know, I absolutely agree. And it's it's very interesting
the way because because this the story of the book,
and you know, the book itself again, just like this
movie has kind of become the archetype of alien abduction stories.

(01:13:58):
And when you think about alien abduction stories, whether you
realize it or not, what you're probably thinking about is
this account because it was so well known and it
was one of the few accounts where like it wasn't
just it wasn't a story that was just told around
the town. It wasn't a story that was just told

(01:14:19):
in like the local newspaper or in the national inquirer.
It was something that got national attention. It got published,
I believe, like you know, he did like several interviews.

Speaker 1 (01:14:31):
Oh ton, he's still I mean, I don't now, but
I mean he was doing UFO conventions for ever.

Speaker 3 (01:14:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:14:37):
So so it became part of like the public zeitgeist
regarding alien abductions. And that's very similar with this movie.
Like I was talking about earlier, is like why people
don't make those sci fi heavy horror movies that involve
alien abduction is because this is the archetype, Like this

(01:14:59):
is this is what you're going to be thinking about.

Speaker 1 (01:15:03):
Well, and to go back to the story in nineteen
seventy five and all that, there is another element of
the zeitgeist that plays a pretty big role in how people,
especially Americans, felt about the concept of being abducted and
being experimented on. That's really dark and people don't talk

(01:15:26):
about it a lot, and I will, but after this
we're back and I'm about to bring things down. Yeah,
so yeah, just get ready. When you think about UFO,

(01:15:51):
the height of the UFO phenomena being like the fifties
and sixties, right, there are two elements of the fifties
and sixties, alien and height, that have something in common.
Number one, the invasion concept, right, the invasion of alien beings. Okay,

(01:16:13):
m hm. Well, at that time, we were beginning a
very long Cold War with the Soviet Union, an enemy
that is alien to us, to our way of life.
The idea of how the Russians at that time, the
Soviets were living very alien. I mean, the key concepts
of communism, the part of the world they live in,

(01:16:36):
just everything very alien. So there's that, but that's not
the dark parts. That's the part everybody talks about. But
if you look at that time period, what's before the
Cold War, before Vietnam, what was one of the most
influential things to happen in the world.

Speaker 3 (01:16:59):
In the world the world wars?

Speaker 1 (01:17:03):
Well, World War Two was right before all of this,
and one of the elements of World War Two that
became very known and very public were the horrific experiments
committed by Joseph Mangela and the Nazis, And if you
think about that, it can get pretty creepy. I mean,

(01:17:25):
obviously thinking about war atrocities creepy, But what I mean
is they would do experiment They would scoop people up
from wherever, and they would do experiments on them like
they were animals. What do most of the depictions of
aliens look like. They look like concentration camp survivors.

Speaker 3 (01:17:43):
Yeah, they're bald.

Speaker 1 (01:17:45):
They forced them to shave their heads because they didn't
want them to get lice. They're always skinny and frail.
They're always so so slender. I feel like, and I
don't know, maybe somebody else believes this too. This is
somewhat my thing that I believe, but I feel like
those wires just kind of got crossed. Like the visual
idea of the horrors of a concentration camp got kind

(01:18:08):
of combined with the idea of alien abduction. You know,
instead of you being the skinny when it became because
you see the pictures of all these bald, emaciated people
standing around, that's what the image of the concentration camps
is to people who obviously were not there. It just
kind of joined the visual idea of being adopt abducted

(01:18:29):
by aliens.

Speaker 3 (01:18:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:18:31):
Oh, I've never heard anyone like tie those together, but
I can definitely see how that works.

Speaker 1 (01:18:37):
I won't claim I'm the first.

Speaker 3 (01:18:39):
I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:18:39):
I sincerely don't know. I feel like I've heard somebody
say that some of the fear of alien abduction comes
from the idea of Nazi medical experimentation. But I'm not
one hundred percent if anybody has said that or not.
But I've always kind of thought that that was an
element because you have to look at you have to

(01:19:00):
look at the time periods, and of course, you know,
by the fifties when alien stuff was really really popular. Yeah,
it had been like almost ten years since World War Two,
but news didn't travel fast back then, Yeah, and something
that horrific sticks around. Yeah, So sometimes I wonder if
that's one of the reasons people became scared and therefore fascinated,

(01:19:20):
because that's one thing about humans is once something scares you,
it's that means very fascinating. It's interesting at the very least.
But that makes me wonder if that's an element to
it as well.

Speaker 3 (01:19:33):
Well.

Speaker 2 (01:19:34):
And I've always heard I mean, there's obviously, of course,
the there's the conspiracy theories that connect like Nazis and Aliens,
and like, oh sure you know all of that, or
the hollow earth theory that connects you know, Nazis in
Aliens together, and then I've I have, of course heard

(01:19:57):
like that. The Cold War death definitely played hugely into
America's fascination with extra terrestrials aliens.

Speaker 1 (01:20:09):
I would say, more so UFOs in particular than the
literal extraterrestrial like the being like the beings like the
rays or whatever. I think that was less so. But
just the idea of of ships you don't recognize and
missiles and that stuff. I mean, that's Cold War delirium entirely,
and not just because that's a little harsh, because it's

(01:20:32):
not just the people who are loucinating the stuff. It's
because the US government was literally testing aircraft that looked
like nothing anyone had ever seen before.

Speaker 2 (01:20:40):
Yeah, so, yeah, there was there was real unidentified flying
objects and oh they were unidentified because the government hadn't
been talking about that well.

Speaker 1 (01:20:51):
And they pulled out such gems as swamp gas, which,
from what I understand the situation and where that was said,
that was retracted. No, it was not swamp gas. It's like, yeah, no, no,
we we we all know we figured that out. We
all woke up and had a brain in our heads.

(01:21:15):
Swamp gas. But I mean now you just pull a
Reddit and say do you have a carbon monoxide detector?
But no, So so yeah, there there there was a
lot to be afraid of. That kind of fed into that,
and and the Cold warfares helped kind of keep that going.
But if you look at it, I mean the other element.
I totally skipped over one massive element too, which is

(01:21:37):
very World War two related, which is the atomic bomb. Yeah,
the age of the atom was everything in science fiction.
Everything was the nuclear this, or the adam the atomic this,
or you know, it was always something related to those
things as well, because people were scared absolutely shitless by
seeing what man had wrought. Yeah, you know it was

(01:22:02):
I can't even imagine what it would have been like
to live in a world where there was no nuclear
bomb and then there was a nuclear bomb. Yeah, that
would be quite a change of pace in my opinion,
in my humble opinion.

Speaker 3 (01:22:16):
No, I absolutely have to agree.

Speaker 2 (01:22:18):
And that's that's kind of what has been interesting as
a sci fie nerd is how how interrelated. The actual
advancements of science have been with just our imagination and
the stuff that we kind of you know, think about

(01:22:40):
in the zeitgeist. So like Star Trek is a great
example where you know, they've got like tricorders and stuff,
and now we've got cell phones and and and you know,
it's very interesting how innovation drives our imagination and simultaneously,
our imagination drive innovation, and in the same vein our

(01:23:03):
fears as a culture drive the stories that we tell
each other. And that's one of the things is as
we've been advancing so fast, one of the only places
we can look that is still vastly unknown is space.
And that's why it's one of those things that has
continually had those surges of interest as far as being

(01:23:29):
something that we're you know, either scared of or something
that we're telling stories about, is outer space and aliens
because it's the great unknown.

Speaker 1 (01:23:37):
Well, when you look at science fiction, especially futuristic science
at fiction not quite this kind, but when you look
into futuristic science fiction, I mean it's very simple, look
at where they say we're going, and you can track
it back to where they are when they thought of it. Yeah,
in culture, in time, and that can say a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:23:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:23:58):
Yeah, so that's one of the reason sci fi holds
up so much to scrutiny as well as horror.

Speaker 3 (01:24:05):
Yea.

Speaker 1 (01:24:07):
But yeah, so now I think it's about time that
we throw old Travis a welcome home party. But we'll
do that right after this and we're back because the

(01:24:29):
moment that everyone is waiting for when they're watching this
film is about to happen. And it was awesome watching
you watch it for the first time. But I was
very very amused by just like I said earlier, how
much of it I remembered, because this is a brutal, scary,

(01:24:51):
wild scene. But it all starts as any good horror scene.
It all starts very mild manneredly because Travis is now
finally home. The detective Waters talks to him at one
point and seems to suspect him of something.

Speaker 2 (01:25:08):
Now, Yeah, because he suspects now that all of the
guys came up with this plan and Travis was doing
it to like get famous, yeah, and get rich off
his store.

Speaker 1 (01:25:20):
Well, and he tells him that right after a kid
came up to him and had him sign his newspaper.

Speaker 2 (01:25:24):
Yeah, So it does start to look that way.

Speaker 1 (01:25:29):
But what's most important is Travis is now well enough
that he can go home, and they've set up a
welcome home party, and in small town tradition, everybody it's
a potluck and there is just enough food for five
towns in this little house. So he's there. He's a
little overwhelmed by everybody surrounding him, but he's doing okay

(01:25:52):
until he goes under.

Speaker 3 (01:25:54):
I love the way they do this.

Speaker 1 (01:25:56):
He goes under the kitchen table and he bumped and
he starts having he was having a panic attack. He
goes in and he bumps it and it tips over
a bottle of maple syrup, which, by the way, is
extra brilliant because I don't know why there would be
maple syrup out.

Speaker 2 (01:26:13):
Yeah, there was like no pancakes, nothing, but.

Speaker 1 (01:26:15):
There may be something you'd want maple syrup for. Who knows,
but it or maybe it was left over from breakfast. Yeah,
but it tips over falls and as he's having his little,
his little panic episode, the syrup slowly crawls across the
table and starts dripping onto him, and boom, he is

(01:26:36):
on that spaceship, covered in that weird go inside of
this bizarre organic looking pod.

Speaker 3 (01:26:47):
Yeah, it's like a cocoon.

Speaker 1 (01:26:49):
Yeah, a cocoon, but but it's a little bit wider
than a cocoon, because it's like it's there is room
for him to move around and stuff. But he's covered
in this gelatinous goop. And he starts looking around, and
he puts his hand out, and there's a membrane covering it,
which he is able to push his hand through. Yeah,
but as he tries to look out, he notices that

(01:27:10):
there is an insanely long fall from where he is.
He's in a wall of some sort in like a
like almost like a I don't know how you put it,
like not like a like like a honeycomb, almost on
the inside, you know, because there's just it's all around.

Speaker 3 (01:27:26):
It's a circular space that goes up and down.

Speaker 2 (01:27:29):
Yeah, Like it's like a big vertical tunnel. Yeah, And
all of these cocoon pods are like very much like
a honeycomb, are lining around the outside perimeter, you know,
around this this tunnel, and you start getting as disorienting

(01:27:49):
as it is, it becomes even more disorienting because he
starts like almost floating as he's as he's digging his
way out and you realize, like gravity does not exist
in the same way here.

Speaker 1 (01:28:02):
Yeah, he starts he's about to fall out, and then
as he falls out of that spot, he realizes he's
not falling really, he's yeah, he's just kind of floating,
like there may be a little gravity, but it's very
very little mm hm. And this is the moment where
I'm sure you realized that you were in for a
serious scare, because he ends up punching through another membrane nearby,

(01:28:27):
where he finds a man somehow still barely alive, who
is basically just a torso.

Speaker 2 (01:28:34):
Yeah, and like decomposing but still somehow alive.

Speaker 1 (01:28:40):
Yeah, with with like no no nothing in the cavity
below his chest. Yeah, and he like even kind of
reacts a kind of reach it from me. And he looks, honestly,
straight out of a zombie movie. He looks like he's
straight out of Day of the Dead. Yeah, very very scary,
very shocking moment, and of course shocks him because he
lands and is in his hand that goes right into

(01:29:00):
the guy's guts.

Speaker 3 (01:29:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:29:01):
Yes, he pulls out of there and he's trying to
wipe the guts away, and he's trying to figure out
what's going on, and to be discombobulated is an understatement.
But as he tries to calm himself, he realizes, I
guess a number one, I don't want to go into
any more of those things, and number two, I don't
want to be in one. So he starts making his

(01:29:23):
way up, up or down.

Speaker 2 (01:29:26):
Like that's the same as we can't We can't really
know because he starts as he's climbing the cameras, you know,
kind of changing angle a little bit, and he's floating
a little bit, and then as he floats you can
see his hair, Like we were even talking about it.
It must have been wire work. But as he's floating,

(01:29:48):
like his orientation will change and it kind of gives
you this feeling that again, gravity doesn't really work the
same here.

Speaker 1 (01:29:55):
If I had to guess, it was a combination of
wire work and perspective shift like he would be.

Speaker 3 (01:30:05):
On a wire.

Speaker 1 (01:30:06):
But also the camera was sideways or whatever, so that
you were getting two different kind of skewed views or whatever.
But it appears like he's going up like that's kind
of what it looks like. Obviously, it doesn't up and
down don't really matter.

Speaker 3 (01:30:20):
Very much.

Speaker 1 (01:30:21):
Yeah, but he notices a car key, which I believe
was his car key, Yeah, floating up.

Speaker 2 (01:30:28):
He recognizes it.

Speaker 1 (01:30:29):
And as he's trying to grab it, all of a sudden,
it's gravity is on and he's up high. Yeah, like
it basically flips. So now he's looking at the floor
of a room. So he manages to kind of well
fall into what he thinks are a bunch of aliens. Well, well,
he doesn't think they're aliens. We think they're aliens. Better way,

(01:30:51):
they look like a bunch of aliens. They look like grays.
They have the big black eyes, super skinny. But that's
when were they reveal those are base suits because he
looks into one and it's empty, which I thought was
a really cool reveal to show like a classic gray
alien and they'd be like, no, no, those are spacesuits,
which is another of many wild you know UFO theories

(01:31:16):
out there or alien extrarestrial theories out there. So he's
trying to figure out what he's going to do next,
and then we realize one of the suits is not empty,
and he has quite the close encounter of the scary kind.

(01:31:39):
That's the best I got, Okay, but things are now
going to escalate even further, I would. I think that's
a very sweet way of saying that. I was going
to say a lot, a hell of a lot, and
we'll tell you all about it after this. So as

(01:32:15):
Travis is startled by this alien when he thought he
was in a room full of empty suits of some
kind that looked like aliens to us, all of a
sudden one of them grabs him. And this is the
part where it truly it doesn't relent until basically the resolution.

Speaker 2 (01:32:35):
Yeah, it gets super crazy because one of the suits
kind of like almost comes to life and grabs him,
and he starts like wrestling with it and trying to
get away. And then a bare hand grabs him and
it's vaguely human like, but it doesn't have nails, and
like the joints seem kind of wrong, and it starts

(01:33:01):
it starts like dragging him to the ground. And then
another pair of hands come and we see there's two
naked aliens, and again playing with those expectations that we
have because they're naked, they're not in the suits, and
we start seeing just how human but not human they are.

Speaker 1 (01:33:18):
They have no hair, and their brows are very are
very pronounced, their noses are bulbous. They all look the same,
but they also don't look the same. They do look
like they're individuals, but we don't see them very long,
very often.

Speaker 2 (01:33:33):
Yeah, and which is super effective. You know, I'm a
huge fan of the less you can show of a
monster in a movie, the more scary that monster tends
to be. And they do that very well because we're
almost getting it from Travis's point of view, where we're
only you know, you'll only see a glimpse of their

(01:33:54):
face in full light before you know they're back in
the shadows, or we'll only see a little bit of
their and just enough to make us feel really unsettled
at how different it is, but not long enough for
us to like really get a good beat on them
and really figure out, like what they're like. Except all
we know is they're not like us.

Speaker 1 (01:34:15):
But I don't think that's even remotely as scary as
some of the other stuff that's about to come. For instance,
as they now more aliens have come in and they
begin to drag him through this slightly slightly more gravity
gravity rich area, but still gravity is different. They're dragging

(01:34:35):
him through this obscenely long filthy hallway. And that's one
thing I noticed too. Everything's filthy, yeah, like dirty looking.

Speaker 2 (01:34:43):
Yeah, it's covered in grime and goo and ooze and
it's covered in trash.

Speaker 1 (01:34:50):
Well that's what I was getting to about, like one
of the things that would scare you, that like stuck
with me, please you.

Speaker 2 (01:34:57):
As as they're dragging him along and he's like trying
to get a hand hold on the ground on anything
so that he can try and save himself. We start
seeing shoes, items, eyeglasses, items of clothing. We start seeing jewelry.

Speaker 1 (01:35:15):
Clearly human by the way, I mean like no very
recognizable space rebox. I mean like we're seeing like stuff
that looks like it's been there for years, if not decades.
It looks very old.

Speaker 3 (01:35:27):
And worn, and and the idea being that, yeah, they've
done this a lot for a very long time.

Speaker 1 (01:35:34):
But talk about a Holocaust symbol.

Speaker 3 (01:35:36):
Mm hmmm is all I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (01:35:39):
The clothes and the shoes again, you go, yeah, you
definitely go back to that Holocaust symbology of the long
Long corridor and all of those belongings just discarded onto
the ground, which is very powerful, you know, is a
powerful metaphor and It was an extremely powerful story telling

(01:36:00):
visually because you you really start to understand between this
and between this the tube of pods full of decaying bodies,
you start to understand like the scope and the magnitude
of these abductions, and that makes it even scarier.

Speaker 3 (01:36:23):
Oh yeah, definitely, without a doubt. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:36:26):
So they drag him into this this at the end
of the hall. It's like this circular examination room, and
they throw him down into the center of the room
and he's fastened down like these straps just come up
out of the ground.

Speaker 3 (01:36:42):
And hug him. And then uh, they cover him in
like this film almost it's like it's a membrane and
it yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:36:50):
It's another membrane and it totally encases him his body
and just like vacuum seals to him, so he can't
even like move, and it you feel so claustrophobic because
you can see it constricting, like he's trying to scream
and you can see it constricting into his mouth. And
then and then they just poke a hole in where

(01:37:12):
his mouth is and one hole where his eye is, which,
for some reason to me psychologically, there is something even
scarier about you can only see out of one eye
makes it even worse.

Speaker 1 (01:37:26):
Well, and and making you able to see what's going
on is also scary. You know that was was that
on Dexter. There was some movie, it might have been
Dexter where that was like an element of killing somebody
as they put him. Oh no, no, I'm thinking of
law abiding citizen where he's he's cutting up the body
parts of the guy who killed his daughter and his wife,

(01:37:48):
and he puts up a giant mirror over top of
him with a photograph of his daughter and wife so
that the guy can watch him. Oh, he tells him,
if he closes his eyes will kint of eyelids off.
That movie's that. But and then they reveal later like
his eyelids were cut off. Oh god, yes, so you
would see it. So I mean there's also some cruelty

(01:38:09):
to being able to see what's going on. But what
we realize is there's even more cruelty coming for his eyes.
But first, as he's gasping for air because they've cut
open around his mouth, they begin to feed a They
put like a speculum almost in his mouth, his mouth open,
and they start feeding a tube all the way down.

(01:38:30):
It just keeps going and it's and it's a metal
tube that kind of it has like ribs ridges on
it as it's going further and further down his gullet.
And that's something that you know, if you've had any
you know, moderate hospital stay, that's going to freak you
out because you've probably experienced something like that or seen

(01:38:51):
something yeah well, I mean or something you know. Just
so we're already getting mortified by all of that, and
now we're starting to understand, like, Okay, clearly we're heading
into the alien experimenting on a human thing. You know,

(01:39:12):
obviously that's where we're heading. This is an alien abduction
after all, so why wouldn't they. But it's it's so
upsetting because this membrane makes him look almost like he's
not a human anymore. He's just parts.

Speaker 3 (01:39:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:39:29):
Yeah, And when you have surgery done, they do put
a sheet over you so that they aren't distracted by
anything other than what they're working on in the section
of your body they're working on. When I had when
I had minor jaw surgery, they put a sheet over
my head, so I was just a mouth. Yeah, although
they told me later that was mostly so that I

(01:39:50):
didn't see all the blood because I was awake.

Speaker 3 (01:39:53):
Oh that's right.

Speaker 1 (01:39:54):
They said that it just usually in dental procedures, you're
not bleeding like that, Like they're not pulling drills out
covered in blood. And they're like, it can cause people
to panic or freak out even though they're not.

Speaker 3 (01:40:04):
Feeling any pain. Yeah, and I agree. I would.

Speaker 1 (01:40:06):
I much enjoyed looking at that white sheet instead. Honestly, no,
I did. But now they put a similar piece, a
similar device on his eye, holding his eyelids open. And
then the biggest, most upsetting part of the entire film

(01:40:27):
right after this. So I've seen this movie at least
a couple times, and you had only seen it the once.
I'm going to give you the honors of talking about

(01:40:48):
the most nightmare fuel part of the entire movie.

Speaker 3 (01:40:53):
Ah.

Speaker 2 (01:40:54):
So they've got him, you know, down on the examination table.
He's covered in this membrane. They've got his mouth and
his eyeball speculum to open, and then uh, this this
thing starts coming down from the ceiling and it's like
it's almost coming down. It almost looks like a at first,

(01:41:19):
it almost looks like a telescope or something, the way
it's telescoping down and all of this white, oopy, goopy
stuff starts coming out of it.

Speaker 1 (01:41:30):
I don't remember that.

Speaker 3 (01:41:32):
You don't remember the because he's like the.

Speaker 1 (01:41:33):
White goo came out of his eye open. Oh, and
it wasn't It was very milky.

Speaker 2 (01:41:39):
It was like gooey, milky, gross stuff. That That was
the first thing that started making an impression because I
was like really upset by this liquidy goop goo touching
his eye, watching and watching it.

Speaker 3 (01:41:54):
Because it was filling up the cavity.

Speaker 2 (01:41:55):
Yeah, it was like filling up his eye. And this
thing starts to scoping down and with each section it
gets smaller and smaller and smaller, and then this needle
comes out right over his eye and it's just hovering.
And what makes it even worse is it starts out

(01:42:16):
is like a mildly large needle where you'd go like,
oh wow, that's a pretty big needle, and then it
keeps extending until it's like I swear the thing must
have been like nine inches long.

Speaker 3 (01:42:31):
Maybe very wrong, Yeah, it was extremely long.

Speaker 2 (01:42:34):
Yeah, and it the length of time it just hovers
over his eye as he's trying to blink, and then
it just presses in slowly and the.

Speaker 1 (01:42:46):
Entire time, we're cutting to these aliens who, while they're
obviously animatronics, they have expressions, they furrow their brows, they
look closer, they're they're you know, very curious. And that's
the big thing. There's no sense of anything other than
interest and curiosity.

Speaker 3 (01:43:04):
Yeah, there's no malice.

Speaker 1 (01:43:06):
No, it's just it's it's just huh hmmm. Can they
get a better look at that?

Speaker 2 (01:43:11):
Yeah, which, again, the clinical feeling makes it worse. Sure,
I think there's there's something psychologically where if something is
malicious or mean, or we can identify it as being

(01:43:31):
uh ill spirited, we can handle that.

Speaker 1 (01:43:35):
That's because that's human. No, because yes, it is is
a human experience.

Speaker 2 (01:43:41):
We we we can comprehend it. It tracks for us,
and so at least we can go like, Okay, I
don't like this, but at least I can understand it.
But this, this clinical, this cold, clinical curiosity is very
different from our curiosity, but also not so different. And
again it goes back to those you know, the Nazi experiments.

Speaker 1 (01:44:03):
Once you're used to something, it's just another day.

Speaker 3 (01:44:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:44:06):
So yeah, very you know, it's it's scary, beyond scary,
it's deeply unsettling because it's kind of this this reflection,
and it makes us feel like, oh.

Speaker 3 (01:44:21):
What would it be like to just be a test subject,
to be a lesser life form? Yeah, no, that's that's
really what is scary because as humans, we are always
at the top of the food chain. We're always we're
always the most intelligent and cunning we are the world,
and to not be is a very scary concept because

(01:44:46):
that you're right, they're looking at it like you might
look at a fish. Yeah, that you're that you that
you're you know, just kind of looking at going like
what is it doing?

Speaker 1 (01:44:54):
What are those things on the side of its head?
And that's something that you know, people who claim to
have been abducted by UFO say a lot is that
it's like a fisherman catches you and then just throws
you back. Yeah, you know, I always like that old
stand up to me a joke, the comedy joke that
was like, I wonder what the fish say to each
other when they when they get back, when they get
thrown back, they're like, I saw this thing and all this.

Speaker 3 (01:45:17):
Stuff, and.

Speaker 1 (01:45:19):
Right, sure you did, okay, but no, it's a very
dehumanizing feeling to have the concept of your pain, your discomfort,
your fear, just completely not understood. And that is and
that's why I love that they put so much effort

(01:45:40):
into those aliens faces so that they could effectively show
an emotion. The wrong emotions. Yeah, yeah, no concern, no concern,
no annoyance, no joy, just curiosity. Yeah, that is so
unbelievably terrifying to just be a big hunk of meat

(01:46:00):
on the slab. That is something that makes it stick
with you so much. And I really can't overstate if
you're listening to this and you even watch the movie,
yet once they put that membrane all over his body,
the movie becomes truly hellish nightmare stuff, like it really does.
It's just there's something so horrifying about that. And one
of the things I love about sci fi is the

(01:46:22):
idea of going beyond what we what makes sense to us.
So it's there's no straps, there's no rope, there's no chains.
It's something organic, it's something wet, it's something else like I.
I you know me, I I love to riff on
anything you give me, but not just humorously like I
will you know you put me in a situation and
be like, are you how this could make sense, and

(01:46:43):
I'll do it. Like and like, for instance, the whole
idea of like how everything looks dirty, everything is grimy.
It's probably because our understanding of germs and theirs are
completely different to them. They're like, there are no germs here.
We know for a fact, all germs are dead. Yeah
the end, Like who cares if it's dirty or whatever,
Like yeah, we don't there's no germs, yeah the end,
we don't care. Yeah, Like like in our world, you know,

(01:47:05):
getting rid of germs means cleaning hard surfaces down to
the to the you know, down to the hard part
of the surface to where it's not porous, and then
disinfecting it and drying it. There's a it's a whole process,
and if you want to disaffect something porous, it's an
even longer difficult process. To them, it's just like there's
no there's no Yeah, there's no microbes here.

Speaker 2 (01:47:26):
Yeah we got the we got the laser thing. It
kills all the microbes or.

Speaker 1 (01:47:29):
It's just we just like lift it in the vacuum
space when you know every now and then and that
just kills everything. I don't know, Like I'm not an alien,
I'm not okay, But now as the needle goes into
Travis's eye, we're back with Travis on Earth, and now
we fully understand what happened that night question mark, because

(01:47:53):
the time we don't timeframe of how long he was
he was kept. We know that he was dehydrated. They
didn't feed him, they just kept him as basically alive
as possible. And now, oddly enough is the time for
healing after this. So now that Travis has had his flashback,

(01:48:27):
so that we all as the audience, understand what's really happened,
He's back at the party, these people are around, and
now it is over, but he has to live with
these memories. Which that's another scary element for sure, is
the idea of being of what trauma does to us.
So now we go into even more human territory, ironically

(01:48:50):
after you know, all the aliens, because now things calm down,
there's no inquiry any more, the police stop sniffing around,
people kind of go back to living, and we find
out that Mike Rogers has left his wife and is

(01:49:10):
living up in the mountains just kind of solitude, because
I think he had enough of the way people had
treated him when they thought he'd killed Travis, and of
course Travis doesn't want anything to do with Mike because
he feels Mike is the one who abandoned him. And
we end on this really great scene where Travis drives
up to Mike's place and they start talking. We find

(01:49:32):
out that that Travis did marry Mike's sister and they're
about to have their second kid, which surprises Mike. He's like,
you're about to be an uncle again, and he's like again,
He's like, nobody told you. He's like, I've been up here.
I don't get a lot of visitors. And they decide
to do something really interesting. Travis has let me take
you for a ride, and they go out to where

(01:49:53):
it happened in the broad daylight, and he just tells
him like, I understand I shouldn't have got out of
the car and I would have been scared senseless, and
they just have a moment where they kind of become
friends again and except that both of them have been
through hell and both of them need a friend. Yeah,

(01:50:15):
it's a very sweet ending as the film. Really, that's it.
That's that's the resolution of the film. And we do
find out that eventually all all of the men took
a polygraph again and they all passed, including Dallas. There
are a few little snippets like that, you know, but
that's that is Fire in the Sky one of the

(01:50:37):
scariest alien movies I've ever seen, and it's not there's
very little alien in it, but boy, when it's there,
it does the work, yeah, of scaring the shit out
of you. It came out, like I said, in nineteen
ninety three, it did nineteen point nine million dollars at
the box office against a fifteen million dollar budget, so
it was relatively a box office flop. But it's been

(01:51:01):
very well received. It was not well received when it
came out, but it's become very well by critics. But
it's very well received now. But a lot of people
had had a lot of the negative things they said
about it were like, oh, it's great once they get
in the spacecraft. I disagree. The actors were great. Every
one of the people in the town was great. It

(01:51:22):
was really engulfing. And what you the movie wouldn't be
as scary if they were on that craft more.

Speaker 2 (01:51:29):
Yeah, yeah, it would have felt like it. It would
have felt like it diluted the experience. If it would
have drawn it out because I think the movie is
only like one hundred and nine minutes long. It goes
by it a pretty fast clip, and I feel that
if they would have drawn out being on the spacecraft,

(01:51:51):
it wouldn't have been effective because the scarcity of it,
the feeling of being totally totally disoriented with Travis for
the brief like six minute eight minute sequence, which that
feels like, Yeah, it feels so long because it's so gruesome.

(01:52:15):
I feel like you would get desensitized to it. Honestly, yeah,
it would, and it would become normal. Yeah, it would
lose its effectiveness. And being such a short feature of
the film is what makes it so powerful.

Speaker 1 (01:52:30):
I agree, And it makes it stick. It makes it
stick with you. The fact is, I think the storytelling
is strong, and I think that it would be weakened
by it being like a NonStop sci fi or a
NonStop horror movie. I mean, it's already a thriller drama.

Speaker 3 (01:52:47):
I saw.

Speaker 1 (01:52:48):
One of the big critics had said that while he
liked how gut wrenching and scary the abduction scenes where
he felt like it couldn't decide whether it wanted to
be a horror movie a drama movie or science fiction movie.
And I agree, except that I think that's what makes
the movie awesome. Yeah, I agree, is that it is
a drama about people. And you know, granted, like we've

(01:53:11):
mentioned many times already, based on a true story element
is kind of scurl us at best. I mean, it's
based on a book that may or may.

Speaker 3 (01:53:19):
Not have happened.

Speaker 1 (01:53:20):
I'm not a believer personally, but whatever, But it is
a movie about people and how people react to the extraordinary,
especially people who live every day in the ordinary. Yes,
and that's what I think makes it have extra staying powers.
When you're a kid, you'll remember those scenes forever, but

(01:53:42):
as an adult, you can appreciate the way a community
was just torn apart, and the idea of losing your
friends and holding grudges and growing and learning to handle trauma. Yeah,
so that's my thought. What about you, No, I.

Speaker 2 (01:54:05):
Have to I definitely have to agree. You've often said,
and I have to agree with you that the final
scene and the final shot of a movie can reveal
oftentimes what that movie is actually about. And I think
that Fire in the Sky was a great example, because

(01:54:26):
the closing scene is all about Travis and Mike reconciling
after healing from this trauma, and you really do start
to get that feel from the movie that the extraordinary
circumstances could have been anything. It didn't necessarily have to

(01:54:48):
be aliens. What this movie was truly about was about
the extraordinary circumstances and how the town dealt with it.

Speaker 1 (01:54:58):
Yeah, how and how friendships? You know, how how hard
it is to be loyal, how hard it is to
own up to your mistakes, how hard it is to
make decisions under pressure and live with the consequences.

Speaker 3 (01:55:09):
Mm hmmm.

Speaker 1 (01:55:10):
I think those are all major parts of what the
theme of the film is about, or the thesis. I guess,
I guess that's the theme. Or no, I guess that's
the thesis. Now the theme is space aliens.

Speaker 2 (01:55:21):
I suppose, Yeah, the theme is space aliens. Sorry the
small town drama.

Speaker 1 (01:55:26):
Oh fine. So with that all being said, if you
haven't seen Fire in the Sky, I really do think
you should watch it. It's one of those movies that
didn't get a fair shake originally, and I'm glad people
are appreciating it. I'm glad I got to sit down
and watch it again and talk about it a bit
and talk about how scary aliens are. And I'd be
remiss if I didn't mention really very quickly that Nope.

(01:55:50):
The Jordan Peele movie is about one of the other
major theories about UFOs that UFO people have, which is
that UFOs aren't spacecraft. They're giant animals you can fly around,
and the reason they abduct people is they eat them.
So if you've never seen Nope, really good movie and

(01:56:10):
a great horror sci fi kind of alien movie, but
not in the way you'd expect. Yeah, So that's you know,
that's it for this cutting deep into horror. But we
want to mention that we'll be back much sooner than normal.
We're trying to find a groove here in life and
in this podcast, so to talk to you, Spooky's a

(01:56:30):
little bit more about fun horror movies.

Speaker 3 (01:56:33):
What do we have coming next, Rach, Well next, And
it's funny because you mentioned it toward the beginning of
the show, But my fault, you're a one trick pony
and you just want to do more horror sci fi. Ah,
I just love horror sci fi so much.

Speaker 2 (01:56:48):
So next we're going to be doing Event Horizon.

Speaker 1 (01:56:50):
Yes, and that is I consider that a relatively modern
classic horror film.

Speaker 2 (01:56:55):
Yes, that one's pretty good. You've you've shown it to
me and I was blown away, which is why I
definitely wanted to make sure that we cover it.

Speaker 1 (01:57:06):
It's a classic. It stars Laurence Fishburne and Sam Neil
and it is basically a science fiction Pandora's Box kind
of concept where what if dark matter and faster than
light travel could open a not only open or cut
through the fabric of space, but what if what was

(01:57:26):
on the other side was basically the thing that all
scholars and philosophers based hell on. Basically, Yeah, but I'm
making it really simple. The tagline was infinite space infinite terror,
which is cheesy, but it gets the job done.

Speaker 3 (01:57:43):
It's effective. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:57:44):
So, but we do really appreciate you guys joining us.
It's been really cool to do the show, to bring
the show back again. We always bring it back at
least around Halloween time because there's so many horror movies
and we all want to watch them.

Speaker 3 (01:57:58):
So but thank you guys again.

Speaker 1 (01:57:59):
If you enjoy what we did here tonight and you
want to email us, you can do so at Weekly
Spooky at gmail dot com. We love film recommendations. All
kinds of things like that. We're totally down for it.
If you want to support us in a very direct way,
you go to Weeklyspooky dot com slash join join our
Patreon for as little as one dollar a month, and
that would be awesome. Make sure you're subscribed on your

(01:58:20):
favorite podcasting apps and leave a five star rating.

Speaker 3 (01:58:24):
Yeah, so I'll give you the last word, Rach. The
truth is out there. Well, we're gonna get sued.

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Cutting Deep into Horror | Fire in the Sky (1993) — Alien Abduction, Trauma & Small-Town Panic

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Cutting Deep into Horror | Fire in the Sky (1993) — Alien Abduction, Trauma & Small-Town Panic