Somewhere in the Skies - HALLOWEEN SERIES | Alien Abductions in Film: A Movie Review Special!

Episode Date: October 15, 2021

It's Halloween season and the boys are back in town to review some of the scariest found footage(ish) films concerning alien abductions. Joining Ryan are TV/Film writer, Andrew Sanford, and Film/Stage actor, Nick Westemeyer to discuss the films below. Did they live up to the hype? Did they follow alien abduction lore? And most importantly... were they any good!? We also hear from cast and crew from several of the films and what their experiences were like working on them, and we hear from YOU, the viewers/listeners on your thoughts as well. It's a jam-packed movie review party of cosmic proportions. We also here from YOU, the listeners, about your thoughts on these films! The McPherson Tape (1989) Alien Abduction (2014) The Fourth Kind (2009) Slumber Party Alien Abduction (2013) - Segment for V/H/S 2 Follow Andrew Sanford on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/SanfordMinusSon Follow Nick Westemeyer on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/Nwestemeyer Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/somewhereskies Website: http://www.somewhereintheskies.com Buy the official Somewhere in the Skies coffee! : https://bit.ly/3mIAq2o Somewhere in the Skies Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/SomewhereSkiesPod/ Official Store: https://bit.ly/2SIYaJ8 Order Ryan's Book in paperback, ebook, or audiobook here: https://amzn.to/3dEBEHQ Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomewhereSkies Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/somewhereskiespod/ Watch Mysteries Decoded for free at http://www.CWseed.com Edited by: Jane Palomera Moore  Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is part of the eOne podcast network. To learn more, visit: https://entertainmentonepodcast.com Copyright Disclaimer: Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use. Copyright © 2021 Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprague. What is up, everyone? Ryan Sprague here from Somewhere in the Skies. And welcome to a very, very special Halloween season, YouTube live stream and Facebook, I guess. This is going to be a lot of fun tonight. For anyone who knows, I am a huge fan of alien abduction movies and obviously alien abductions in general. That's why you're here. So we're going to be talking about four alien abduction.

themed found footage films tonight, which is going to be really fun. And I have some really special guests for you guys, two of my co-hosts for tonight, and also some special guest appearances as well from people from the films. We're going to be reviewing. But before we do all that, let's talk a little shop here, guys. The super chat is open. If you want to help out somewhere in the skies, please you can do so with the super chat button.

That way, we will highlight your comments, highlight your questions. you might have for me or my guest co-hosts for tonight. It's a great way to help out the show and get your comments and questions asked right here live on YouTube or Facebook. And other than that, let's see. Oh, I wanted to mention, I just got sent this book by a listener of the show. Nomar Slavik, who's actually been a guest on the show. We only come out at night.

This is a really cool book full of scary stuff. stories, ghost supernatural paranormal, aliens as well. And Nomar has just done an incredible job of creating these terrifying worlds in the book. So please, this Halloween season, help out an independent author and just have a good time. Have a good time. Spook your friends, your significant others, whatever you want with We Only Come Out at Night by Nomar Slavik. So check that out on Amazon. What else do I have here, guys?

Oh, we have an upcoming Halloween series episode where we're going to be talking to two modern day witches who practice witchcraft in today's world. So that's going to be a lot of fun. Keep a look out for that very soon amongst all the main feed episodes as well. And other than that, like, subscribe, share the show. I'd really appreciate that. But without further ado, I'm going to introduce our two co-hosts for tonight as we go through these movies, whether they like it or not. First on the docket is one of my closest friends and colleagues. Andrew Sanford. Andrew is a writer, performer, director operating out of New York City.

He was twice featured for the ABC Discoverer Showcase and co-created a graphic novel called Gwendolyn in 2013 with artist extraordinaire Joe Cabotet. Andrew was selected for the for the ABC Discoverer Showcase as a writer, which is really awesome. Recently, he has been working with the New York City Theater Company Random Access Theater, writing Shakespearean adaptations of popular movies. That's really cool. I know he did one of the Star Wars, so we'll have to ask him about that. And one of the Star Wars. I sound like an old person when I say that.

Go see a Star Wars. And he has also been a staff contributor for Pajiba.com. And he just came out with an article over there recently about Chuckie. So go check that out. And you can follow him on Twitter at Sanford minus Sun, though the handle is no longer accurate because he is the dad of two of the cutest twins I have ever seen. Not the creepiest, the cutest. And that is Andrew Sanford. So I'm going to bring him in right now, Andrew.

How are you? How are you? I'm good, man. How are you? I am good. I'm good. I hope I did you some justice. You did wonderful.

I will say it is Pajiba. Pajiba. All that really matters is how you spell it, because that's what you're really going to be doing. But Pajibah is how it's pronounced. I feel like I would be remit. It doesn't matter. There's also a lot of other wonderful writers over there, too, that you should check out. I should have said that.

People who are much more qualified to review movies than I am. Because it's what they do for a living. Right. Not to say we're not qualified. I don't want to dash anybody's hopes before we get started. Oh, not at all. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've seen easily 50 movies. No big deal. It's whatever. No big deal. It's right there. Anthony, thank you so much for the shoot. Did you just call me Anthony? No, Anthony.

Anthony is one of our super chat contributors. I would hope I knew your name by now. Oh, man. Anthony, I love your last name. That's a dope last name, man. McCulski. He's a huge supporter of the show. Thanks for being here.

Let's give a shout out quick before we bring in our other amazing co-host. Matthew Riot is here. Alien Girl. Thank you for being here. More Kavi Studios. Oh, hello. Tim F is here. I'm going to try to shot you guys out as much as I can.

We're going to be really busy tonight reviewing these movies as well and showing you some special clips. But let's move to our second co-host of the night. And that is Nicholas Westermeyer. Nicholas is an actor, director, and teacher based in New York City. He received his BA in theater from Clark College and his MFA. That smart, smart man, MFA in acting from Brooklyn College. He currently teaches theater and speech at Cooney, CUNY.

He is a founding member of Voyage Theater Company and Third Kind Productions. Little company I know a little something about. He is also the co-executive producer and co-star of Rebri Lane. I put that in there, Nick. So he's going to love that. So without further ado, let's bring him in Nicholas Westmeyer. What's up, buddy? Hey.

Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick. Welcome. I think this may be the first time we have done this in a really, I think the last movie, the three of us might have looked at was like, God, last Jedi, maybe. Did we I don't think I talked about that for your show No Maybe not

Was that you, me and Chris? Okay The last time we did something Was whatever the last October was Oh my God The last one The year before the last one Right

Yeah yeah yeah I don't even I don't even remember I remember I know some great movies I know that Oh was that the one where we did It follows

Yes And two other ones Cranpas Yeah It was a really I really like a hodgepodge episode. But I kind of like that. Any time, before we get too into the weeds, I used to host a podcast.

It's pretty much like done at this point. It kind of, the pandemic kind of, it was a pandemic casualty. But that's, that's okay. It was a lot of fun. We did, I did that for a few years. And even though it was like a pop culture and politics discussion podcast, every October, because I love horror movies so much, we'd throw out the entire purpose of the podcast. and just talk about horror movies

and I would bring on wonderful people that I love to talk to. And you two were one of the few multiple guests. I tried to switch it up every year. Ryan's my favorite hard UFO podcaster, too, mainly because, oh, jealous of my hair. Anthony, we're good friends, Anthony. I'm trying to slip these comments in.

Don't feel like you have to respond. Sorry, I look, it's hard. I noticed that they're there now, and I came out. I know. I love that. These are all my, like, hardcore friends out there who are always here in support. So I love you guys. But, yeah, tell us a little bit more about Shocktober.

That's what we're doing tonight. I would throw out the purpose of the podcast. We'd just talk about horror movies. And I think the first time you guys did in episode two, we talked about like six of them. But what happened was, yeah, yeah, yeah, which was a lot of fun. But anyway, so, and I would call it Shocktober, because. That's what I just. I'm not the first or last person to call October shock, Choctober because of the scary movies.

But yeah. So I love doing that. But you can take credit for it. Yeah. Yes, I will. I take sole credit for it. There is, it's October, TM. It's so much fun.

I miss it. It is a lot of fun. I do miss that aspect of things, but it was just things move on. I got busy with other stuff. The pandemic happened. We couldn't record in the same room, which I always, I usually prefer. I like this. This app is great.

Oh, it's great. But it is hilarious that all three of us live in the New York City kind of metro area. Yeah, we're in three different places. Absolutely. I've done more theater via Zoom over the pandemic than I have ever. Very true. I know. I know.

When I see people in person, I'm like, I got to like touch their face and make sure it's real. I'm like, what's happening here? And then that's when I get arrested. That's another story. Well, let's talk since I have you both here. Both of you guys come from the theater world. That's originally how I met both of you. And all three of us became really good friends.

Nick and I went through a lot of trials and tribulations, both as struggling artists in New York and then as creative partners. And it's been a crazy journey ever since. And same with Andrew. We've written a play together at this point. Nick and I have worked on a movie together. It's just been an incredible ride. But what I want to know from you guys, since I have you here, you're both performers as well,

your experiences in the world of horror, which is a lot of what we're going to be talking about tonight. So, Nick, I think I'd love to start with you, man, before we dive into the movies. What is your experience as a performer with horror? I know you've done a couple horror films. Would you mind giving us a little, little, real real of your experiences with the movies? So, I mean, I'm kind of like Andrew. Like, I love horror movies and definitely, and usually right, definitely like a large swath of them.

I like watching them. It's kind of what I do in October. In terms of doing horror movies, I've done a couple shorts. I've done two feature films that are more like slasher genre. So one of the things with my experience is that there's definitely a formula that goes with it, but it's probably the most fun I've had working on a set. The stuff people come up with creatively to do effects on lower, budget. So with a lot of times the horror moods, you'll see that younger filmmakers or experienced

filmmakers will do them and do them more low-fi, low-budget, because they can be really effective without a lot of effects. And that was cool. So, yeah, I mean, I've done two future films, which is great. It's probably the most fun I've had shooting a movie. Always in fun. The cast are always great. And watch someone stick glass in someone's eye. I make it cool. I don't know. What was the name? Do you mind? I've done. So, Frat House Massacre, Violence of the Mind, the Gacy Project. Oh, God, there's a couple other ones. Those are the three big ones that come to my mind, though. Now, was this the original Frat House Massacre? This wasn't like part 12.

No, no, it's an O.G. It's something. Andrew, we should watch that, and then Andrew and I should talk about it. There you. Look, no, it won't even be that. I'll interview you. about it. Oh, really get into the, I want to, one of the things, like, not to spoil anything, but I really wanted to, for some of the movies that we watched, I really wanted to pick some of the creators' brains afterwards, all of them actually for different reasons.

Yeah. So a little tease there. Absolutely. And I did pick the brains of some of the directors and actors of tonight's film. So we'll be hearing from them. But, yeah, they're very accessible. So definitely, Andrew, I'll have them reach. chow to you, man.

But, and guys, like, if you want to give your comments on the films we're reviewing tonight, put them in the chat, put them in the super chat if you want. We'll definitely, we want to know what you guys think of these movies as well. This is just the three of us, just sitting back drinking and having a good time. Thank you so much. I'm drinking caffeinated bubbly. I'm not going to lie, y'all. It's pretty damn good.

What do you got, Nick? Diet Coke. Yeah, am I the only, God, I'm the alcohol. No, Ryan, Ryan, Ryan. Yeah. He already showed you his giant jug of vodka before we got on here. Your North Carolina jug. I love it. I am drinking. Punkin now. Ooh, nice. It's sound effects, Andrew.

I do want to give a shout out. He is. He is the Renaissance man incarnate. John L. from Australia with the Super Chat. Thank you so much, John. Thanks for being with us, man. What time is it there? I can roll, brother. What did Anthony say, Ryan, look at Andrew's shirt. Oh, Plaid, yeah. I am noticed Plad, man.

Anthony, no, it's not even just that, bro. Anthony, I was waiting. I was literally about to say, I'm just going to say it, nobody has acknowledged my McFoly cosplay over here. I just saw my little, my little, like, I was almost going to put on the full Ghostbusters. Mick Foley or Cactus Jack? Well, here's the thing.

Cactus Jack didn't always wear the flannel on top of the shirt. He did sometimes, but that was usually, I feel like when Mick Foley, wrestled as himself. This is the look he would kind of rock. I love me some McFolley. And it was either this or the Ghostbusters costume, but that thing's hard to pee

in. Oh, yeah. It'll happen at some point tonight. So, this is my nod to my ode to Halloween. I love it. I love it. I wish I...

Thank you, Anthony. I tried to... He's great, man. He's so cool. I love having him here. He's here every time I gave me. Thank you. I tried to spookify my studio.

I've got this fluorescent ghost I got from Target. Very nice. Let's see. What else we got? We got the jackalope in there. Yeah, I thought it'd be appropriate. Jackalope? Jackalope is classic.

What is it? Oh, gotcha, gotcha. Yeah. Yeah, we've had that for a while. That's our one and only child. I know. I carried that into your apartment for you. You did.

Nick has, oh, my God. I'm not. We won't even get into that. Why did it leave? Why did there have to be a second time? Yeah, why did that to be a second time, Ryan? Um, I don't... When you got back from L.A.

Oh, that's why. I like to black out those two years of my life, to be completely honest. I forgot about it. I've honestly forgotten about this point. John says it's 11.15 a.m. Oh, good. Well, no, no. Oh, nice. Ah, John, that sounds like an excuse to me, brother.

What do you have to do today? Come on. Listen to us. Be honest with me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Be honest with me. We're all friends here. God, it's just me and you. Oh, all right. Andrew's having his own episode with John. What? Hey, look. I'm trying to, no, I'm not trying to encourage anybody to do anything that they don't want to do. You can take Andrew away from the podcast, but he'll always come back. He always comes back in the safe space.

You're right. There's no escaping. P.S. I love the Batman animated series. Hello, we're getting a new animated series from what I hear. Yes, from Bruce Tim. No, yeah, it's going to be a TV show, a cartoon from Bruce Tim. Oh, okay. Bruce Tim and somebody else, I think one of the people working on Harley Quinn, which is an amazing show. Yeah, but it's like really incredible stuff.

But, yeah, new cartoon from Bruce Tim, which is very, very, very excited. And another new Batman. Man, it is the year of, like, reboots. Like, I want to talk to you guys about that, too. We've got Chuckie, the TV series. we've got Halloween. Which isn't a reboot, by the way. Chuckie yet.

No, Chuckie, and I actually like controversial thought, maybe not hot take, maybe not, whatever. Childplay is one of the most consistent franchises in any horror. Even though they do,

like, it's always kind of like campy. I think that first movie is a little bit scarier than people give it credit for, which, as you said earlier, I wrote about how it affected me watching it now as a new father for Pajibah.com. I can, uh, Ryan, can you drop that link in the, in the comments, I guess, or can I do that?

I got you. Look, check it out. You might enjoy it. It's good. A very personal read. Thank you, Nick. But I, uh, is, uh, one of the great things about Child's play is Don Mancini, who is Chuckie's creator. And in the first movie, I think he gets like a story by credit and a co-writer credit.

And then he slowly, like, bumps up until, like, he's soul writer. and then Seed of Chucky, which is, like, if you know it's a comedy going in, is better than I think people give it credit for. It's not, it misses a lot, but it hits as well, because it's just funny and silly. He wrote and directed that one, and then wrote and directed Curse of Chucky,

which was straight to Blu-ray and exceeded all expectations and was kind of a return to a traditional horror for the franchise. And then he went and worked on Hannibal a little bit, the TV show. I did that timeline works up, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then took what he learned from that and did cult of Chucky, which you can see the influence visually, and then came up with the idea for the show,

but the people who own the rights to child's play wanted to do a reboot, which then halted the plans for the show because they were like this reboot myself. Like, this dude is actively working on this franchise. It's the only franchise I can think of where it's had a singular creative-minded charging for its entire.

It's been 30 plus years. Right. And it's just been him. So it's got that going for it. And honestly, the first episode of the TV show, because thankfully, I know there are some people that liked it. I honestly just did not see it because I didn't think it was fair that that franchise was taken away from him like that. So I didn't see the reboot. I just know it did not do well enough to warrant a sequel.

So the production for the TV show went back on. And it's another just advantage. for the franchise. It's really good stuff. I think that first episode is like free on YouTube now, too. Oh, okay. I highly recommend it. I'm going to have to check it out.

I'll happily plug somebody else's work because I enjoyed it that much. Yeah, and I'm sorry, I fell miserably with dropping the link. Can you say, spell it out for us? Yeah, P-A-J. I can pull it up. Hold on just a sec. I got a computer. Let me get right out.

Oh, here it is. I got it. I'm going to put a link right. right here, guys, to directly to Andrew's article. So please go read that. Thanks, bud. After this, of course, after this. Yeah, yeah, wait. Don't read it now. Halloween kills comes out tomorrow, which I know. Very excited about that. Me too. Me too. But let's get to it. The reason we're here, the reason people are listening to us go on and on is these found footage films. Now, a lot of our viewers and listeners have probably seen a lot of these.

But I want to know from you guys, is this your first time seeing all of these films? All except for the slumber party abduction. Which I do think it's important to point out for context of that movie that it is, because I've seen VHS2, which was that short. I know you spoke with the director earlier today. I'm not sure if you did it independently first, and then it just got rolled into that movie, or it was just made for that movie. But it's an anthology movie,

so that segment is a smaller segment amongst other segments. And I do think that's important to bring up even well before we get into talking about that movie because context is everything for a lot of these things. Yeah. And that, especially for its page. it's flow like it's when you put it in the context of what it needed to be there are things that you can excuse because exactly you just you know yeah part of the thing it's part of what it is you're

right i think you know you zoom in on just this slumber party alien abduction yeah um not vhs as a whole which yeah um jason i izzaner the creator he did create this specifically for bhs um i i don't know if that made it into i i had to dude it was awesome i asked i asked him to do you like a five minute video and we went for like half an hour. So I had to drastically cut down what you guys are going to see tonight. But I am going to put the extended version of the interview up on YouTube as well. But yeah, he, you know, the challenge was to create a like, you know, very short film in the VHS found footage sort of feel. And that's what he came up with.

And as we'll get to, I think it was pretty effective. But let's start chronologically. So tonight we're going to be talking about the McPherson. tape from 1989, slumber party alien abduction, 13, alien abduction, 14, and the fourth kind, 2009. We're going to end with fourth kind because I know that's the one we're going to talk about probably the most, pretty divisive. And I know a lot of people in the chat probably have some ideas about that as well.

But let's start with literally, I can say, almost with certainty, there might be some debate on this, the first found footage film that really came out worldwide. And that is the McPherson tape, 1989, 10 years before the Belarwich Project. We got the McPherson tape. There's a really interesting story behind how this came to be. We will hear from the director about that after our review. But let's kind of jump in. Here's the quick synopsis of McPherson tape. On a typical fall evening in 1983, young man was videotaping his night. Nice's fifth birthday party. As the night's strange occurrences took place,

he kept his video camera running, recording the entire event. And that event would be an invasion, an alien abduction. So before we kind of get into like what the film is about, written and directed by Dean Alliotto, starring Tommy, Gia Faccini, Patrick Kelly,

and Shirley McCalla. And Dean, actually, the creator, plays the 16-year-old, the camera. So there you go. The director is literally the one behind the seat of the camera. Was he 16 at the time? No, no, no, no. Okay. Okay. No, he was not. But, um, so yeah, I guess that's kind of, um, the premise. We, we get this bound footage film. A guy is recording his family, like most families do. And mind you, again, this was filmed in 1989. So, I mean,

that's just crazy to me to think that that's the earliest found footage film we have. And, um, you know, you can feel it. You can definitely feel this is from the, late 80s when you first start watching it. But yeah, what did you guys think? Initial thoughts when you started watching this for the first time. Lots of places can expose you to identity theft. Oh, no. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity,

which is way more than anyone can do on their own. If we find anything suspicious, like new loans or changes to your financial accounts, we alert you right away all through text, phone, email, or the LifeLock app. Get the alerts that could make all. All the difference. Save up to 40% your first year at lifelop.com slash special offer. Terms apply. I was immediately engaged by it 100%.

Because it's, there is an authenticity to how the movie is set up and how it looks. And it really like, it doesn't feel, I mean, obviously it was filmed in the late 80s, so it looks like it was filmed in the late 80s. But it also has this. tone to it and I think the I without tangying too much

I think all four of these movies did at least one thing that was like really really strong some of them did a few things that are really strong but I think that the McPherson tape one of the many strong things

that I think it does is the improv amongst the family and that's not easy and I do think in one of these other movies you see that that's not that improv's not easy it to make it believable that these people are just kind of like, it felt like I was looking at a family.

And my first thought, and maybe you know the answer to this, Ryan, is what was the distribution for this? Because I know you said it didn't get like a proper release until just a few years ago. It's not even a red film. That's crazy. Exactly. I know.

I was looking for like Ron Tomatoes, nothing. Well, yeah, that's, and I don't think the clip I have really goes into that too much, but this film was never distributed. So crazy story. Dean Aliotto, the filmmaker, full disclosure is a friend of mine. I was in a recent horror film of his, which I'll tell you guys about a funny story with that after this. He filmed it and they had a distributor, like they had it all set up. So he gave them the final cut.

He gave them all the artwork. It was ready to go. And not shooting you, the distribution building burned to the ground. and everything was lost. The master copy of the film, all of his artwork, everything destroyed. Like you would think that it was like,

when he first told me that, I'm like, come on, man. Like, that's such a like sort of cliche thing. Like maybe this guy burned it to the ground for insurance money. Maybe that's what happened. I don't know. But what happened, like he was heartbroken. You know, this was his first film that he ever made.

And that happened. So for years after that, He was like, well, you know, shit happens, moving on. Little did he know that somehow, some way, there were copies made of the film that made it out onto like the black market and the early days of the internet. And it became this cult thing specifically within the UFO community. This thing for years, I'm not kidding you guys, was touted as real.

Us in the UFO community thought that, thought this was an actual home video taken of an alien abduction. That's how convincing it was, which we'll get to in terms of how convincing you guys think this was. But that was crazy. And then when Dean, the filmmaker found out about this, he was like, oh, my God, I had no idea. So my film still is alive. And not only that, people think it's real. Like, I did my job.

But he wanted to get credit for it. You know, like, no, I made this. This wasn't like, this isn't a real alien abduction, guys. Come on, come on, come on. So he ended up going on like TV and saying, I made this film. I can prove to you I made this. But the UFO community was not having it.

They were so convinced and I think wanted to believe this was real. It was the evidence we always wanted. Lieutenant Colonel and the Army actually was convinced. Like, it's that this was real. It's crazy, crazy. Like to the point where eventually it got, picked up by Dick Clark Productions and remade. But, well, Dean will explain that to us.

But, yeah, that's the story behind the distribution. It never did, but somehow it still came up from the ashes like a Phoenix. And that's what I thought, because it felt like. And it's hard to explain this to people maybe that aren't of a certain age. But I think we're all of it. Like, tape swapping was a thing. Yeah. You swap tapes with people.

Absolutely. He had these big clunky tapes, and you traded it for other big clunky tapes. That's what you did. I did that with bootlegs. You know, Broadway shows back in the day. It's like, oh, I can't go to New York and see whatever. Like, Phantom of the Opera, like, let me get it on the black market. Can I swear on the show?

Absolutely. Okay, cool. I'm going to say one last thing, and then I'm going to shut the fuck up so Nick can talk. But just real quick, did it have, did the version that was out there have credit? Yeah, yes. And people still thought it was real? But what they did is whoever leaked them cut the credits off the end. Same with like the title card at the beginning.

Like whoever put this out like did it for a reason. Like I honestly think it somehow made it into the hands of like some UFO person. And they were like, I got to get this out there. Like people are going to think it's real. Like that's proving this is all real. and my life's work is for a reason, you know. So, yeah, the version that got out to the public, like all those things were cut off.

So I get it. Like, if I had seen this back in like 92, 93, which I did not, I saw the UPN remake version much later on, which we'll get to, which was still terrifying to me as well. But this original version in 89, like, I can't imagine what it must have been like,

seeing that, like on, you know, not on television, just getting a copy of it and throwing that in the VCR and watching it. Again, like, found footage wasn't a thing. So we didn't have all these ideas of like, oh, they fake this, they fake this. Like, we weren't there yet, I think, as an audience to be like, yeah, for sure, this is fake.

At least that's my opinion. I don't know. But, Nick, what do you think? Yeah, no, I mean, this is all just dovetailing off the stuff you guys said. So, I mean, I didn't do a lot of research about any of the films before we started watching him because I kind of came in later. So I was just trying to get like the movies watched. And so this is the second one I watched of the group.

And like I basically took three notes and then just watched. So I said like, oh, early found footage, the 80s, exclamation point. Because I was so like impressed. I was like, holy shit. I didn't know this existed. And then I suppose like Feels Very Home movie. And finally I just wrote Be Impressed. So for me, like one of the things I think about when you're working on like,

a found footage film. I'm sure it's the same as like a film director, which I'm sure Andrew could talk about or as an actor. How do you make something feel as realistic as possible to make it feel like this is actually something that's being shot? The actors aren't acting in it to make it feel genuine. And that was something I thought that actually worked really well with the older like 80 style, the home movies,

the lo-fi of it, worked really well. And then to add to that, Andrew, you mentioned this, the interaction between the family. That was the thing I was the most impressed with. I was like, this sounds, it sounds to me very real. Like, I bought into it. It felt like I was watching like an old family recording of my family. And so because of that, I was on that, I was already engaged.

I was like, this is doing a really good job. Because as a general rule, I'm not a huge fan of Falunfurtage films because to me, I already go, this is not, this isn't real. You can hear it. You can feel it in the way that it's being the way that the dynamic between people. It's why I thought Blair Rich was so good because Blair Witch had that feeling of like, well, shit, they're in the woods. This is really happening. And I thought this movie just fucking nailed that.

I mean, just was so well done in its simplicity between everybody in it. And I just can't like, I couldn't let go with that. I was so, it felt so. genuine. And even at one point, because I didn't know, I was like, the fuck. I like got on IMDB. I was like, is this? And I was like, okay, it's fake.

Cool, cool, cool, cool. Right? But, but you had to look. And that happened with Blair Witch, I remember, too. Yeah. And I bought it from, I bought it from Amazon. I was like, oh, yeah. Then I still was like, wait, is this not?

Is this? Right. Fake. Even though there's like a title card, right? It's crazy. That's how bought in I was. I was like, that's what, you know, I was like, Nice.

Kudos. Kudos for doing some of that. And, you know, I guess I can speak for Dean because, you know, I did like a three-hour interview with him about this entire journey with both versions of the film. I think they rehearsed for like a week. Like these people were cast. They were all local actors out in like the Bay area. And, you know, brought them in a room, told them kind of the concept and what they were going for. And again, like now you can be a trained found foot.

actor. Like there's classes to take on just how to be in found footage films from what I've been told. But back then, like, there, that's not, nobody knew what that was. So I can't imagine, like, showing up on set and kind of like, just experimenting. And this is what we got. And I think it was really effective. And we even even talked about, like, the actual plot, which is, you know, aliens show up. And, and this is inspired, I should say. Andrew, you and I talked about. this briefly. The Hopkinsville Gobland Invasion back in 1985.

Nick, I'll tell I'll school you on this one. This family in Kentucky these weird goblin-like creatures showed up in the middle of the night on their like property and were like just surrounding this house and they like went

out shooting at these things. Bullets were bouncing off of them. They were like floating in midair. It was like a weird battle going on between the like alien goblins in this terrified family. And Dean was very inspired by this supposed real event that happened back in the 50s. Like the Air Force came and investigated it, part of Project Blue Book, which was an official Air Force investigation.

That's like a legit thing, right? It's like a legit, sorry, I'm probably the least knowing. No, and Mick, if I've learned anything doing this with Ryan, it's that once you watch enough of these movies, all of those terms will just, it'll be. It would become an old hat to you. Exactly. And I saw it twice.

I was like, okay, Project Blue Book, clearly something really important. Blue Book ran for like 12 years, and it was a real program that the Air Force did to go investigate UFOs. And they hired an astronomer to come in and, like, debunk all these cases, be like, it was the planet Venus you saw, or it was swamp gas. That's where that term swamp gas comes from. With all the lights. Or you were, yeah, like stuff like. like that or you mistook something like it was his job to come in and be like i need to like quell the hysteria here in america because this is back during the cold war they didn't want people

thinking like our skies weren't safe so they hired this astronomer to be like i'm going to explain it all away um and i think once project blue book closed there were 7001 cases that remained unsolved and this astronomer came out on the other side being like holy shit like there is something to this UFO phenomenon, things I cannot explain, things the Air Force told me to legitimately cover up. And he went against all of that after, it came forward and said, they told me to lie about this. They told me to lie about this. That still remains unexplained. And he went to his grave being like, wow, I was hired to debunk all this, and I couldn't,

and there's something to this. So this Hopkinsville Goblin thing was a part of that, which is crazy. So that was kind of the inspiration, I think, for Dean to tell this story. story. Two things. Yeah. I don't want it to go on, and I promise I won't keep doing this, without it being said that my man, Anthony, said it looked like Shakji in the comments, and I consider

that the highest of compliments. Anthony, my go-to karaoke song is the Humpty Dance. So I am quite fond of Shock-G in the digital. It may he rest of peace. in the digital underground and just that really that got to my heart so thank you um the other thing y'all let's be real for a second because i do i did very much enjoy the mcpherson tape like i just full on i it was a great it's it it it was just a lot of fun to watch and i think especially when you think of it as being passed to somebody else in their basement that they watched thinking it was real that's super fun

but I, when watching it, and we're going to get in this a little bit later with some of the other movies, is that I do think that some of these, when done correctly, give you a little bit to let you in to be like, it's not real. Like there's always like a little something. For me, and this felt intentional and probably for budgetary reasons,

because from what I saw, he shot this for 6,500. which is really impressive. It's impressive. Nobody thought those aliens looked. No, I was pretty alien. And I just talked about this. Let's talk about that.

I just saw that and maybe it's because you know, maybe after years of Nazi. And I think so Ryan, that communion book cover, that's like around the same time, right? Yeah. And wasn't that the first time that like gray's really broke out into popular culture? Keep talking.

I'm going to grab the book. Okay, perfect. I remember talking about that because Ryan and I talked about communion before for his podcast, I think last year. And gray's, as I believe they're called, there we go. That look of a gray with the whatever shape of the head is

and the eyes, the slit nose, that was just becoming popularized. And a lot of it is because of that book cover, right? Does that book cover have a date on it? Do you know what year that was? So the book came out in, let me double check here. And I want to get this right because this is a pinnacle book in your, you followed you. 87.

87, okay. So I would even love to ask Dean if he had seen the book ahead of time or if he had thought it, like, gotten that idea from somewhere else. Maybe he was one of the early adapters. But I just, I guess, again, because we're talking within context, at the time, At the time, maybe that got people. I don't know. And I, and it's, it is. He shot it on $6,500 and it's still, there's a lot of fun stuff about the aliens.

But I saw that and I was like, okay, this is it letting us know that this isn't real. Right. Well, let's talk about, let's talk about the first time you see them. Nick, I'm sorry, but. Oh, no. I was. Yeah, go ahead. I wanted to add, that was the thing that I thought watched this movie, the only thing I would have liked more.

And it's funny, now that I watch movies as I'm older, I appreciate what I don't see. So I remember seeing Blair Witch Project and being like, we don't see the fucking witch. Still being freaked the fuck out by it the whole time. But I remember being like, you know, whenever age I was,

my early teens or almost teenager, and wanting that moment, and wanting the tangible thing. And now as I'm older and I watch stuff, I'm like, no, sometimes not seeing something is more effective. And that's what I thought with the cinema, I was like, man,

I would have loved to have not seen the fucking alien. and like just let it like it's like the fucking end of the soprano spoiler just like go to black if something happened because it's so grainy anyway that you I lost so much detail you know that in a way that I liked that I almost would have rather just not seen them and then I would have been that much more like kind of created it because yeah as soon as they walked in I was like oh those are some more if you're like me my hype people or um you know or you know I'm like okay yep that is yeah you're all short yeah it is I was like, you know, that's just, it just broke me out.

I was like, oh, okay, I get why it's happening. But like, yeah, I would have loved to just not seen them or just kept the one, the body. Like, you see them carrying in the body. And I was like, okay. Hidden enough that it still kind of worked for me. Because one of the things that whenever I deal or watch anything with aliens, and this is a cross-bable for all the films, we're going to see, like, and I understand that there's, I mean, obviously, if there's aliens, there's lots of different kinds of aliens, right?

It's like there's lots of kinds of species of things all over the place. But the idea of the gray is such a common idea that we see, right? Like it's such an easy thing to go to that like it almost breaks me out of it. It almost breaks me out of the illusion of what I'm watching. And that was something like I just, I would have rather not seen an alien. It's so funny you mention that, Nick. Like I get reports of people claiming to have seen these. gray beings or having been abducted by them.

And when I hear, when I have them describe it, and it's this prototypical gray alien, I do kind of be like, ah, well, like, either this is a pattern and all these people are being abducted by the same beings, or you just saw that in pop culture, and that's what you went with. So I struggle with that as a UFO researcher in an individual who is very empathetic to what we call experiencers, people who. have claimed to have experienced these things. And again, I'm like, this discussion tonight isn't about judging those who have claimed

daily in abductions or anything like that. But I understand what you're saying. The weirder the reports are that come to me, the more obscure, the more I tend to believe it, that it's not the same story I've heard over and over again. Right. And I get what you're saying. I get more scared. Like just being an audience member, like, I am always more scared of what I do not get to see, especially in sound footage stuff because it's like, oh, we're going to set the shot up perfectly.

So you get a reveal like Andrew said. Like the nod that this isn't real is when you get that like perfect reveal of the thing that's coming after you. And when that doesn't happen and some other thing happens to that camera, to me, that's way spookier. Because my mind, especially as like a theater creator, starts to fill in the, bless you, starts to fill in the. Yeah, I got an agreement. with that point. Yeah. Seems legit at the time.

Yeah, I will say, like, and I get, because I get what you're saying, Nick, and I don't disagree. But my counter question would be, what if it was something that you had seen? Oh, Close and Conters of the Third Kind. Okay. Yeah, that was pretty popular. I tend to forget about that movie. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Which, hold on one sec. I should mention this poster behind me is, from close encounters of the third guy. Oh, nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, my gosh. The artist is escaping me, but I will put a link in the show notes. Just by chance I got that because I thought it looked Halloween and UFOe. So, yeah, I thought I would mention that. But, yeah.

Yeah, my counter question, Nick, would be like, so do you think, and I know obviously it's hard to put yourself in a certain position after you've already watched something. Yeah. But if you, let's say, you saw this, even if you knew it was a movie. you know, in 1989. And this was a concept for an alien that you may not have seen that often. Do you think that would have given you any kind of leniency? I mean, it's all context, right?

Like, it's all in a matter of like what you're used to seeing at a given time. Right. So, yeah, I'm sure like that's, I mean, dude, Killer Quantum Hour Space scared the living shit out of me when I was thinking. Hey, man, I'm sure. Like, my brother would be like, we're going to watch this shit. Now I'd be like, no. So I'm sure if I watched this, even as a younger viewer, right, this somehow floated into our house because my brother loves scary movies.

I would have been like, oh my God, oh my God. I'm just saying if we're looking at it like constructively, like if you're going to make a film like that where budget is an issue, right? So clearly I'm sure I would love to know that like you saved your budget for that, right? Like that's the thing that like you're going to spend your money on to create that moment. But would it have been more effective to not see it so like them walking? in the room in that way. Yeah. I get that.

What about the standing in front of the shit moment? What's that? What about the standing in front of the ship moment? Oh. Not like that either. No, see, it's funny because for me when I was watching, that happened so fast.

Okay. When I talk about like the great, the quality of the video adding, adding to the film for me because it's high depth, like that kind of stuff for me passed. I loved it because I couldn't like, it happened so fast and I was trying to like make out what was gone. See me of them carrying an alien in.

Like, there's enough that's kind of hidden from me that it worked. It was just the end, the walking in and the end, where I was like, those are people on a costume. Yeah. Like, so even like a teenage me would have been like, those are people in a costume. In a costume. All right. That's fair. Well, I'm glad Andrew brought up the shit.

So I'm just going to kind of fast forward through the plot just in case people haven't really seen it. So, you know, it's this little girl's birthday. She blows out her candles. Then the power goes out. So these brothers, older brothers, go out to fix the electric. electricity and they end up going, they see something kind of like, I don't know if it like zips by or crash lands, but they see something go off in the distance in the woods. So they go out and, you know, the teenager who's still filming all of this because he's like, oh, this is kind of cool. They see literally a landed UFO in like kind of, it looks kind of like a gorge or like a gully, whatever you would call that.

And a ravine. Thank you, Nick. That's the East Coast coming out with me. A gorge. I got you in the Midwest right here. Yep. Yep. And that ship, we see, like, kind of remnants of a UFO and some little aliens in front of it.

I mean, Dean built that ship from scratch. That's so cool. Plywood and, like, paper machet and stuff. It's really impressive. It's so good. It's so impressive. I have to give him credit. And, like, you know, we had a couple people on set.

with him. But like, this was as skeleton crew as it comes. And I I'm just amazed at what he was able to do with that. But moving back to the plot, so they see it, the aliens see them. So they run back into the house, tell the rest of the family, there's

fucking, literally, there's fucking aliens out there. And then the family gets all worked up. And then what happens, the aliens start to move in on the house and you get that kind of typical aliens trap them in the house thing. like the Hopkinsville Goblins or Sines.

Signs was incredibly inspired by the Hopkinsville Goblin case as well. And I think another one of our films that we're going to talk about was inspired by either Sines or the McPherson tape. But yeah, that's kind of the story. We don't have to go through the whole thing. They're trying to fend off these aliens. They shoot one. Bring it into the house, put it in a bedroom. And then the brothers try to go, I don't know, find the cops or something.

thing and they never come back. So we're kind of left with the rest of the family to fend for themselves as this invasion happens. Oh, man. Yeah, anything you guys want to add? Don't bring him inside. Why are you bringing inside? That's what I'm saying.

Why would you bring them inside? Why the fuck are you bringing that thing into your house? Well, yeah, there's a lot of, question. And I think I grant this some leeway in that kind of stuff, just because I think that we now know that people do a lot of stupid things for no reason. I think that's true. Like, if you can't accept that, you know, fantastic.

I mean, it's a good thing. I mean, I'm like, I'm going on my TV being like, don't do it. Right, right, right. There are a couple things. There's one thing I just have to say, and this probably, look,

on a week of rehearsal, I'm impressed with what they were able to get done. I will say, I thought the improv was great. And I'm not even sure, was there a full script, Ryan, or was it improv most? Okay, that's what I figured.

He gave them, like, a premise of the scene, and they, did everything. I feel like there were time, there were just a couple times, and this could, again, giving a week of rehearsal,

where they just all, not all of them, but a lot of them had like kind of actory moments, and a lot of them had with things, had to do with things where it's like, okay, for this one part, though, you have to say, there's an alien outside of it.

Like, whenever they were fed lines, you could really tell. And I was just like, oh, that's kind of, well, it's charming. I think there's, There's a lot of charm to this movie. I don't fault it for those kind of things.

It's just like I wouldn't fault clerks for some of the, some of the line reads that are in that movie. Like there is just only so much you can do with that budget and that amount of time. And I think that they really did a lot. I think they did a lot that was impressive. And some of the moments, it happens with big budgets too. Yes, exactly. All big time.

Yes. You know what I mean? There's shit I watch a whole time where I'm like, this is really good. And you get to point in you're like, I mean, especially it's like a person who teaches performance, right? And you get to be like, oh, yeah. Or if I'm performing and like, I'm like, oh, oh, I think that's the nature of the beast, I think sometimes. Yeah.

Right. Well, and, you know, I think this is a good point to mention, too. This became pretty popular that people at Dick Clark Productions saw it and said, this is awesome. we let's do this and they hired dean to remake this with like a $1.5 million budget instead of $6,500. And it's almost shot for shot. I'm not kidding you. But this was mind you, UPN who hired all the actors and stuff. So talk about like knowing something's fake.

You've got like just eating the scenery. And what are the kids in space cases was in there? Yes. Oh my God, dude. That was the. That's how I knew it was fake. The kid with the ears, the kid with the ears from space case. Really?

The ears and the mullet. Also, space cases. I was trying to think of what that show was called. Yeah, good, good gig, man. I've been, and that show, maybe somebody out there can help me. I feel like that show is hard to find. I don't understand all the things that were put on Paramount Plus. I can watch Are You Afraid of the Dark, Rockles, Modern Life, Nick Arcade, all kinds of stuff.

I can't watch Space Case? No. I can't watch Space Case. I can watch Hey dude And I can watch It's on It's on Paramount Plus

Yeah Wait a slur your shorts on Paramount Plus I have fuck yeah Slurie Short is on Paramount Plus But you know what is it A whole other podcast Base cases That show

That's right No more digress I'm not watching the show I'm like yo Zach from Power Rangers Is on that show Yes he was And then Julie

Julie stays Jewel State... The one who ended up in... Firefly? Firefly, right. I watched some class

forward on Disney and then she was in that show and I was like, you are... And therefore, and then she was gone in the second season. I was like,

you just robbed me. Keep it PG, Nick. Disney, you rob me and Nickelodeon you rob me. That show was great. Anthony Clark says, oh my God, the best. Let's see.

Let's run through a few of these comments. Thanks, Mary, for being here. UFO twice. signs too. I like signs too. This is a great movie. I love signs. Oh, Space Ghost and Zurach, sure. I saw that. I love it. Don't forget Braksha.

Let's, let's, I guess, because we could talk about, we could talk about all these movies forever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jeez, we've been going for almost 55 minutes already, guys. Let me see if there's anything else that want to really hit here.

So, you know, it kind of what did I miss? Now would I, please continue. All right. I love you guys. I love you guys. This is a side of me that my viewers and listeners don't see often. Ryan and like theater in film mode with my two best friends.

So I hope people are digging this. So what do we got? Dead alien in the bedroom. The family is kind of like dealing with all these weird paranormal things going on in the house that the aliens are probably a part of. And then we get to the. end of the movie. And this is interesting. You know, they're trying to calm down, keep the young daughter, like, you know, distracted from all this. And then we get the final shots of the movie,

which while I agree, you know, looked a little cheesy. I thought we're very effective. Like, the fact that you're getting like a great angle and you're just seeing these creatures walk quietly into the home. I was just like, oh my God, like, look, look over. Please look over. And then movie cuts out. And it's them. And I love to, it's the family playing cards. I love that idea that they keep trying to calm each other down, you know,

especially given that there's a five-year-old there. Yeah, like, it's just really, there's something very human about the whole thing that I really, that I just really appreciated. And I think was really well done. and really helps enjoy the movie, the picture. Like, it's, it's, it's, it's, it, there's this, not even just heart necessarily. There is this humanity to it that I think is a good hook for something that is a found footage movie. And it feels like it is found footage.

I really appreciate it. There are some things that are a little contrived. That happens. But I appreciated that the tone, the vibe, even when. crazy shit is going on. It feels very found footage. I also love the excuse of keeping the camera around. And this is, I feel like this

would be a thing that would be done now, which is kind of funny. Which is the whole like, oh, that thing's huge and it's on your show, like get it. I love that that was happening in real time. Like, I mean, like six years removed because I know it's supposed to take place in 83. But that was, that's how somebody would have reacted

at the time. And I just think that's funny that that's like captured, like a little time cap. And we're all of that age, like, I remember when my family got a camera like that. I mean, dude, it came out all the fucking time. Sure. I mean, just because, like, you know, from my parents who are old, so my parents are much older, they're born in the 40s. So for them, like, this shit's just, I mean, when that came in our house, it was revolutionary.

Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, think about the first time you got a camera phone. Oh, I always take your pictures of everything. Yeah. Thank you, Anthony. Thank you for that super chat. We have to still have fun discussing it while. seriously talking about it. It gets so dry at times. Keep it fun. He's totally right.

Like, this is, that's what tonight is for. Like, we will leave the abduction phenomenon, the serious nature of it at the door. We're here tonight to talk about some. Kind of. I think we're going to have to talk about that later. And you know me. Absolutely. I know we're slowly moving, but I thought this is a really good example too in films. Like, where good, like, having a very clear purpose of what you're trying to do. Like, this is what I'm trying to accomplish with this film. And then good storytelling can over, like, overshadow a lot of what would seem shortfalls or seeing problems. Like, budget. Like, but knowing, like, knowing what you want to do.

And it's so impressive that it was the first one to watch that and be like, this director knew what he wanted to do with this. It was clear. And he executed it so beautifully. It just goes to show that storytelling, how much that can really, especially going into films later on, How much like a clear idea of storytelling can really bolster what you're doing? Yeah. Yeah.

It can like a story and an actor can really make something that might lack in other ways like really shine. And I think this cast just, they seem like a real family. And it just seems so authentic to me. I loved the grandmother. I thought she was fantastic. I said I saw somebody in the comments say that she is,

they thought she had an actual experience. That's wild. No, I thought she was... She told the story at her audition, I believe. And they were like, she's cast. Yeah, she was great. She was great. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, she was really good.

Gruffled, grandma, you know. There's aliens out there. What? There's no... Like, what are you talking? And I loved all that. And again, this is not a criticism. I just think this is funny.

It cracked me up that they were able to talk those dudes down. They just saw something that should break their brain. And they were just like, no, it's fine. And they're like, they hug it out. They're like, all right, I'm good. I'm good. You know what? Let's go play.

Let's go play. Like, it's, I did. Birthday party commence. Yeah, it was pretty interesting. That's crazy. Well, let's do this, guys. I've got a short, short. I've got about a five-minute clip from Dean who wanted to give his thoughts on a lot of

this for the audience. So if you want, if you guys want to go take a little break, I'm going to go ahead and play that for the audience right now. We're going to get the inside. I do want to watch it. Absolutely. You're going to be able to watch it right now. Let me make sure I have this ready to go.

Enjoy, guys. This is Dean Aliotto talking about the movie. Ryan and Andrew, I heard that you guys are going to be reviewing my film, the McPherson tape, and that you wanted me to comment on the making of it and also talk about my journey into the UFO alien abduction phenomenon rabbit hall. This film was made for two reasons. The first was I had to make my first feature by the age of 25 because all of my film directing idols like Spielberg and Scorsese had done that. And the second reason is that I had read

Whitley Streber's book Communion, which scared the shit out of me more than any Stephen King novel had ever done. And so I felt compelled to share this with an audience, but have them feel it as close as they can without actually being abducted. And so I came up with the conceit of shooting it through the lens of a 16-year-old's new home video camera. This is 10 years before Blair Witch, so there was no kind of reference for, oh, I'll just do a found footage film. It was more of, well, I've shot wedding videos. So maybe if I just take this as an event, a little girl's five-year-old birthday party, and have this kid videotape it and then conflate the two

where all of a sudden here this UFO sighting happens and they go out to investigate and they see this ship in aliens, and then one by one they get abducted and it's all caught on videotape. I thought that would be as close as possible as I can get to approximating. what that experience would be like. So I said about doing this. I only had a budget of $6,500. I hired improvisational actors out of San Francisco, the Bay Area.

This was shot just outside of that. And we went about shooting this in essentially one night. I play the kid, Michael, and I have a headset on that I'm communicating to all the assistant directors. So I'm telling them, Q the alien ship, Q, Q the aliens. And I'm trying to stay in character as a kid with this camera.

It was a blast. It was very much like shooting a live sporting event. For the aliens, I took a page out of the Spielberg Alien directing playbook and hired kids to play the aliens, three girls. And that was it. We had 750 bucks for the shipman alien masks and rubber hands. You know, we had no idea really what we had because it was so experimental. We just, let's just go out and shoot this.

and what we get is, you know, what we're meant to get. We actually got a distribution deal, and the film was set to get released. Unfortunately, the distribution company burned to the ground and lost my main master in all my artwork, and I thought, well, that was it, and it was for five years. And then I received a call from someone claiming that he had been to the International UFO Congress convention where my film had been shown as the real McCoy. A lieutenant colonel and a UFO researcher claimed it was authentic, and it supposedly brought the house down,

and there were several TV shows that wanted to do specials, shows like Unsolved Mysteries, Encounters, et cetera. And so I went on one of these shows and debunked it, because my feeling was, I admire UFO researchers and trying to get to the truth,

and they sure as hell don't need to be going down any more blind alleys that seem to be created every month by fake UFO makers. And so I debunked the film on national TV. And again, I thought, well, that was my kind of, you know, 15 minutes of fame on this project. And then flash forward a few years later. And I'm at UPN. And I'm pitching them a TV movie version of this. And now my budget was $1.25 million. And we got the guys from the

X-Files to do the ship and aliens. And again, thought that was it. You know, it came out, did really well. And then several years went by and with the proliferation of online and chat rooms and farms and stuff, a whole new crop of conspiracy theories started building around this. And it basically kind of cemented the cult status of the films. And so just a few years ago, I received a call from Alhandro Rojas and Karen Brard at the International UFO Congress Convention. And for the 25th anniversary, they wanted to show the film again. And so that was kind of where part one, of my journey as a filmmaker ended, and my journey as someone getting sucked into the UFO alien rabbit hole began. At these conventions, which I'd never gone to before, I met a whole bunch of people

who seemed highly credible. I ended up actually going to a couple UFO support group meetings and left being just completely both terrified and shocked by what I had witnessed. There were people from all walks of life, from supervisors of Homeland Security to doctors and lawyers, major in the Army, a woman who had done TED Talk, highly credible people that were smart, articulate, and did not cause a blip to go off on my bullshit meter. So looking back on that film, I am really, really grateful that people have kept it alive and have been inspired by it and some of them made their own films. And that people in the UFO community have also found it inspiring and worthy of conversation.

And I look forward to doing more projects in that space. And lastly, and this is most important, you can get my film at Amazon. You can get it on Blu-Ring and you can also stream it. So thank you guys again for reviewing the film. I'm honored. I hope everyone digs it, who hasn't seen it yet, and look forward to creating more content in this space in the future. Cheers.

Awesome. So that was Dean coming in to give us the Inside Scoop on both versions of that. I hope you guys had a good break. I'll bring you back in in just a sec. Nick's here. I'll bring you in, Nick. What's up, buddy? What's up?

So, yeah, we got the Inside Scoop. from Dean. I thought that was pretty cool. To have it. Yeah, what, let's do it. Final rating of the picture. Let's be one out of ten flying saucers. I'd give it like, like eight. Wait, can we do one out of ten not using seven?

Can't use that? Sure, Nick. There's a whole, so no, listen, there's a whole study that people will do that if you say raise something from one out of ten, most people will do seven. They don't want to go lower than seven because six is bad. bad, but they don't want to go higher than seven, because I mean it's too good. So if you eliminate seven, seven point five.

You, motherfucker. No, I'm just kidding. No, no, no. I'm actually going to go much higher than that. I'm going to go, because I think I would want to go, especially out of the four that I watched, ooh, it's tough. I'm going to say 10 out of 10. I'm going to give it 10 out of 10 flying saucers.

I really am. I really enjoyed it. I think Nick nailed it that there's a clear intent and mission to what's going on. I think he executed it really well, especially with the tools that he had at his hand. And I think the fact that it fooled a generation of people is pretty impressive. And I appreciate knowing that that was not his intent. His intent was not to fool people. I think that's very important.

And it's going to come up. And it's going to come up again later. Good. That's amazing. I love that. I'm really impressed by that. Really? That's going up again later? Really? Really? Yeah. Okay. Cool. Cool. Cool. Let's move on. Oh, I'm going to mix mine together between Nick's and yours. I'll give it a 9.5. I don't know what he could have really. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what Dean could have done better. He had so much working against him, so many challenges, being the first of his kind. He had a lot to lose with this. But I think this really cemented him as like a pioneer. in filmmaking, which was a dream of his.

He probably never saw it, like, being the first of something, but he did. So I give him all the credit in the world. McPherson, too. Because, like, when you make any kind of film, it's such a fucking labor of love that, like... Absolutely. Good for him.

Well, okay. Before we move to our next film, very quick story, I was in one of Dean Aliotto's newest horror movies. This was when I was living in L.A. He called me up. He's like, hey, what would you think about playing a duchy paranormal investigator?

And I told him, I don't really have to act. I could do that. Like, it's fine. Check. Check, done. And I was all in. I had enacted in years. Nick, you know, like, I'm horrible at memorizing scripts and stuff.

I have like four lines. And I couldn't even. It was insane. But fast forward. We shot in this incredible neighborhood in right outside L. It was actually the neighborhood where they shot Nightmare on Elm Street. Oh, cool. And also the, we film next door to the thriller house from the thriller music video.

It was so cool. It's just like these really old haunted house-looking places in L.A. You would never expect these places to be there. But lo and behold, that's where they were. So we, Dean had scouted this house where we were playing like it was haunted. And I'm like the paranormal investigator who's super like trying to be cool and like everything we do is real. Like I'm the one who communicates with the ghosts. Nobody else can.

Blah, blah, blah. So we shoot this scene where we're walking up and my girlfriend Jane is in the movie as well. She plays a psychic along with my ghost hunting crew. I've got the two big burly white bald dudes in the back like every ghost hunting crew has. every ghost hunting crew is all white. Andrew, you'll have to explain that one to me. Why am I going to wait? Hold on a second. Why does Andrew have to explain something to us?

As a resident, not 100% white guy, I would like you to explain that. Why are all ghost hunters white? Yeah, let me tell you about yourself. Don't you put that on me. I'm sorry, that's a lot of pressure. Mind you, there is literally a ghost hunting show with just African Americans. It's amazing. And I can give you half an answer on both.

I love it I love it I'm digging myself in a hole here let's move on so we're filming I'll finish with this we were filming the scene and I go up to the door

to like knock for like and nobody's home like the house is vacant it's been vacant forever or so we thought so I knock on the door and that's like cut done we're not going to show what goes on after that

somebody had been living in the house house and Dean thought it was vacant and empty. We were filming, mind you, on their front porch for almost two hours. Yeah. And I go to knock on the door, you know, being all like confident, we're done, we're done. And the door flings open. And this woman got in my face and she was like, what the fuck are you doing? Who are you? What do you? Get off my property. Oh my God. And then her husband came out and I swear. I swear, I swear they had. a gun. I might not have seen it, but they definitely were the type who would have

shot us dead right there. And, oh my God, man, we had this really awkward exchange. We ran into the car, we got out of there, and Dean felt so bad. He was like, oh my God, he's like, I swear I checked this out. I was told it was vacant.

Like, I knocked for almost 30 minutes. No one answered. And to be there, like these people looked like they had been squatting. So it's very possible that they didn't even live there. But they had the crazy eyes, so we got the hell out of there.

But that was a memorable experience of filming with Dean Elliott as I'm sure it was for McPherson tape as well. Yeah, yeah. So check out the movie Portal, which is on Amazon right now. Portal, P-O-R-C-R-C-R-Ching. Yep. And starring, I might add, Heather Langenken from

Hey, pretty cool. I did not get to film. How are you, she's a lot. She was Nancy? No, is it Nancy? Yeah, it's Nancy. Yeah, and the first one, and then she shows up in the third one, and then she's in my favorite one.

She goes up in a new nightmare. Yeah, yeah. It's a great fucking movie. Yeah, I don't know how they got her, but they got her in. It's actually a pretty fun movie. So check out Portal by Dean Aliotto. But let's move on to our next film.

We've got alien abduction. No, we don't. I fast forwarded it too much. Sorry, guys. We have slumber party. aphabduction. 2013, like Andrew mentioned, this is a segment from the movie VHS2.

So for any of you guys who don't know, these VHS movies are, they all kind of have that like found footage feel like this is supposed to be VHS as you dug up or whatnot. Am I right? And I think it also gives the kind of, and I'm sure maybe Jason, when you spoke to him earlier,

maybe he spoke to this, but I feel like it is, well, I mean, the setup for this particular one is these people break into a, a house and they find all these tapes, like, and they broke into the wrong house, essentially. But I feel like it has that kind of, like, tape swap feel to it, these movies. Like, you know, like, oh, you're passing these VHSs around. Like, that's how you see faces of death or how you see, like, you know, it's, it's,

um, yeah, I don't know, it has that kind of feel to it, the movies. And I really love, there's a lot of fun stuff in VHS, too. I think that one, I saw that one, and I remember actually there were a couple segments that I thought were really, really stand out. One of the other segments is done by Eduardo Sanchez, who did Blair Witch. Absolutely. Yes, exactly. We were in good company here for sure.

This was a... And Adam Wingard did one of them? Sorry. Yep. No, no, dude, they were packed. And that's what's so cool is like these anthology series. They get these really talented people to kind of give their own take on things, put them all together.

It's like having a play festival. Yeah, sure. You get a bunch of different visions. and stories being told, written and directed by Jason Eisner, who for those of you who don't know, he has a funny film called, I think, Hobo with a shotgun. Yes, yes, which made it into the Grindhouse. He won the competition and made it into the Grindhouse fake trailer thing.

He's also behind one of my favorite shows, Dark Side of the Ring. I will say that I wore my fully cosplay tonight, half because I knew we were covering a movie that Jason did, I think, y'all, even if you are not a wrestling fan, watch Dark Side of the Rings. Ryan was just telling me about it. Watch dark. It's a phenomenal show, the documentaries, the stuff that they are able to uncover, speaking of humanity, the heart and humanity that they bring to a lot of those stories,

and they bring attention to wrestlers and stories about certain wrestlers that really don't get as much attention as they should. Lessons a hard fucking life. Really hard. Like anything, like there's like the top tops, and I mean, that's hard, but then you have like, everyone trying to make it like it's fucking crazy. Yeah, and it used to be a lot harder too. Like there's just a lot.

165 days a year those guys. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. Put the bodies through. I mean, yeah.

And for a long time too. Before now, luckily, DDP is saving everybody with his yoga. But instead, everybody would just be in pain and just fucking take pills or drink. Popping pills. Yeah.

It's, it's come a long way. It has. Yeah. So I'd say it's slightly. Screw the Undertaker for being like, you know, back in my, at one point recently, and then I'm done with this tangent. At one point recently, the Undertaker was just like, you know, back in my day, people after

a wrestling, but we went, we got drunk till four in the morning and got in the bar fights. We didn't, you know, play video games for a bunch of hours. And it's like, bro, back in your day, these dudes had, like, would die constantly. And then it's still a problem with pro wrestling. But it's like there's the people that ruin their lives doing shit like that. And now these guys are trying to save their mental health But instead of going out to bars until 4 or 5 in the morning They're going on Twitch

The whole point of generations The next is to make it easier and better for the generation before you I will speak so this is my one number going to be a parent I have a young son All I think about now All I think about is like How can I, Nick Westmire, Make something better for my soon-to-be five-year-old?

You prepare him for the Water Wars of 2047 Well, yes, of course. You know, well, he's small like me, so he'll, like, be able to, like, get in and out of stuff. It's going to be great. But, like, seriously, I hate that shit. Like, well, when we were good, it's great. Then people learn not to be as, you know, dumb as you. I wish more people thought like that, Nick.

I really do. I really, really do. All right. Well, let's, I guess let's talk about alien abduction slumber party. I have this. Yeah, this being the one I had. Anthony, Nick is my favorite F-bomber, spirit animal. Thanks.

Thanks, Anthony. And I'm going to. going to reset the room as we do here at somewhere in the skies. If you're just joining us, I have Andrew Sanford, Nick Westermeyer with us, two of my best buds here in New York City, both in the TV and film industry. We're reviewing four found footage alien abduction movies. If you want to help out somewhere in the skies, you can use the super chat. We will highlight your comments or ask your questions to Nick and Andrew as well. Guys, please help out somewhere in the skies. Ryan steals me whiskey for moving him into his apartment.

I owe you way more than just whiskey, both of you, both of you. So yes, please help the show out. And in turn, you will be helping these two fine gentlemen as well. We are on 2013's slumber party alien abduction, quick synopsis. We're at a slumber party. There's an alien abduction. Synopsis done. But the interesting thing about this, found footage, again, but in a really interesting

way. This isn't a 16-year-old at a birthday party holding the camera. This is from the point of view of ostensibly a dog with a GoPro camera on it. So we got to give Jason credit for a unique way of filming this thing. Initial thoughts, guys. Go. I really enjoyed it. I had seen this one before and it's been a while since I seen. I think I was since I saw it. I think I must have saw it right around the time it came out, honestly, or at least came to a VOD. But I just really enjoy it. I think there's a lot that's like really scary about it. I do think it is clearly heavily inspired by the McPherson tapes. I would be like in a very good way. It's almost, it's almost like an update in a way. Or I would call them like sister movies. Like they're very, they have a very similar kind. I think they're

both trying to accomplish the same thing except one had 60 minutes and one had four. which is really impressive with what they're able to get done in that amount of time. But yeah, I think it's very inventive. I would love to, I, as a filmmaker myself, I was like, oh, man, how did they shoot in that sleeping bag when the kids in the water and, like, the dogs? I thought that was fantastic. I thought that was really, really cool. Just for me, even in a technical standpoint, I was like, that's really cool. Let's give some setup for that.

So we have the film. No, no setup. No setup. Go watch the movie. movie. No. Welcome to Summer of the Skies hosted by Andrew Sanford. Go watch the movie.

In Andrew's Day, you had to watch the movie before you heard anything about it. Before you listened to about it. Really? What, in his day? Somebody had to be there with a piano. Otherwise, there's no sound. Otherwise, there's no sound. All right.

We have, these kids are going to have a slumber party. the parents go away for the night. You know, you've got the older. They're very young parents. Not that, but I like, I always like, the mom especially, I was like, how old are you? I was like, is she, at first I thought she was the older. This has nothing to do with anything.

Right. I was just, because they're literally on screen for like five seconds, but I was like, they seem kind of young. Yeah. We got to know the parents are out, so the kids are at play. And people age beautifully. It's true. That's an absolute point.

You're watching the opposite happen. on the third screen. Stop it. Stop it. But, well, okay, I'm sorry. These kids... Why are you sorry, Ryan? These kids are terrible.

Yeah, yeah, they're pretty rough. Terrible. So the first kind of, like, thing we get is, you know, they live behind a lake and the older sister, her boyfriend comes over, obviously, because the parents aren't around.

And they're, like, out on the dock. The little kids are going to mess with them, get in the water, start, soaking them with like super soakers Super sores. With pee, mind you, and water balloons full of pee. And again, like these kids are like, oh my God, they're so... That's primal brother. I was proud of them. That boyfriend was a real, real jerk.

Yeah, he was a real real jerk. Well, let's talk about it. So the boyfriend, he gets all pissed, he jumps in the water to get one of the younger kids. Well, let's start. No, no, no, let's start. The boyfriend shows up, drives over one of their costumes. kicks their stereo, like, kicks it, like, just, I was like, that does that. Kicks their stereo.

I was like, I was like, those turns in it. And again, you have 14 minutes. So, like, you just kick, just kick that stereo. Thank you for that. Look, I appreciate it. You just got your Twitter handle. That handle is no longer accurate, but follow that handle on Twitter. You'll see some casually funny stuff.

If you go there right now, I posted a picture from this live show. ask me questions there. Do you do it. Yeah, so the boyfriend's a dick. Obviously, we've established that. Yes, we have. Very well. He jumps in the water to get the kid

who's right now kind of filming the thing before they put the GoPro on the dog. And that's where we get our first show. I love that. I love that so much. What are you guys thinking of our first shot of the alien? I love it. Great. Oh, my God.

Terrified. It was real scary. And it's, it is a jump. What I love about some jump scares, because I'm not a big jump scare person, but what I like about that is it's a blink and you'll miss it kind of jump scare. I don't remember that from the first time that I watched this. And to see that happen, I was like, oh, cool. Like I just thought that was really, really strong, real scary. They look great.

Yes, they do. It looks so good. I do talk to Jason about that. the alien creatures in this were very simple but also really scary. But yeah. So what I thought was really interesting is the boy jumps in the water, but then when the camera goes under, it's an alien. And again, it was the first jump scare. And how he did that, it just, it astounds me.

Like just for the budget he had, the time. They shot this in a week. They shot this thing in a week. It's really, really impressive. And again, like, I've never seen an alien abduction movie starting in the water of all things. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's good point.

Well, what do we got next? Any of you guys want to go on to whatever the next plot point was here? Oh, plot point. Well, I mean, then they... Or whatever. Starts. I was just... The thing I just watched this.

I watched this before we got on. It was like the last night I had to watch. So I was like at my computer setting up and, like, huddled to my wife and kid in here. And then, but I have to say, like, I, short films, short films, store plays, whatever, if you can do it well, if you can tell a succinct story in fucking 13 minutes that engages me, scares me a little bit, I have to kudos you because like, that means you have to get all of your storytelling done immediately. There's no, there's no fat, right? It's all got to be, and I thought this did a pretty good job at, yeah. Like, I never lost, I never was able to, I never disengage. It didn't allow me to, like, disengage.

And I thought that the story, again, the storytelling in this was really good. And with that first alien shower, even some of the other ones, to me, I think I'll keep going back to this because to me, when I watch these movies, it's what I like, the scared, like, you get just enough alien to make it really good, but not so much that you start to, like, pick it apart. I thought they did a great job. It was great design. It was great creature work.

And then, like, it was executed. Your visions of the creature were executed really well. Nick didn't be shy jump in there. He did. He jumped in there. Yeah, man. And let's, I think you're right. Like, you have so much time to tell the story.

I think he had a really good beginning, middle, and end. We'll get there. But let's talk about the slumber party aspect. Sure. And you guys know which scene I'm going to bring up. bring up. We get the scene where the girlfriend and the older brother walk in on the kids in the living room.

And one of the kids is, I'm just going to say it. Who doesn't have a slumber party? Was being off to a porn. Pounding off as they say. Pounding off as the kids say to a porn. So I want to ask you guys, is this a thing? No. Did you guys watch porn with your friends at slumber parties or anything like that?

Like, who does that? No. Again, that's why I was, like, who are these kids? What damn? So, I may have watched, like, late night HBO or Cinemax with, like, my friends, because they had it, and you're like, yo, we need to watch somebody like that.

While we can. Yeah. But there was, like, there's, that's about as far as that went. Well, no, you really cut yourself off there. No, I am. No, because here's this thing. Has that happened to me personally?

Not to my knowledge, because I was usually one of the first ones of sleep at these kind of things. And that's if I would go, because I was also not a big celebrity person growing up. I still don't like sleeping in not my own place. I get it. That being said, let us remember that 13-year-olds, 13, 14-year-olds are disgusting. Right? Right?

I think we can agree with that. The young teenagers are gross. And especially boys that age, oh, God, just disgusting. Boys and girls filthy little animals. Like, I'm already nervous. I've had to warn my wife. I have two little boys.

And at some point, there'll be, if your friends had a pen. Look, look, yes. Look, watching porn together is a weird thing

that young, young, young boys do. You just, it's just, it is a thing that, like, and then it's just,

it's just awkward. It's just awkward around. But no, but I, yeah, I don't, I, this to me was the least far-fetched thing.

Okay. the entire thing. I just, I had to get your guys opinion on that. I just really, I was like, of course. Look,

he's in a sleeping bag. It's not like it's going anywhere. Right? He's shielded. Good boys. Come on. Where's it going to go? Where's it going to go?

Oh, In just a sleeping bag with him. That's his mess. All right. Listen, toddler to like, kid boys are also equally fucking disgusting. Oh,

look, boys are gross. The children are disgusting. I love. love my view. You're not to tell any of us. Yeah. I picked up my kid's mattress to change the sheets and underneath I just saw goldfish and fucking Cheerios for days. I'm like, what? What? And then I open up the couch. I'm like, oh, and you did not throw that out, correct? You respected, you respected his stash. Yeah, not a real goldfish, right? I just want to make that. No, no, like the very underrated

snack that is fantastic. I like, I like goldfish. Joy's a big goldfish. My problem with goldfish, I'll eat too many. They're not heavy enough. Yeah. Like what I like about cheesots is cheesots let me know when I'm done eating cheeses. Goldfish, I'll eat that entire bag without even thinking twice about it. Quality content here, guys, at somewhere in the sky. Yeah, you know, you hear this with snack talk.

That was old time. Somewhere in the snacks where we're talking about 13-year-old boys masturbating. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're talking about it. It's gone off the rails. Who wants to talk about what an oaky cookie is? We'll just cross the over it. No, what do you do? Wait, where's everybody going?

Okay, let's get back on track here. So the boys... I think we're perfectly on track. It's the movie that got us talking about Master Mansion. I think that's... I think if you're doing service. I have five kids. There we go.

We got the woman's perspective. I love that. Appreciate you. So, okay, so that scene happens, whatever. And now they're all kind of in the same. room and this is when things really start to get amped up. We get like crazy. The house is shaking.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Lights are coming into the windows. Clearly something weird. Again, because you got so much time. You got to get that shit moving. You got to get it in now. And then... The boyfriend just has a shotgun.

Yeah. It just finds an easily accessible shotgun that the person who doesn't live there knows there it is. Again, this is not a criticism. This is not everything wrong with whatever those stupid videos are. That's not a criticism. It's just funny.

We're nitpicking, Jason, if you're watching this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's not even a nitpick because it brought me a sense of joy. It made me happy that he just suddenly had a shotgun. I was like, oh, shit, like that. And he seemed like that kind of character. It's just like, where do you get that shotgun? It doesn't matter.

It's just a fun thing to think about. Right. So, okay. So this is when it goes to... And he gets got. He gets got. Zero to 80. We go zero to 180

Immediately. There's no like There's no subtlety of aliens Coming in or weird paranormal stuff Like these aliens fucking bust through Like psychopaths And just zip these kids up in their sleeping bags And drag them the hell out of them

That was so jolting to me. Yes. Ryan, I have a question for it. I have a question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This might seem like a tangent but I do not intend it to be one. In the same way that PETA may get upset if a movie shows the harming of animals or anything like that, are there people, and this is a sincere question, are there people in the UFO community that get upset when aliens are portrayed as hostile?

Oh, 100%. Yes. That is a big conflict within the UFO community is a lot of them believe aliens are benevolent and they're here. help us and love and light. You've got that whole aspect of it. But you do have those who have claimed very traumatic, evasive, intrusive things. And look, if we're talking about fond footage and alien abduction, obviously, they're going to go the malevolent around usually, the scary about.

So, but yes, that is a big issue that I think a lot of claimed experiencers have with these types of movies or the way aliens are portrayed or how the, quote unquote victims are betrayed. You know, a lot of these people who have these experiences, they do everything they can to fight back or, you know, they don't see themselves as victims. And then on TV, like, we'll talk about a movie later on that really takes that to the next level.

But yeah, that's a great question, actually, and kind of see it play out with it. Especially in this one, I'm just like, it's straight up. Like, it even looks like, I'm like, help you out here. Are they biting that girl? at the end when they get the last... It looked like they were taking a chunk out of that. Yeah, it looked like he was trying to eat her. And I was like, oh, shit. Like, that got me because I was like, I don't think I've seen that dog before that. Let's talk about that scene. I think Nick, you brought it up. The dragging them out and into the water. Again, this is not something you see in usually alien abduction lore. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Aliens coming out of the water and then bringing their abductees back into the water.

And all you see is the kid in the sleeping bag, and then it starts to fill with water. And that took me a minute to be like, what is happening here? And then I realized I'm like, holy shit, he brought him into the lake. And like, it blew my mind. I'd never seen anything like that before. They're almost, to me, they're almost, this is something with the bite. They're almost predators in this movie. So when I watch these, so whenever I watch an abduction movie, and I always think about this, I'm like, okay.

So if things are coming out, whether it's peaceful or whatever side you're going on it, I try to think about like an animal, right? So like what we do, like people. We're like, oh, let's go check out this wild animal. And then we come in in a truck or a plane and we fucking shoot them with a goddamn dart. And then we like do shit to them. And sometimes they're not like, listen, I've watched a lot of Dr. Oakley on Disney Plus. And a lot of times you're like, that animal's not fully asleep.

We don't think it's feeling pain. And I was like, oh, that clocks, right? That fear of something that's unknown, that's doing something, right? because if you're just an animal essentially to these things that are even if they're not doing it in a malicious way, it could still kind of be fucking malicious. We don't think we're malicious all the time. And so where I liked about this, dovetining off that is the first time that it seemed to me like they were predators.

Like it is a predation of the people at this party, which is different than the abduction to me that we'll get to in the other, the other abduction. Like, no, like the bite, the dragging into the water, it's hunting. It's literally hunting. And then they're watching them, and then it's an attack, right? Then it's like, once you say, like, once it snaps, then it's an attack.

And that's what feels so, like, visceral about this film in a way that other ones did not. Because you don't know in McPherson's like what's going to happen with those aliens. You don't, that's, it's left for the radiation. This one, like, they're coming out in a hyper-aggressive way. It is in your face. Yeah. Predator is a perfect word, Nick. I feel like, like, this is the one that really stuck out to me is, like, if this is how an alien race would treat us, like, God, God willing, just kill me now.

Like, I don't want to be put through that to be completely honest. Like, once they drag them in to their craft or whatever, if that's what they did to them before they even get them on the ship, I don't want to know what comes next. Like, are they going to, like a little 13-year-old boy? Are they going to start picking the legs off of a spider? Or like what comes next? I don't want to know. That's what really got me about the next one that we're going to talk about. Okay.

Well, let's, I guess, we got to confront the dog aspect to this. Yeah. Oh, man. A go-go on a dog. And so we are literally seeing most of this from the dog's kind of perspective. And the older daughters kind of try. Right. That starts at the masturbation.

scene. Yes, where they put it on the dog. I just wanted to bring that up. Is it on the dog for like a hot second earlier too? Like them messing around. I think so. They were kind of mess. It was a little like just to establish it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, oh, and I do want to bring this up.

So they drag one of the boys in the water and he essentially drowns. Like he goes cold blue man. And they drag him out on the dock. The older sister is giving him CPR. And this is the scene that really got me. You see at the end of the dock, you know, lights are going, we're catching

glimpses of something in the distance. Obviously, it's one of these aliens. And as she's giving CPR, you see the alien getting closer. And it was so intense. I had to stop it and like catch my breath. Because not only do you have an alien doing the prototypical getting closer thing, you have a sister trying to save her brother's life. It was just like layers upon layers of just intensity that I personally couldn't handle. I get really affected physically by horror movies. I have a really

tough time. But that scene, man, I gave Jason Kudos like, talk about layering something. It just really, that scene alone really affected. And the idea of predator and stalking, right? Like, that's when I think the other horror, like, that's what I love, like, that first Halloween movie so much. Because that whole

movie is just in fucking stalking people before anything happens. And that idea of like something's coming after you, again, that you can't stop and you don't understand and is otherworldly. The other thing about this film, just to make sure I don't cross them, the police lights.

That moment where like, again, the tricking, like basically being like, oh my God, it's safe, but it's trickery. It's a whole idea of like really elevating this to like, you know, monsters are wrong word, because I always feel like monsters are mindless in a sense and this is not that. But like, again, like things being implicated,

being implemented to lure this, this group into whatever was going to happen. I thought that was fucking brilliant. I'm like, oh, smart. Because if you're a higher being, right? Like, what can you implement either for just shits and fucking giggles or to like, to trick them more so they don't escape? Right.

That was such a good moment. I was like, that was really creative. So in the UFO lore, there's a gentleman named Jacques Valle who looks at all of this as a very, cultural thing, a very psychological thing. And his idea is that a lot of these advanced alien races, if they are real, they are tricksterish in nature. They have kind of that sense to them, this old idea of like,

yesterday's fairies are today's aliens. And they will trick you and deceive you to get what they need. And we do see that play out in some of these movies. And especially with this idea. idea of screen memory. You know, they're able to show themselves as something different, um, uh,

to get what they want. Like, we'll talk about that later with owls. Yep. Thank you. But in this one, you're right, Nick.

Like, you think you're safe. The police showed up. No. It's like the U.F. It's the lights from the UFO is what I presume. Right. Yeah.

And then the alien walks out and you're like, oh. Uh, yeah. At the moment, like, you're like, God damn it. Yeah.

Um, this is my favorite moment in Hornmo is you're like, sound too. I want to talk to you guys. I listen to this with stereo headphones. If you listen to this, like, top volume, like the way Jason used sound in this was just, you've got like this metal dragging of metal screeching sound going on

when the creatures are around. You've got kind of that almost predator, the actual movie predator that like, I can't do it. No, no, go ahead. You're nail it. You're nailing it. Do it again. Do it again. Crescent. Look at that. Crushing it. Oh, my God. Super chat is open for anyone who wants me to keep doing the Predator's set.

Oh, that's somewhere in the skies. Matthew, what's up, buddy? Rowan's here. Just saying hi to some people. Thank you. Oh, yeah. I already got that one. Andrew, Nick. I got to thank you guys. We're almost on an hour 40. We've been through two films. You guys are troopers. We'll get there.

I promise we will get there. So let's, I mean, let's just go to the end. We get, everyone's getting picked off one by one sort of. And then, oh, man, you literally see the last boy who's got like the dog get sucked up, which was crazy. I thought that was, I thought that was real, real, real good, real, real good. Even if we had to watch that dog die. Okay, that's my question. Do you guys think the dog died at the end?

I mean, I know he was bloodied and he was crying. Everyone's fucked up. A part of me is like, I want to think they just were like, just leave it and it somehow goes on to tell its story to the dog kind. Not only does that dog die, we watch the last bits of its life out of its body as it happens. We hit the ground and we hear a few whippers and then it goes cold. That's the fucked up part.

It's not even if they killed. of the dog. The fall didn't kill him right away. We had to watch the rest of it happen. I hate when animals die in movies. I don't give a shit really, but I just thought that was... That dog's fine.

The real version of that dog... It might be dead in real life, but maybe by natural causes. Ryan, don't worry. That dog did not die. It definitely didn't feel anything because, you know, it's fine. You're okay. It's fine. It's in dog heaven. Isn't that a movie?

There is no dog heaven. and they all go to hell. That is, and look, I love dogs, but they just, that's what happens. Evil.

Evil. Can't stop on stop. Dunwell says. We will not stop. It's dog hell too, so there's nothing to chew on. No hydrants. Yeah,

yeah, now everything turns to sour cream in the mouth. Oh, buddy. You just made my stomach turn. If you have a beagle, like I do, they're like,

you know what? Is it food? Do I get food? Don't care. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Deborah said John Wick moment. Yeah, that was the

impetus for John Wick. I can't watch John Wick because I have a Beagle and I know what happens to that fucking Beagle in that movie. No. I have never seen the John Wick movies. Not yet. Oh, they're fun. Well, let's, I have a clip from Jason, so we'll play that in just a moment here. But this one

did have a review on Rotten Tomato, 71% by the critics, 51% by the audience. So not too bad. Not too bad. Is that for just a segment or is that for the whole movie. That is for the whole movie. Good thought. I didn't think about that. That's a collective rating.

Yeah, that's for everything. So what do you guys give? What do you give slumber party alien abduction? I'm going to go with a nine out of ten. Nice. I very much enjoyed it. I'm only giving it a nine out of ten because I think, and maybe Jason would agree, maybe it's, no, 10 out of ten. Ten out of ten. I thought this is really good.

And I think that, and I am because I don't see why not. And it's also, I think there's a lot of this that really works. And I do see it as, like I said, a sister film to the McPherson tape in a very positive way. I think they were able to nail some of the, like, what McPherson tape does for like a family outing. I think this does very well for a sibling rivalry for this kids. I thought all the kids' relationships to each other made a lot of sense. and I thought those kids were very natural. Everybody felt good in it.

There were no... And it was just a lot more polished. You know, they had a week of shooting, and they had it, like, there's... And it may not seem like a lot, but compare it, how long did it take them to shoot the McPherson tape? I think two weeks, tops.

Two weeks? Okay, either way. Either way, with a very limited, like, it's a different kind of a thing. McPherson tape versus this. And I think this would almost be like an updated version. And I think that they do... I watched them, I watched the McPherson tape, and then I watched this immediate.

afterwards this afternoon and it was a great one two punch it was a great like seeing seeing the origin and seeing the origin of then seeing how far it's come so I'm just going to say 10 out of 10 I really thoroughly enjoyed it Nick I think fun yeah you know I was going to say 9 out of 10 but I'm going to go withander I'm going to go 10 out 10 just because I think telling short I think telling short stories is hard just in general I think it's a hard fucking thing to do and I think that they did this really well and I was I was

I genuinely had moments where I was like uncomfortably like scared. And I thought that that was really well done. And that healing stuff doesn't usually scare me. Because what scares me, they don't tend to do. Which I'll talk about the last one. I'll talk about that. Ryan, you have a question down there.

I saw that from Anthony with another super chat. Thanks, bud. Decapitating you there, Nick. Sorry, Matt. Anthony says, Ryan, Andrew, Nick, I'm getting ready to go down a dark hole. I have a question to pose dealing with a real life circumstance. Is this possible?

This is a real life circumstance, yes or no. I don't know if he means slumber party specifically. Anthony, if you could, buddy, please elaborate on that, what you mean by that. Do you think that this scenario in this, what we're talking about now is real life? Let me know what you mean in the comments, my man, and we'll get back to that. but I'm going to give this one, I think, as well, a nine out of ten. And my only problem is killing the dog. That's my only problem.

I thought this was the tightest thing I've ever seen. It was slick. It was scary. It hit all the essentials of alien abduction. And I just loved it. And I hated the kids so much that the brutality they went through, I actually really enjoyed. I thought, like, I'm fine with these kids.

But that dog breaks my heart. It breaks my heart. So that's my only criticism of the film, honestly. But it's bleak. That's what you've got to listen. If you're going Scorce Earth, go Scorch Earth. Yeah. Good point.

Good point. Well, awesome. Anthony, elaborate on that in the chat, buddy. And I'm going to go ahead and play this clip from Jason. If you guys don't mind, take a little breather and enjoy this clip by the writer and director of slumber party alien abduction. Jason, man, thank you so much for taking time out of your day today. I know you're a busy dude, but thank you for coming on someone in the skies to talk to us today. Oh, thank you so much. I'm excited to be here. Yeah, and as much as I want to talk about dark side

of the ring, the huge craze on vice right now and in the wrestling world, you're here to talk about UFOs and alien abductions, man. So I hope this is a little, uh, a, a good thing. a good trip down memory lane for you. Definitely. It's been like almost like gosh, like 10 years, I think, since we made the short film. And it's, uh, that, that short is, there's a lot of me and my childhood within it, not only just like the crazy antics that me and my friends got up to when we were kids, but my fear of aliens growing up, you know, I was a kid that like, as early as the fifth

grade, I picked up a book about aliens and I became obsessed and just started like going down the rabbit hole of reading every book I could about alien abductions and stuff at that time. And there was definitely a big inspiration was that movie Fire in the Sky when it came out. I remember just seeing trailers on TV for it. And I was so terrified just from the trailers alone that. But like, it, like, it piqued my interest, like, so much. So even though I was probably too young to watch the movie, just seeing the trailer on TV, like, I could, you know, go to the library at school. And even at my elementary school, they had, like, books about UFOs and stuff.

And so I was kind of, you know, without my parents looking, like, I was, like, diving into that stuff and getting way too scared and my imagination running with it. But it all, like, came together for that short, for that short film. As a kid, too, I was, like, in my youth, I experienced a lot of, like, sleep paralysis moments where I would see, like, you know, at night, like, sleep paralysis is, like, you're kind of, like, stuck between dreaming and being in the, you know, in the real world. And I was having these moments where I'd be, like, I'd wake up, frozen in my bed and these, like, dark figures would come into my room and surround my bed. But I had no, there was no internet or anything back then, and I'd talk to my parents about it.

They would just take me to the doctors. And, you know, there was no ever, like, explanation as to, like, why I was, you know, experiencing these things. And, you know, to me, I almost thought, like, oh, no, like, am I experiencing, like, alien abductions of some kind? Or I didn't know how to process it. How long did it take? What was the process, like, filming?

Yeah, it was only, I think we had four days to shoot it. Yeah, and then it was, you know, it all took place at my parents' home, and the dog in it is our, it was our family dog at the time. And I, like, I was really at the time, like, also inspired by, like, ride films. Like, I don't know if you ever went to, like, Universal Studios and went on the Back to the Future ride. Oh, right, right. Yeah, where it's like it's a movie, but like you're going through this experience that's like a ride. And Stuart Gordon, who was an incredible director who did From Beyond and reanimator, he made one of these ride films for the movie aliens for some theme parts. And it's cool because it's like all from the point of view of that, you know, the tank in aliens that Sigourney We've,

and the Marines drive into that colony. And it's like, it's just all PLV and taking you through this experience driving through and aliens are popping out. I was just like getting really into the mindset of that. And the challenge we had for the anthology was to make like a found footage short film. And so I was like, I really want to make a ride movie. And like Stuart Gordon had also worked on Honey, I Shrunk the Kids as well too. And so this idea of being on the perspective of a dog was like really intriguing to me.

That's the whole alienation. Yeah, it could like this be from the perspective of the pets, you know? And so, yeah, I was like leaning into that while, you know, it's and also just a lot of my nightmares as a kid were, you know, me and my friends like hanging out. And then like something is coming for us at my home and I have to run like through backyards to like neighbors home. and stuff. The aliens in this thing was terrifying. How'd you come up with your creature design? What was that creative process like? Yeah, it was pretty simple because it just was the version of, you know, I've all the sketches I've seen from, you know, people who have said they've experienced encounters with aliens. And, you know, the gray alien has always been, like, scary to me,

even though it's like a it's a bipedal figure that's standing on two feet but it's almost human-like and there was like I don't know maybe as a kid there was just a part of me that was like there was something scary about the idea that aliens in my head was that they could just enter your home without you know it doesn't matter if the doors and windows are locked they'll find a way in and and maybe it was partly because of the sleep paralysis figures that I saw were also like you know disneyed look like dark figures, you know, just shapes of, they're very human-like, you know, but the, with the aliens, it's like they're human-like, you know, but if you got a little closer, you see that, like, oh, their fingers are longer and, like, their heads are, you know, a little bigger and, like, so it was mostly just being inspired by the classic sort of gray alien. It's been fun. I love the chance to be able to talk about that short because it means a lot to me and I'm very proud of it. And I love hearing when like people who, um, who are also like me and were interested in this stuff like growing up and had fears of it that when they see the short,

they really connect with it because it like kind of, it like, uh, it kind of shows the same fears in a way that, you know, that they had as well too. And so I, I, every once in a while, see someone like write a Twitter post or something about it and oh, man, this was so scary the way they portrayed aliens in it like you know people just give props to like how we did that and I think that's cool absolutely man you have forever cemented your legacy and found footage film and I loved it dude so I want to thank you for coming on summer in the skies today let's do it again and we will get deep into dark side of the ring but uh get back to work can't wait to see what you come up with next awesome thank you so much all right so that was

The man, Jason Eisner, giving us some of his time. He was literally on set for Dark Side of the Ring waiting. He gave me his whole lunch break to talk about slumber party alien abduction. So I do want to send out a special thanks to him. He has a new episode of Dark Side of the Ring that premieres tonight. It's about Luna from the WWF. Where can you watch? Oh, the one's about Luna?

The ones about Luna. It's about Zuna. Vice TV. But they pull out of their episodes on YouTube. I watch it through Yeah, I watched it through Hulu. Hulu live TV. But it might, I think it's on there.

I think it's on Hulu anyway. Okay. Yeah, it's awesome, Nick. Check it out. Everyone's checking out. Check out. A lot of Lumber Party Alien Abduction as well. Yeah. That was, again, like, he was so, he gave me like half an hour, which I was not expecting. He didn't even get to have lunch before going back.

And he did a badass master of the universe thing. I was like, clutch. Clutch. Frank LaGelle doing some Skeletor Shakespeare? Watch. Oh, man. What did you guys think of the new, the new, what was it, Beast Master or whatever? The Kevin Smith thing?

You mean Masters of the Universe revelation? Fucking badass. This is a bad ass. Is it good? I haven't seen it yet. Miles watched all of it with me. We sat one Saturday morning and just like, boom. Can I address something out of you?

The only He-Man content? that I have ever seen is Masters of the University. The movie? Okay. Yes. I have never watched any of the cartoons, new or old or old. I was a real Ghostbusters guy. I think that's the one that I watched the most from that era.

And Pee We's Playhouse was my other favorite thing around that time. But I think my favorite. Yeah, never really got into He-Man. I don't care for the Masters of the Universe movie. Not even really in one way. I'm sorry. Oh, see, I like in like a total. And I get that.

And there are a lot of movies that I will deal with for that. And that one definitely holds some nostalgia for me. But last time I watched it, I was like, man, I'm really struggling through this. And it's only 86 minutes. It's awful. But I fucking Franklin Jell, like this, okay. And I digress. I'll get back on.

Franklin Jell. So my wife's a professional stage manager and probably he can maybe be kind of difficult to work with. But regardless, he did that movie for his kids. Right? Yeah, that happens a lot. And he fucking takes every moment of playing that villain just to the extreme. And I fucking love it. Like the minute Shakespeare starts coming out, I'm like, yes.

I also believe it was originally supposed to be Jack Kirby. Matthew Ryan's correct. You never saw he made cartoons, bro. Yeah, well, come at me, bro. So. Is Ryan a cannabis consumer? Matthew, that's a great question. He is when he's around me.

I've had my days. I can say that now. Hey, it's legal here. Come on. But there's also the Jack Kirby. I believe Jack Kirby was supposed to do the art or design for that movie. And then they like went over budget because it was a canon film. First of all, you can still see the Jack Kirby influence, especially when Skeletor goes super Skeletor or whatever happens at the end.

And he gets like all gold and he basically looks like Galactus. But this last thing is the people who made that movie, Canon Films, if people watching this are familiar with Canon Films, if you're not familiar with Canon Films, there's a great documentary called Electric Bugaloo, the rise and fall of Canon Films. I might be getting the second part of that around, because they made Breakin, and they made Breakin to Breakin,

which was a huge success, and then they tried to do Breakin, and they did break into Electric Boogaloo. But they also did, they are, the reason that Chuck Doris is a movie star. They are the reason that Jean-Caam is a movie star. They are the, like, they just made really cheap, shitty movies on the fly and like put the money elsewhere. Like just all this. It's a great documentary. Don't watch the one made by the guys who owned canon films because it's not. Just don't do it. You don't want that skew. Watch that one. And then watch the Apple, which is one of my favorite bad movies all time, which they made. Was that canon? Yes, that's canon. Yeah.

Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I wanted to just bring up, Nikki brought up that good point of, like, actors doing roles for their kids. The only one, other one I could think of as, oh, God, what's his name?

From Street Fighter. He played the main villain in the street. Oh, uh, Raul Julia. Yes, right? He did that for his kids. And he was literally on his deathbed filming that. I think he died months after. Again, another example of a dude playing a villain who went all in.

He's like, I'm going to do it. Or Dennis Hopper. Dennis Hopper for his, um, for Mario. Let's not say anything we can't take that. Dennis Hopper for Super Mario Brothers, I believe, was the same. Oh, my

God. They went all in, man. I love mud, because it's clean and dirty at the same time. What are we doing? What are we doing? What is the next one? What is that happening? I'm like, I don't want to do anything else in the actor anymore in my life, but be on fucking Sesame Street because my son

loved it. It would just, I was like, that's a lot of him. Exactly, Nick. We got to say good night to Anthony. Anthony, thank you so much for making my week and saying I looked like Shack Club. Thank you, buddy. Thanks for being here, Anthony. Thanks for the super chats, brother. We never got back to your question.

We'll get to it in our chat, Anthony, for sure. Thanks for being here, buddy. Have a great night. Let's see what else we have here. Electric Bookely. People are loving it, Andrew. Okay. It's not a real movie title.

It's a real movie thing. Andrew, can we watch them? Where can we watch it? It used to be on Netflix. Now I think you'd have to rent it. Probably you can rent it on like Google Play or something like that. It's worth it. It's worth it.

I'm sure it would be like four months to rent. I love that. You know what else you can rent on Google Play? Alien Abduction. That's what I did. I got Amazon, but you know. Okay, fair enough, Nick. Written by Robert Lewis, directed.

Smart TV. It's a fancy page. Yeah. Alien Abduction written by Robert Lewis, directed by Maddie Beckerman. This was another first. first film. Oh, really?

Interesting. That's pretty impressive. You know what? That makes this a little more impressive. That changes a lot. Yeah, exactly. I try to keep that in mind when I hear that. Starring Catherine, Ziggismund, Jillian, Claire,

Corey Eyed, and Riley Polanski, who was the 11-year-old kid. I wonder if there's any relation to the, the Polanski family. I don't know. I didn't look that up. I don't think that. I don't think so. I hope not. At least synopsis.

Vacationing family encounter an alien. threat in this thriller based on the real life Brown Mountain Lights phenomenon in North Carolina, which is a very real phenomenon. And actually, in our podcast version of this review episode, guys, we have a

special researcher who has researched the Brown Mountain Lights. He is featured in alien abduction. He's the guy in the beginning when they're kind of going through the history of the Brown Mountain Lights. So, wait, were those real, like, was that like real footage from like real, like, experts in the field at the beginning

the movie? Yes. That was real footage of, he is an actual researcher who's looked into this stuff. And so was the woman who claimed to have seen the lights and everything. And I believe that physicist was real too. And they were aware that this was a found footage film before they did that, but they saw it as an opportunity to talk about the Brown Mountain Lights, which I thought was cool. The only reason I bring that up, we didn't talk about this. So in the UPN version of McPherson, team, the one they made much later on. They interviewed actual UFO researchers and told them it was a documentary about alien abduction and had them, you know, give their thoughts on alien abduction, completely lied to them,

put them in this UPN special under their found footage film. Excuse me, they had no... And Dean didn't know this either. They did this without... Because Dean directed the UPN version as well. Right. But they had final say on everything. They put those interviews into the movie without Dean's knowledge.

And he went out of his way to go to all those researchers and apologize to that. I'm glad to be put on them, though. Yeah. But moving back to this one, I just had to get that in there. What a Dick thing to do. Dick Clark Productions is what I say to you. Let's move back to Alien about it. That's not going to read well on the podcast.

It's not. Middle finger is what I'm doing podcast. I know. You son of him. Metal figure. So what do you guys think? We have another found footage film being shot by a autistic 11-year-old kid, which I thought was...

Nick, I'm seeing you shake your head. I have the most notes on this film than any of the other films. Okay, let's start. Initial thoughts with how this thing started. Let's start from the beginning. Do you want me just let go into it? Do it, yeah, do it? I is a general rule.

I'll give you my like thing. I got you not like this movie. The autistic kid thing was one of the first. So I literally go, why autism? Dad's a dick. Never go camping. And then I get into the bird thing,

like so many fucking birds. So here's my thing. Well, that is a UFO. I know, I know. It is. But I just like, that's a lot of birds.

Always like, where all these fucking birds coming from? There's so many birds. Nick, you haven't seen dark skies. No, so clearly. They're coming from the dark sky. That's a whole other story. So here's the thing.

Being around like, so a little bit of scummer within like a college professor. One thing that I do is my class for the last couple of years has been open to students who are on the spectrum or other things. We'll take my, we'll take my class. I am accredited. I want, I opened up my class up to as much diversity as possible. So I've dealt with a lot of students in a learning perspective who are on the spectrum from all kinds of different levels of the spectrum. Because you guys know like it goes in a lot of like ways. First of all, I was like, really? Why are you making this choice? Like, why is this your choice? Why is the kid have to be on the spectrum?

And then secondly, I was like, not even a really good job of representing somebody on the spectrum. I know the spectrum has a lot of like cues and colors, but I was like, I just don't believe it. I don't believe it. I don't think it was a good representation of people on the spectrum. I think it was a really, sorry to the director. It's your first film. Listen, I thought it was a really unnecessary decision to make. And it bugged me, it bugged me immediately going into the film.

I was like, this is a storytelling choice that I don't think serves that community, right? But in representation, I don't think actually serve a story. Because to me, he was just pretty much any other fucking kid, except they didn't want to put the camera down. But guess what? Kid with the camera, probably not going to put the fucking camera down. They would have done that anyway. It was just like a trope. It was like, ah, kid with autism.

Yeah. Like, and then I just thought the day I wasn't dead. But that's it. So here's, and I'm not defending the director because I agree with you to a very strong. I'm actually interested by this. I don't think I feel strongly about it either way. But from what I saw, I think it got praised for this. Well, here's the thing.

he did base it on an actual kid he knew. This was his way of dealing with the world and viewing the world was through a camera. So there was some personal touch to it. But Nick, I completely understand for anyone who doesn't know that, this could come off very insensitive in some ways. So I understand that. My suggestion would have been in that situation, right, is to, I mean, one, like, anytime you have more representation in film is a good thing, right?

Like having a character on the spectrum is a net positive good thing with the representation. But if you're going to make that choice, what I would have done would have been because that idea of viewing the world through a camera, you could have made that choice with an older actor who could more, who could handle that better and make more clear choices. And I think utilize it in a better way than casting a kid. And this is not that the kid did a bad job, right? I'm not trying to like dison like a 12 year old's acting job, which is fucking. and hard to do when you're 35.

But you could have made that same choice in a way that I think would have been more effective and bought out that agency if you wanted to give agency to an underrepresented group in film. I just, I did not like how it was handled. I just did not, for me, it did not aid the film. It hindered the film and like it just didn't do anything for me in that way. Well, and the other thing too is they play with it a little, you know, he sees, I think a mailbox that has like the address 31. And he says 31, 31, 31, 31. And like,

I understand that's, that can be a way that an autistic child expresses their self through numbers or through repetition. But I thought there was going to be a meaning to that. Like, is 31 going to play some role in this eventually? Or is the kid going to be like, let's go back to 31. That's where we'll find safety.

I think it was just never brought up again. They did it just to do it. And that to me, like, I gave find the artistic vision as well the cameras how I've used the world that did not come through to me and so to me it is a it is a unlike McPherson tapes right and unlike alien abduct uh alien sleepover like yeah we talk about making clear purposeful choices um and storytelling that to me was not one of them it was not clear to me and if i as a as an actor as a director as as a teacher like I would that was like we'll want to be like why why the fuck are you doing this like what that's your choice? Like, if I don't understand as an audience, it is ineffective, then why do it? And I'm done. No, no, no. Deborah, thank you for joining us from Australia.

Thank you, Deborah. Thanks, Deborah. She said, sensational chat, guys. We also have Ash Ellis, who's either in Wales, Scotland, or England. Ash, let me know in the comments, buddy. I don't remember exactly where you live, but I know it's late over there. So all of my European listeners and everyone,

thank you for being here, guys. I know it's super late. It's getting late on the East Coast. 10 p.m. at least for us old guys. But if you're just joining us, I'm here with Andrew, I'm here with Nick, two of my best buds in New York, TV and film, extraordinaire. We are reviewing found footage alien abduction films. If you want to help out the show, the super chat is open. We will answer your questions. We will take your

comments. Help out somewhere in the skies any way you can. But yeah, let's keep moving on with alien abduction. So I guess, yeah, I can't know. I can't have a premise. this one. Okay. We have a family going on a campy trip. So let's start there. They're on a campy trip. They seem to be getting along really well. They seem like a pretty tight-knit family. You know, and we get some beautiful shots of the North Carolina mountain ranges, which I thought was beautiful. And then kind of our first, I guess, issue is they see these lights. They see the Brown Mountain Lights, which I thought was an awesome scene.

Agree to disagree. I think our first kind of issue, which is what Nick brought up, is that the dad's a real dick for no reason. At a real sexist. He does a lot of sexist shit, too. And here's the thing. I believe the intent. And you see this a lot, especially in horror movies, is to have him be somebody who is a

dick, but has like some redemptive moments, right? At some point, you often write before he would die. Now, this dude has. happened in this movie. However, there was zero breath to it. Like, he just goes from being a dick to, he's having this moment where he like tells his son to go back, which

by the way, happens with three different characters in this movie where they're just like, in a row a character goes, I'll stay here, you save yourself. That happens to three different characters in a row in this movie. And again, when I say

I liked it, I will, I, there are things that I think are weaker things about this movie than the others. There are some things that I think it does well. But I do think that there was more things that I was kind of just like scratching my head. Yeah, I get it. Well, and, you know, making movies is hard. If a movie comes out even kind of good, that's a goddamn miracle.

It's so good. I just want to make that clear. I'm not here to shit on anything, as it were. Absolutely. Yeah, we're not having to shit on movies. I think some of, like, I, I, I don't think any of the, like, I think the improv was weaker in this movie. Oh, that being said, I think this cast had a kind of reverse at the McPherson tape and stuff, which is when they had to turn to a script.

I thought that's when this cast had a chance to shine a little bit more than when they were trying to make up things on their own. Because improv is also very hard. Exactly. Especially when you're supposed to fake a familial car. connects to the people. Yeah, I think in this film, we see very trained actors who can use a script to their advantage, where I think improv actors, that's not their strong to. I totally get that. And I think in this one, we saw actors who are used to having a script really dig into their character and try to think of what they would do in that situation. I didn't see so much

freedom in terms of improvving. We will hear from one of the actors. from the film in a little bit about that process. But yeah, yeah. So what I like about this one is, and I don't mean this in a bad way, it was kind of a paint by number of what you would think in abduction experience, how it would escalate.

You start with lights in the sky, and then you get kind of a little closer to the beings, and then you get the full out abduction experience. And I thought our first kind of introduction to the aliens in this one was, Very effective. So let's kind of jump to. They're driving.

They get lost in the mountains. They don't have any phone reception, which again, this movie's in 2014. You need a reason that your cell phones aren't working. That's just the way horror movies work now, unfortunately. And I thought that was a good way to do it.

That shit does not work in the mountains. If you go hiking, your phone sometimes does not work. Neither does your GPS. So that all was very, it made perfect sense. They come up on this tunnel in the mountains. Oh, I haven't, yeah.

After the birds? I said, birds. That was surprisingly, that was before the birds. I thought it, the first time I saw this film, I could have sworn it was after the birds. More like for the birds. For the birds. We'll get to the birds. I have a good theater gate for that one.

Let's talk about this tunnel scene. This is kind of our first major scare moment, I would say. They come up and it's very like almost, I would equate it to, like, what was that? The leftovers or like this idea of everyone just vanishes out of thin air. They show up and all these cars are vacant. All the doors look like they were ripped open. Nobody's in them.

The cars are all messed up and pretty troubling. When that happened, there was a time, there was a point for this movie that I thought, like, and it was probably just cheaper to shoot it this way. maybe this was the, can I, Lieutenant Wings? This could have been the intent, all that stuff. When that happened, what I like about found, to me, some of the best found footage movies is there's something, it feels like you're seeing it sneakily. Like something got out that you weren't supposed to see that you've now gotten your hands on. And even Cloverfield does this where it's just like, at least with that, you're seeing a different perspective of,

something huge. For this, when that moment happened, I was like there's no, it kind of took the found footage aspect of it away from me for some reason. Because I felt like I was like, well, this story would just kind of be out there. And now that I say this out loud, I'm not even sure if it's like a, if it's fair to put that on the movie. But it was at that point that I was like, I almost wish that it wasn't a found footage movie at that point. I was like, I would be cool if this was just a regular movie. You know what I mean? Like, I thought the events in it were interesting enough,

but something about trying to make it found footage, I thought wasn't very cohesive. And then because of that, I feel like some of the improv got in way sometimes. They were just, you know. That's a great point. Andrew, I love that. I wonder if I would have liked this more if it was just.

And with the kid, too, again, like I said, said I kind of didn't think about that once it was brought up. And so I don't really have an opinion strongly in their way. But like Nick obviously had strong enough feelings to speak as passionately as he did. So I don't want to dismiss that either. It's just not how I took it in. No, I'm just saying. No, I'm just saying.

I like that, like, you know, people stand up for other people. Bim Jim does not watch movies. Thank you for sure. No watch movies. Okay. All right. Fair enough, my man. Hand on my knees.

But yeah, just, but real, sorry. That's a good point. No, that's a very good observation. But what the thing is, too, I think one of the reasons I didn't notice it is for me, he became kind of a non-character at a certain point. Honestly, I, he kind of just felt like literally fell in the background for me. Those characters are always the ones that I least interested in, is the people operating the camera, which is why I kind of appreciate that.

and the slumber party one that put it on a dog. Because most of the time, those characters just kind of cease being characters for me. Because I know it's not my point of view. I know I'm seeing it from somebody else. And to me, they're just kind of a means to an end. Very rarely, I think,

I can't, like Blair Witch does it because I switch the camera around, I feel like. But you don't often get to know the person behind the camera much, at least not in these examples. Yeah. It's like a narrator you don't know. Like, you know, yeah.

I will say the tunnel scene had, for me, the scariest moment in this entire movie. Yeah. And that was the dad. And the dad's like, I was like, oh, shit. That was scary, man. Like, straight up, like, possession? I don't know. It's quick.

And because, again, for, like, alien abduction stuff for me, the less I know, right? Especially someone who isn't as, like, engulfed in the research and the culture. the less I know the scarier fucking is because that's what scares me. And so just because it happened, you're like, I know something's going on. Something's got him. Get the fuck out. But then you don't know. And then you're left with it.

I was like, oh, that moment just got. Let me ask you this, man. And I agree. It was a very effective first kind of intense moment. But we do see the alien. We did see the alien walk by. And then we do get a very quick up there. Is that the first quick?

Is that the first quick thing? Yes. That really irked me because I go back to what you said, like less is more. And we're not even 25 minutes into the film. And we already see what is hunting them, essentially. And I kind of didn't want that. I wanted to keep the mystery going. What is happening?

Why are these crows falling from the sky? Why are we, you know what I mean? I don't disagree with you, but I do think, because for me, I, with that moment, And I was like, wow, they really, like, I thought like, with something like this, you really got to fucking go for broke, I feel like. They went. Especially at this point in 2014, like, it's, this is not new. This is not, this is not breaking any ground. This is when, if anything, movies like Record have come out.

People have, like, begun to even just in other countries elevate. Guys, watch Record, REC. It's so good. It's phenomenal. I have not seen it. A wonderful writer named Matt Donato. You didn't see that? Oh, Ryan, a bunch of.

Oh, Ryan, dude. One of the best endings in film. So good. It's really good. Right. It was great. American audiences might know it as quarantine because it was remade. Oh, okay.

But watch the original. My point being, Don Floyd's things are not new at this point. So I feel like to help themselves stand aside, they had to make it clear that they, early on, that they were not going to be one of the found footage movies where you don't see anything. That's a good point.

I do think that was very intentional, and I don't, while I do think that this movie, no, I don't want to say not. Like, I think that that is successful in what it's trying to get across, which is that, like, this is what it is. Here's your answer. Yeah, exactly. And then with this one, because they're, I think they're making it pretty,

I also think with that, and again, I thought this was McPherson tape that when they're showing the aliens, and they look like that, like, you know, they're letting us, to me, that's like, this is fiction. You know what I mean? There's a very clear indication that this is not a real thing. Apparently, it wasn't for people in 1989, but I, I, so with that moment, I appreciated that because, then they start pulling from all these other, you got the birds, you got the lights,

you got, like, you know, all these other different UFO tropes that they start pulling from, from all these various stories for one story. And I think it all kind of kicks into gear there. So then you're not really questioning it.

You know, they're wearing the alien nature of it on their sleeve. And while I agree, I can see how that could not be successful for some people, it didn't bother me. And I feel like I understand why they had to do that. And also to that point, I mean, the name in the movie is literally. Alien abduction.

They're not fucking out. It's a good point. Yeah, exactly. It's not like Fourth Kind or, you know, McPherson tape. I mean, like, these aliens, aliens? There's no experience. McPherson tape is out there a lot as UFO abduction, I believe. It is that.

It's gone under different times. Or UFO abduction film or something like that. But I just, I'm just like, yeah, you, I, when I said, I hate almonds during one of these videos, and I've been pulling almonds out of my mouth for the entire. I apologize. No, because the thing is I'm sitting here and I'm like, I see myself like kind of chewing. I see myself kind of sitting here going like this, like going, like trying to get these almonds out.

And I look like a fucking Coke head and like grinding my teeth. And I just wanted to clarify that for people. I am not, I am not. I am not. I was concerned. I'm not a cocaine fan. The chat was concerned to you. The chat was concerned.

Well, let's get to another one of the effective. practical effects in this film. So dad's gone. Dad's gone. He's gone at this point. The mom, the daughter. His redemption arc did not work. It did not work.

He's gone at this point. The family's kind of like, all right, moving on. We've got to get that hell out of here. I like that. Like, he is gone. Go, go, go, go, go, go. We'll deal with it later.

And again, oh, wait. Oh, wait. Oh, wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, cannot move out without addressing this. They're driving and, the car in the beginning, right? And I'm sorry, but this just, this got me real mad. Because they have the, uh, let me smell your dick playing, right? They're playing, let me smell your dick. I, I, and I'm not even sure if that's the exact name of the song,

but that's how I'm going to refer it. Um, so they're playing this and they think it's funny because they're saying this over and over and over again. And we get the joke and then somehow the mom is dancing along and singing and then is singing it to the kids and then the word dick comes up for like the ninth time since we started this scene

and then she has a problem with it and now the other thing is too I could I might have to rewatch it but I'm not going to do that for this particular scene where they maybe not now just not now maybe at some point in the future

everybody Go watch Alien Objection. I rented it, so I don't even feel like I paid some kind of money. This really took a turn. Anyway, that to me felt like a moment, and I would almost want to ask, is it Riley is the name of the woman who? Riley is the son, the 11-year-old son. Who's the young lady who wrote a question or submitted a tape or what have you? That would be Jillian Claire, who her character name is also Jillian.

She's the daughter. Gotcha. Yes, okay. So Jillian might know. I feel like there was not a song play. They put it in post or something? Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. It happens and it can be hard to deal with, okay? Andrew. It's true. Most production is 90% of the battle as Nick and Angela. Yeah, it is. A lot of that. That's, but I'm so happy we'd rewind to that, Andrew. I totally caught that. I'm like,

sorry. They said Dick six times already. Now you just are, I don't. Anyways, yeah, we're nitpicking. Let's get to the crows. So the family are getting the hell out of this tunnel because there's something in there, it got the dead. And then all of a sudden, all these crows start falling from the sky. And it's a pretty, yeah, totally. Lots and lots of crows.

And this is kind of been said to have been reported in areas where UFO phenomena is, happens. that birds just fall out of the sky. It could be something, a lot of people believe it's like an electromagnetic thing. Whatever power these UFOs have is messing with the birds. And, hey, we see that all the time. We see birds fly into radio towers or, you know, stuff like that. So, but to have that many just raining from the sky, ooh, that was rough.

Yeah, what do you got, Nick? I have so many birds. And then I just put toasters, true west, lots of props. It's all I can think. I was like, man, you got yourself. Shit. Oh, wow, that's a deep theater. Yeah, that's all the thing.

I was like, man. I haven't thought it's a long time. There's a lot of birds. Our birds. And Andrew, correct me if I'm wrong. There was a scene in dark skies with the birds, too, right? Yes, absolutely. They like fell.

I think there were a couple. I feel like that was something they had to happen a couple times in that moment. Yeah. So that was a pretty scary scene. Just to see that many birds falling out of the sky. Clearly, the family is. super traumatized by that. And now it's just finding somewhere to go.

Like, get the hell out of here. And they end up back at 31. I believe it's 31, where they saw that mailbox. And here's where we get into... Banjo music. We get into... What's that movie? I'm thinking of.

Deliverance. Deliverance in my notes. Well, because they make a deliverance joke. The woman who was upset by... the fact that she was singing Dick then says, yeah, then says it's like deliverance except without the

anal rape. Oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which, don't get me wrong. I miss that. That happens in that film, but it felt like an odd joke for someone to make that. This family has an interesting dynamic. I would give them that. Very weird sense of humor.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um, well, let's talk about it. They get to this house and there's this redneck kind of dude. living alone, shotgun in hand, ready to protect his property like you do. And this is kind of where the movie didn't lose me, but I'm like, I know exactly what's about to happen. And I'm sorry, apologies to the director, apologies to Gillian. I did not care for this actor. I thought he was something about his voice just.

Which one? Which one? The right dialect. The red neckout. He had this nasly thing going on. He seemed like a cartoon. It just didn't work. And I know what the director was going for.

It made sense. Someone like that was living up in the mountains and would know how to deal with these lights and what happens. But it's the whole idea of crafting a character, right? This is to me a storytelling thing. Again, like, is it the actor or is the director? I don't know. Like, I don't, it's probably, well, the actors probably did what he was asked to do. Like that was probably the brief for his character.

But like, you're making a characterature, right, instead of a character. So I don't give a fuck about that guy. I also have some know for him. I could have punched it, man. Like, I, you know, I just, like, you could have made that character dynamic. You could have made it compelling. You could have made him the hero that kind of tried to set him up to be, I think, as it goes. But you just don't, it's a cartoon.

Like, he's a cartoon character. It just didn't work for me. I don't like it. Yeah. It really took me out of the moment. But look, I think the rest of the actors did everything they could to make it work. And he was working hard too. I'm not saying he was not trying to do his job.

No, it didn't. It just didn't translate for me personally and kind of the tone of the film. I think we needed some levity and maybe that's what he was kind of going for with his character. I don't know. but it just it didn't land for me um and it was just so cliche like um i you you city folk here let me tell you how to deal with you i get it like dude you throw me in the brown mountain as a new york city guy and i'm gonna trust what this guy who lives here says and i'm gonna go by the beat of his drum and dealing with this stuff i get it but um at the same time i'm just like come on and then really i think

one of the smarter, smarter moments in the film was when, Jillian, the daughter, is trying to get the ham radio working. I'm like, yes, don't wait for these things to come and try to kill them. Like, try to make communication outside of the Brown Mountain, which they can't do, unfortunately. So smart choice on her part. In general, like there's something like, there's things that, like, were really smart, right? And really work.

They just feel like weren't. they're the whole time, like the GPS thing in the car like that fucking up. I was like, oh, that's awesome because it's an older GPS, it's not on a phone. So you know that once those things go, they're gone and you're in the mountains and like those things used to fuck up anyway. So I was like, oh, so good.

Like such a smart choice. But then it didn't like, didn't carry on through everything else. Like when I had, this is skipping ahead a little bit. He's like when they're getting out of the house, like we'll take the back roads. I'm like, yo,

it's the fucking mountains. Everything's a back road. What are you? What about? Bad roads or trails? You're going to take the trail? Like what have you driven? Like when you drive in the mountains,

like my in-laws had a mountain house in North Carolina for a little bit and like you'd go up to it. And like it's it's all like there's one road. There's no like back roads. It's one goddamn road. So what backwards are you taken? And then you end up on the main road anyway. I'm just like, yeah.

What the logic there is yeah it's not as sound We're gonna take the trail with the truck All right well let's I mean we could go beat by beat No no no man like I and I don't want to keep you You guys are the fathers Yeah I was about saying to hear one of my children crying right now

My wife hasn't texted me so No I think I'm good I'm good I'm good I'm good I'm good I'm good but yeah yeah let's let's fast forward a little We kind of get everyone starts getting kind of picked off in the home. I remember the mom, the mom getting abducted and getting, having bones broken. I really

appreciate that. I did not see it coming. And I thought she did a good job too. And I think especially again, once these characters were under duress, and I feel like sometimes movies can get cast that way too. These actors were good at being in duress and making

that feel very real and very grounded. I think that was kind of almost across the board. So, yeah, when she just got all of a sudden yanked up like that in her phone start. But that was really effective. That sounded like it was good too. Oh, my God, so good. And to have like basically the point of view, Ryan, almost exactly what you're saying,

towards the end there was that the effectiveness of like, you're watching these people get experimented on these tables. And presumably that's about to happen to the 11-year-old kid that we've been with the whole time. Oh, my God. We have to mention the way this film started. I can't believe we didn't talk about this. This film starts on the UFO. Right.

The camera is in the UFO. We don't really know what's going on. We presume we're in a ship. People are getting experimented on. Did we see that ship footage at the beginning of the movie? Yes. The beginning of the movie, it starts with the camera in space, in this crap. And then the camera falls to Earth.

That's how the thing's starting. I'm sorry. I have a bigger problem in this movie that I realized. Please do it because I think it's what I have. Look, look. I can't believe we didn't mention that. There's got to be a suspension of disbelief for everything. And because it originally, I thought it happened at the end of the film.

I was like, that's silly, but okay. There is no way in hell that a camera is going to fall. from outer space and hit the ground on earth without cremating. I have that. How the fuck is this thing still recording? I know. Again, I will say, I'm joking when I say that ruined thing. Because that is, that is about as big, like, that's just something silly.

But that happened at the end and I was like, really? Well, yeah. So it ties back, we get the same scene at the end of the movie. That's fun. but I did not like that choice. It completely ruined. I mean, didn't ruin it,

but like, come on, man, like take us on the journey. We don't need a comic book. You're probably wondering how I got into this situation sort of feel to it.

We didn't need that at the beginning. Like, your film is better than that. That's what I honestly felt. So when it came back at the end, I didn't, I didn't care for that. And also logically,

no, there's no way the camera would have survived that. Funny story. Funny story. That scene was 100% genuinely filmed.

He put a high altitude balloon with a camera up into the outer atmosphere. No shit. And he did like four of these balloons

before it finally were. And before he could find like the other ones just disappear. Well that didn't be a lot then because clearly it works. For this one,

he was, he literally got that camera up into like almost the outer atmosphere. I feel like such an asshole. That's fucking great, man. 10 out of 10 UFOs for this. Give him credit, that scene of the camera falling back to earth was real.

That's amazing. That's brilliant. That's so funny. It can work. Yeah. Look, look, I will be the first one to tell myself to eat shit when I do something right. So let me just say, eat shit to myself.

Because look, 10 out of 10, UFOs. So this is my thing. All you think of this movie is, yo, are these humans really worth it? Because these aliens are going to a lot of, lot of work for like,

it's like three people. I'm like, are they like, well, Nick, to the movie's credit, they do say in the beginning, people have been disappearing in the Brown Mountains for a long time. I think they go back all the way to like the Cherokee Indians, like,

disappeared in mass at one point. And then all the people in the tunnel are gone. So, like, this seems like a pretty big abduction. And I think we're kind of just seeing it from the families, this one family's perspective. But I get what you're saying. No, listen, the camera thing, all my opinions are trash. That shot's fucking brilliant. It was a great shot.

Yeah. I'm incredibly impressed by that. And again, I was like, me and Nick both, real assholes. Because I was setting it up and Nick was egging me on. Oh, I was like, do it. Yep, you're part of this. Spiked it. Well, let's, I mean, okay, so picked off one by one by one.

Unfortunately, they all get brought on the ship. I honestly, okay, here's where I thought the movie was going and kind of dark skies did this, Andrew, as well. I thought the 11-year-old was going to be part of the abduction. Like he was maybe an alien. Like a plant or something. Like a plant. And that's maybe why, again, no, I'm not nothing against anyone on the spectrum or anything.

But I'm like, maybe that's why, because he's not, you know, he's not your typical 11-year-old kid. He's doing all these close-ups of, like, insects throughout the film, too, which I thought was really interesting. And I thought that was going to lead to something, you know. Like, maybe he's studying things. And that he was going to, like, turn out to be, like, one of them. that. But I don't think that's what they... Yeah, no, I think I will say, Ryan, and this is not to judge how you're

taking this one in, but I think if something, especially with found footage movies and something that this does do that makes it at least a little bit of successful found footage film, is you can't really expect the kind of, I will call it, magic of storytelling to show up, these kind of wonderful coincidences and stuff like that. To gain that true

kind of element and something that makes it feel like real found footage. It has to, I feel like, at least for me personally, it has to feel a little chaotic. It can't give you something to like, oh, like, look at that 31 because it's going to come back later kind of a stuff. Like there might be some things that rhyme a little bit, George Lucas style. But it's, I do think that that stuff was purely to show this. boy using the way that he knows to take in the world to do just that. And that I thought was actually beautifully done.

I really, I really like that a lot. Yeah. All right. Well, I mean, you know, we get to the end of the film. Whole family's been abducted. We get this terrifying. Pick the part, apparently, maybe. I don't want to know.

I don't want to know. It was. Again, they're real gnarly in this. It was effective. Yeah. You know. Oh, when he grabs the sister, that was another moment I love. When the alien, like, the camera, and then the aliens got her on the face.

I was like, oh, Jesus. That's like, I think, that's like the thumbnail of the official trailer, too, I think. That was nice. And then, you know, I think we get the camera being held by an alien, I presume, kind of throwing it out the garbage shoot of the UFO and sending it back to Earth. And now we have this story. But that's not it. And then it happens again.

Then it happens again. Oh, the human. Human story just keeps repeating itself. But we do, you know, the camera lands, whatever. We think that's the end. Then we see some guy in a hazmat suit finds the camera. Presumably, this is Project Blue Book, as we talked about, which was not around in 2014. It stopped in 1969.

But that's neither here nor there. I thought that was cool. It's like, all right, there's going to be a cover-up of all this. like they got the footage back. Somehow it leaked out to the public. I think it's a Project Blue Book file, blah, blah, blah, and that's what the movie ended up being, which was pretty cool.

But not only that, that's how the movie ends, but then we get a credit scene, like Marvel style. Yeah, with the dad. The dad. They found the dad. Oh, did you see that, Andrew? No, I did not. Oh, you didn't stay. I was going to ask if you guys stayed till.

Oh, no, I didn't. I feel so bad. I usually stayed through. credits, but I, like, this was the one that I finished last night and at the end of the end of us. And they used a police camera for it too. Because no matter what, I have to wake up at 7 a.m. these days. And I'm sure that's not as early to some people. Let's get to the last film soon then. But yeah, we get dash cam footage. A cop pulls over and finds the dad. And I think they literally say, it's the dad. So clearly the police

know what's up and they know what's going on. So I thought that was cool. It was kind of That is pretty neat. I'm mad. I'm mad I missed that. And they utilize the garage cam really well, too. Like, he does a very good, like, close up on it as they, like, came away. Cool. So, yeah.

Okay, guys, let's give it a rating. Let's play the video. And then let's dive into our last. Oh, I'm going to stand by my 10 out of it. I'm going to stand by my 10 out of 10. He dropped a camera from the atmosphere. And look, look, there was a, I had a, you know what? I had a real, I had a real fun time watching this.

And, like, I think at the end. of the day, especially in my advanced stage, I'm not that old. But something that I think is that I try to stand by is if I enjoy something, if I enjoy a piece of work, a piece of art, I don't want to shy away from that. And I can enjoy something

and know that it's flawed. And I do think that there are some flaws in this movie. But overall, I enjoyed my experience watching it. So, you know, that's where I'm going to leave it at. Nice. How about you? I was going to give it a six out of ten because it were things I liked, but I thought it was long. I was like, this movie could have been like 20.

I would agree with that for almost every movie on this list. Not the slumber party one. Yeah, that was the other three. I think that's the biggest fault of found footage films in general. We get too much set up and it lasts too long. I wouldn't even say, like, there were times in the McPherson tape a couple times where I was just, like, I think they played,

they went back to the cards like twice, maybe even three times. Like, and like for once I get it, But the second time, I'm like, all right. And sometimes I understand. It's runtime. Again, Ryan, I learn. It's like, it's runtime. You got to hit a runtime for it to be considered a feature.

And, like, if you're not, like, 50 minutes is, like, considered a feature for some people. But if you don't hit that limit, then, like, it's a short film or it's a medium. You can't put it in festivals. You can't get a worldwide distribution. And even 50 minutes, they're like, yeah. Very good point. But, but, but, but that shot, man. That's fucking cool shit.

So I'm going to 10. I give him all the credit. Because that's shot was... It's real right. It's real right. It's pretty fucking cool. I'm going, I'm going eight out of 10 on this one. I thought the cast...

Well, come on. Come on. All right, fine, nine out of 10. Yeah. And that's because we have one of the actresses with us tonight, which is going to be freaking awesome to hear from her. Again, I thought it was a great movie. I really did.

I thought they did a good job. Actors did amazing. And it was his first film. So we got to keep that in mind. But guys, go take a little nap if you need to or coffee refill. And we're going to end with the fourth kind. But here is, we have Jillian Claire, who played Jillian in the movie, Alien Abduction. So we're going to hear from her now.

Thanks so much for having me on the show today. I am Jillian Claire. I'm from Alien Abduction. And I play Jillian in the movie. Fun fact, that was not written that way. The character names were changed after we were all cast. My original character's name was Lisa. I don't think I look like a Lisa.

But they did that mostly because it was a found footage movie, which meant that there would be times where we would film three scenes as one scene because there wasn't a clear cut. And the director really wanted us to feel super comfortable and really be able to sink into our roles. and so by calling each other our real names, it really felt a lot more real. And it was a lot easier to be able to improv in between the scenes when you kind of had to get from point A to point B without making it strange or making it feel awkward. So that was really cool. Some fun things from set. Let's see. Well, there's that point in the movie where we all go like under the cabin to hide. And I think

I think this was, you know, one of, it was one of our many overnights, and it was very early in the morning, and I was very tired. And when I went to go under, I actually hit the side of it. And I ended up with the biggest bruise ever on my thigh. And we all laughed about it for hours. It was pretty good. What's another story? Oh, when the first time we see the aliens. So the director hadn't shown us photos of the aliens or anything about them at all.

He kind of wanted it to be a surprise. But see, I don't do well with surprises and scary stuff. I laugh. So it's this beautiful scene where the crows have just hit all of us in the car and we get out and we see the alien from the distance. And I remember turning around and it took everything in me not to just burst out laughing and thank God he called Cot like just a few seconds later because then I burst out in laughter. And I was like, I'm so sorry. This is just how I process things.

This is, look, I'm really sorry. But it was scary, seeing it for the first time. And so my brain just automatically went into fight or flight mode, which meant that I was laughing. But it was such a great film to make. It was my first time traveling alone for a job. I was only 19 when we shot the film and we did go to North Carolina. And there definitely was maybe a siding of the Brown Mountain Lights. Maybe we think we might have seen them, which is pretty scary and crazy.

But there was also some ghosty stories going on. It was definitely a wild experience. But, you know, I'm just so thankful that we were able to do the film. I've had some really great lifelong connections from it. Peter, who plays my dad in the movie, ended up playing my dad in another film that I produced in starting called Pretty Broken. And I've stayed in close contact with Riley over the years, who played my little brother and our awesome sound guy, Dan, he and I still talk nonstop.

So it really was a fantastic film to be a part of. I haven't watched it in a very long time. I just, I have a thing about watching myself. Sometimes I'm okay with it and sometimes I'm not. It kind of just depends on the mood. But I haven't watched it in a really long time. So maybe I need to watch it again. I do think that it's one of,

one of the more interesting ways to convince an audience that you would keep filming during something so catastrophic. You know, having Riley have autism in the film as, and filming as the way of processing. information. I think that was a really inventive way to do it. And I think it was really cool the way it was done. And, you know, our DP, Luke Geisbuehler, he was incredible. He, you know, has worked on Borat and all these amazing other movies. So the way it was filmed was really cool. And I think that's kind of what separated our found footage film from others because I feel like it actually

provided a good reason for us to keep filming and not just ditch the camera. run run. But, you know, I think it was a really great film and I'm really thankful that I was a part of it. And it was definitely a crazy time. And I had the best time. And aliens, let's see, what do I think about aliens? I mean, I think they're real. Why wouldn't they be real? We're just tiny humans on a big rock in the middle of space. Why can't there be more? And alien abductions, I mean, You know? Who knows? Maybe.

I don't discount anything anymore. The universe is wide and big and who knows what the heck's out there and what is going on. So sure, I believe that abductions could exist, but I definitely believe that there are other life forms on other planets. Anyway, thank you so much, Ryan. And happy Halloween, yes, Spooks. Awesome. So that was Julian Clare, joining us from Alien. Abduction. Thank you to Julian for doing that. Thank you to Dean. Thank you to Jason as well for sending in those videos. And thank you Nick for sticking with me, my man. And Andrew, he's back. We're on our last film, guys. Can you believe it? We made it. We made it. Thank you to everyone watching for listening. Let's see here.

You're the real heroes. I have two things to share before we move on to the last film. I just heard from Bryce Johnson. He's the host of the Bigfoot Collectors Club podcast. He also is starring right now in American Horror Story playing Neil Armstrong. So for those who don't know, American Horror Story is doing like half of their series this year about aliens in alien induction and stuff like that. And he is starring as Neil Armstrong. So he sends his best. He caught a little of the live stream tonight. So thank you, Bryce. Thanks for shouting this out, man.

One more shout out. Yeah, absolutely, man. playing Neil Armstrong. I can only wish. I can only wish. We have one more shout-out. We have Charlotte Miltchard, who played Abby in the fourth kind.

Oh. She played the real version of Abby, which we'll get to. But she was not able to, unfortunately, send us a voice message, but she did want to say, thank you for reviewing the film.

I can't wait to hear what you guys say. And I told her, we're going to be brutally honest, and she's ready for it. So let's do it. Let's move to the fourth kind from 2009 written by Terry Robbins, directed by Al-A-Tun-Day Osun Sondmi. Yeah, yeah, yeah, perfect.

At least that's what I had found. Cool. And starring Miloiochovich, Elias Kotias, Casey from Teenage Muti Ninja Turtles, and Bill Patton. Man, what a stack cast for this. I wrote good cast. And we'll talk about that.

I don't think the acting was the issue at all with this film. No, I don't think so either. Let's do a quick synopsis for everyone out there. Thriller involving an ongoing unsolved mystery in Alaska, no Alaska to be specific, where one town is seen an extraordinary number of unexplained disappearances during the past 40 years, and there are accusations of a federal cover-up dealing with alien abductions.

Now, before we go any further, fourth kind, I just want to go through that really quick. That is the close encounter scale that was created by Jay Allen Heineck, the astronomer we talked about from Project Blue Book. You know, you got first kind, lights in the sky, second, you might see a craft, third, might see beans in a craft. Fourth, straight on contact and abduction. So that's what we're getting with the fourth kind. So yeah, initial thoughts, guys. Had you heard of this movie? Did you know any of the backstory?

because there's some controversy. I remember when it came out. I purposely only looked a little... When I started it, I had not looked for anything. There was a moment in the beginning of the film where I felt the need to pause it and see what was going on here because I felt like there was something... Not that I was getting hoodwinked because I know it's a movie,

but there is this movie. starts with Millie Yolkovic coming out and they're doing this thing where the trees are spinning behind her and she's basically saying from what I remember and I was going to rewatch it but I have six-month

year old six-month-year-old twins so I didn't have time to re-watch I got to watch it once and that was a blessing but she is as herself telling us that she is about to play

a character, play in a dramatization of real events that took place and that she's playing a real person the whole time and spend it. And then she ends with this fucking horseshit about you decide what's real

and what's not real. It reminds me of Jonathan Franks. Remember beyond belief? Fact or fiction? You decide what's real. So like it's almost like letting themselves out hook and I was like, oh, what a weird way to, I was like, I guess they're playing the UFO thing. But then they cut to the real footage, which is a woman, the young lady who, or the person who I, Charlotte.

Who plays Abigail. Yes, it is Charlotte done up to look disheveled. like I think anybody who has seen five movies in their life could hopefully realize that that was not real footage. However, there are plenty of people who are not able to do that so well, and especially not when you, as a film, break the fourth wall to present yourself and say that you're about to play something that's real

and then have this footage go back to back the whole time. There was a lot about that. And this could be like, and to use a real place. They told a fake story about a real place that is really dealing with disappearances. Instead, they have now taken that and used it to put their own narrative onto, whether that is in a big, like a documentary movie or a movie like this that is pretending to be a documentary, but also pretending to be a real movie. There are things that I just found, especially, and Ryan, we've talked about this before, and this is not every case, but there, and I think you would agree with this, there are people out there who, when it comes to UFOs and abduction theory and things like that, who sometimes aren't the most mentally stable.

Yeah, absolutely. And when they are presented with stuff like this, I feel like there is an opportunity for them to, and I believe this happened, bother the people. of Nome, Alaska, who are already dealing with their own grief and pain over what's going on to try to force this new narrative on there. I was really floored that this movie used that and then doubles down on it at the end with the same stupid swirly trees thing. I honestly, and I'll be 100% honest, I was watching through gritted teeth for most of the movie, and it was kind of hard for me to focus or care about it for the duration because of that. opening, I want to call it a lie. Like this kind of weird, this lie to the audience. And I'm sure they could try to be like,

like, who knows, maybe those bumpers were added after the fact because they were like, we got to put something out there. But I think what they added, or maybe that was the intent, because not only is she sitting down in footage, and this becomes like a thing throughout is that this found footage, whatever you want to call it, like those are the best framed dash cam footage is like that's the best frame dashed cam footage I've ever seen in my life. Pretty damn good, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

And like she's sitting down with the director of the movie who is also breaking the fourth wall and is now placing himself inside of the story. And trying to, it's a, it's, I don't know, I think when it comes to this community who grab onto this stuff, who thought the McPherson tape was real when it comes to those kind of people,

you can't do shit like this. I really think that. And especially we've seen now, if the last year and a half has taught us anything, it's that some people will believe anything if they're told it in a certain way. And I just think the way that they did this was a little irresponsible. And the director has gone on to do a lot of amazing things, and the movie looks beautiful and there's great acting in it.

But the overall thing, and the plot makes not a ton of sense. We'll get there. Yeah. Yeah, but yeah, I just thought that the way that they were serving us this because they go back and forth, they'll do the real footage right up against the fake footage, and it gets as real as showing dash cam footage of a man murdering his wife and then himself. Like, you know what I mean? Like, they're trying to portray these shocking moments and act like they're doing. And some of it is more convincing than others.

And I think that's a real problem. Like, this is the first time that I've ever seen. like a found footage movie where I'm just like you guys could really do some damage with this like what was the idea? Well that's a great point because it's not a found footage movie, right?

Right, yes, that's the whole point because I even was watching and did not do that research and I was like, oh shit, like I'd seen it. I'd forgotten I had watched this movie and I was like, oh, is this real? And then I quickly was like, no, it's not but that's the problem, right?

Because when you present something like this, especially if it targets, I mean it's mainstream, I'm totally mainstream. Universal put this movie out. The thing I remember about this movie is just that it was being released. I would have been in school at that time. And I was like in New York, no, like fresh out of school and in the city and not seeing a lot of movies because I didn't have money. But I remember it was a Milo Yovic movie.

Like it gets, I remember the posters. I remember that kind of stuff. So, no, but you bring up a really good point when you make a movie like this, right? That is, in some ways, it's big picture, but it's also. could be targeted to a very specific group of people that like, and we've seen like there's ancient aliens, how many alien shows are there, literally? And it's like crime dramas.

And so to not like, if you're going to, hmm, you want to make the movie and you want to make it feel realistic, like you want to do that side by side stuff and make it feel real, feel realistic. I can make an artistic argument for that, right? That's the story you're telling. But then you make it. you make it feel like it is actually real.

And like people can buy into that, especially when you are hoping beyond hope to have proof of this thing to share with people because everyone, excuse me, it's sound bad, but like people look at like the crazy alien guy from History Channel, you're like, ha ha ha, that guy's a gift. Right?

And so. Yeah, I would argue he's a meme, but yes. With meme. Fair, fair. It's true. It's a valid argument. But no, but I think you're right, Andrew. It really is like, what's your artistic version?

What was your reasoning for that? Simon was hoping you make more money, but then what does that do to people? And then because they're creating their own story, they can pick and choose what little things, because then they can give people like, oh, here's this thing that you've read about in another story, so I'm going to validate this further for you.

Here's this phenomenon that happens. Like because they're pulling from sources of things that have already, I believe almost everything, right, Brian? In this feels like something that was from actual cases. Oh, yeah. I mean, when we get to the therapy sessions with these hypnotic regressions, like a lot of it rang true of, and there's actual audio tapes out there of therapy sessions. Right. Abducties. I would urge any of you to go to YouTube right now and look for Betty.

and Barney Hill abduction sessions. This was a interracial couple in the 50s who claimed to have been abducted by aliens. And their audio of their regressions are available. And they are effing terrifying. They got taken out of their car, right? Weren't they, like, driving in their car on like an old road that's taken out? Missing time. A lot of the tropes we see played out in this is kind of what this couple experienced back.

And they were like the first to come forward and say they were abducted by aliens. So a lot of what we know of abduction lore stems from this couple in New Hampshire back in 50s. So, and again, like, that's what rung true with me in this film were the therapy sessions in how these people felt and kind of how these memories were brought back. The issue being that Fourth Kind tried to do what Blair Witch did well is they put out marketing beforehand with like,

posters of people in Nome, Alaska. Wait, Fourth Kind did that? Fourth Kind came out with articles about missing people. Oh, shit. And we will get to the controversy that the blowback of what happened with that later.

But I don't see, again, why they had to go the, like, actual footage. It would have been a good movie. If I was somebody who, yeah, again, like, if they would have just cut all that stuff out, Like if I, the way this plays out, like if I was somebody who believed in the UFO phenomenon,

I've, and maybe I'm projecting, maybe because I'm not somebody that I'm overestimating how people feel about this, I would feel taken advantage of. I get that. That is a huge problem in this community as they often feel exploited. Like they're, television, through books, everything. They're taking these things that they know exist in, in the, community and they're like just kind of like plicking you in the back of the neck with it you know what i mean it's like here's something for you to this is what you can attach to this is like not so not only are we

already telling this thing that you're probably going to be interested anyway we're saying it's a true story but we're saying it's not a true story they're using the same kind of language that i feel gets used by some of the um some like sometimes like not less than say like is language like you know truth is out there always trying to find find what's real, what's true, all that kind of stuff. Like, they're using these buzzwords, they're doing all these things and, and telling a lie. Like, and not in a fun fucking, like, you know, Blair Witch did the online stuff, and that is a different kind of a thing. Yeah.

I believe. Like, with this, something about how polished and how, like, big budget it is, makes it worse. Something about that makes it feel way more like, I'm like, what? It feels like you're trying to coerce a reaction out of me. I don't know. It's, but not in a... It's manipulative. Right.

Yes. Yes. No one fucking knew who was in Blair Witch. No one knew those actors. And this movie starts, it starts with a very well-known actor being like, yo, this is real. Yeah. I'm going to play this real woman.

Like, yeah. And I'm going to mimic that act. Like, whoever's, whichever actor is doing whosoever character, like, they're going to mimic each other. They're going to mirror each other like an actress would do playing a real person. And it sets it up in such a way that like, even like Andrew said, like even me, I was like, wait, fuck, is this? Wait, no, it's not.

But wait. I could just scramble my mind a little bit because both those actresses are fucking talented. They were great. Whereas Playwright, which I didn't know those kids. I thought it was real because I was a kid. And then I was like, oh, it's not real. Okay. Yeah.

Great. Cool. That's cool. Oh, she's almost like, cool. Cool. This is what I found with this film is they tried so hard to be Blair Witch, like some 20-something years later. And it's like we were smarter than that now.

Audiences, like you're being so condescending to the audience you think is going to watch this. No one for a second is going to believe this. But like, Andrew said, some people did. I still have people. I thought that archive footage was real. And I get it. I understand that. And then at the end, and like there have been fictional.

movies that have done this too, but then they even add that sense of validity. It's like, oh, this person refused to be interviewed for this. Like, oh, this person didn't want anything. Oh, this person didn't want, this person told us this, but didn't want it. It's just more of that shit where I'm just like, what are you

trying to do here? Like, are you trying to fuck with the community that is already kind of like on edge to a certain degree? Amen. Thank you. Yeah. Like those people who are, who sometimes spend their lives, trying to find answers, trying to feel validated, trying to feel, you know, I have nothing but respect for a good chunk of the people, as you've pointed me out towards some people that I can steer away from.

But when you devote your life to something like this, that is not taken seriously 95% of the time, and you kind of do this big budget olive branch, and it's bullshit? and you're trying to act like it's offensive to a certain degree. Like, and it's like, I don't know, maybe hindsight is 20-20. I would love to hear what the controversy is because I would like to see how that,

because I know critics did not care for this film. Like, it's not even like it was a successful in like being a motion picture. Monetarily, it was a huge success. Yeah, it made like four times its money back. Yeah, but critically, that's successful. I mean, let's just,

I'll spoil it now. 18% on Rotten Tomatoes from the critics, 41% by the audience. This was critically a failure for sure and for many reasons. But let's, I guess let's kind of just, let's go through this scattered plot really quick. Abby is a psychologist. She finds these patterns in all of her patients. She comes to realize she thinks they're being, they think they're, they might be abducted by aliens. she gets her colleague involved who's a psychologist as well

he's very hesitant about believing any of it then he sits in on some of the sessions and he's like holy shit like something weird's going on here meanwhile one of her patients kills his family kills himself he can't deal with all this alien

abduction stuff and now that guy's a really good actor too he was great all the actors in this I thought did an incredible job but now Abby the psychologist is kind of under the microscope of the cops Like one of her patients just killed himself. All this weird shit's going on.

People are missing. Blah, blah, blah. And then we come to find out that, well, and then we didn't even mention her husband gets murdered in the beginning in bed while she was there by an intruder. So the super traumatic thing happens. Abby's son hates her because he thinks that she could have saved him. She's got a blind daughter. Like, the sympathy cards are just, like, being pulled left and right in this movie. And then, fast forward, the cops kind of put the family under surveillance.

And boom. Her UFO comes over their house and abducts the daughter. Right. And then we have this whole side plot with ancient aliens and dead language, Samarians. What would we be speaking? Oh, gosh. Samaria. And again, that stuff could have been interesting.

speak on its own. I had a hard time focusing after it was very scat shot. Well, and it was just I kind of And then you have this line I don't always going in and out, in and out. It's just And they would always like, you know, and they made sure to shoot it like all the archival footage was shot really well with that, which is just kind of silly. But then like, you know, they would make sure that

the dramatization was just a little different in the positioning to Again, to give that, again, more an idea that, like, oh, this is the real one, but we didn't do it exactly the same way. We did it like that. Like, it's just all this stuff that I feel, it's, it's, it's, I almost, I almost wonder if I wouldn't feel as strongly about this. If it was a completely made up, like even make up the town where it exists. Straight up sci-fi movie, yep. Yes, because again, they're like, from what I saw of the gnome disappearance, There are, of course, at any time something like that, people are going to happen,

people are going to come in and be like, oh, it's this crazy thing that happened, not real tragedy. Not that the other thing isn't real tragedy either, but you know what I'm saying? Totally. The hurt that people are dealing with, sadness that people are dealing with, and these guys took $10 million and whatever the advertising budget was to give a differing answer. that's what I was to ask, Andrew, is if it was a different talent or if they didn't put the disclaimer, this was... I would even be fine with the disclaimer.

I feel like I would need it to be about a different subject. And okay, so what if it was just a straight sci-fi movie? And like, they use the same trope, though, like where it's like real footage, fake footage, but they never... Yeah, I guess it would depend on the sci-fi. Like, my first day, like, let's just say they did all this, right? but they're like, it's a town full of werewolves. Yeah.

They're just like, oh man, this lady's family is getting picked off by were wolves or people are realizing they're turning into werewolves. This thing that is very obviously and clearly maybe there might be a few people out there that really strongly believe in werewolves and they're dangerous because of it. But I doubt that. I couldn't be wrong. But with this, I feel like with the UFO community,

there is just more of a chance for something to happen, for something to go wrong. I think there's a little bit too much of a volatility there. And not necessarily, like, not because the people that follow it are all messed up or anything like that. It's just this idea that when you want something so badly and you are given supposed proof, like there's more of a chance that you're going to want to grab onto that.

And again, it is something that most of the time is very far out of reach. Yeah. So I just think, yeah, I just, I can't get into it. I want to get your guys opinion on this. The one cool kind of unique thing I thought they played with a little bit was this owl thing. I don't remember there being an owl in it at all. There's owls all over the place. That's so funny.

It's so, okay. See, that shows her my head at, was that? There's got one shot of, um, so where it's turning all around with the eyes are like, yes. The head the whole time, the camera's following. When I first saw that scene, when I first saw that scene, when I first saw that scene, that was the one scene where I'm like, thank you. That's like a very deep cut in UFO lore.

I mean, look, look, I've got right here, I've got two books written just about UFOs and owls. It's a real thing. a phenomenon where owls are seen to either be around before an abduction or a UFO event or after. And a lot of people believe that owls are kind of like a harbinger of these things. Or, or, I mean, you look at the owl. Look at the shape of the head. Look at the eyes. It's very reminiscent of a gray alien.

So a lot of people think this is what they use to like get to somewhere and then abducting. Like they're they're showing you themselves in another form, a screen memory, they call it. and this is what people have claimed. And that's what they did in this movie. All of her patients claim they saw owls before these things happened. So I thought that was a really cool part of people. So is that more of like a deep cut you would say for? Absolutely.

It's not that well-known. I mean, you go back to when Pete's dealt with that. Sure, but that's kind of my point. You know what I mean? That's like, think about how excited you just got by that, by the fact that they brought up this thing that doesn't get brought up too often. Right? Yeah.

And let's say you're a less stable human being that, like, is taking that as a sign that they're like, oh, like, this is in the shit. Like, this is not your, like, rudimentary. Oh, the gray's come down. And they're getting at the real stuff that people don't talk about. So this has to be so. Can I push back a little bit? I'm going to push back a little bit. So I agree, but here's the thing.

I'm fine as an audience member who's not deeply entrenched in it. if you make this movie and you remove the Mila Jolovich thing at the beginning, and to me it's like I'm going into straight fiction. Someone made a horror movie and utilized found footage as part of it. I'm fine with that story as a main consumer. If you're not trying to make me believe that it's true, right? Yeah. Because I do think that like it's shot really fucking well.

So much stuff that I feel like those bumpers had to have been added afterwards. because they look terrible. If the bumpers weren't there and I was like, I'm going into a horror movie and they're not seeing as real change to town. Change the town, I get that. That's a good point. Like, make it a fake town in Alaska. That's a real town

that has real problems with disappearance. Remove those two things. Remove the bumpers. Change, don't make it no. Make it someplace else in fucking remote Alaska and give it a different name. Right. I'm cool because that makes it kind of freaky. Like some of the images like the guy floating and like the found footage image.

Like the way that the director did that, I was like, ooh, fuck. Like, it was good. It was executed well, but that wasn't necessary. As someone who's not in it, someone's not in it. I'm like, oh, the owl thing's fucking cool. Like, that's a cool shot. Because then you're introducing me to some of this stuff. And if I'm going to go learn about it, I'd be like, oh, what's up with owls and aliens?

Like, totally. There are things that I liked about this film. I just think it was irresponsible. Like what you were saying to make it, to say it, to say it, was real. To say it was like a real, but like a wink real, but if you aren't getting the wink, like, if you aren't catching the wink at the end, then like, you're just like, oh shit, this is real. No, again, they double down at the end of the movie. I was floored by that. I know. I want to give a quick shout out, guys, to Unidentified Celebrity Review. Louisa Menez is here and UFOT has been with us

all night. She's awesome. She's got her own YouTube channel. Go check it out. UFOT. And she did mention earlier the Messengers, which is the book I showed you guys by Mike Clellan and Richard Dolan. Like she knows. She's in this community. She knows how much owls mean to us. Yeah, yeah. But I get both of what you guys are saying. No, I get that too, because look, it must feel fucking nice to feel see.

The first time that I ever felt like I fit in in my life was when I saw a weird owl in concert when I was like a 27-year-old man. When I saw Weird Al for the first time. and I saw other people that looked like me. Like my wife and I, she got me ticket. And we were just looking around. I was like, we were like that person. Like those people were going. I never really felt that before in my life.

I never had any clicks. I didn't really go through any phases. I just kind of like I, like I just felt like I fit in. And it's a fucking rad feeling. And it is a good feeling. Like I understand being. When kind of movies blew up, that was for me. Like, oh, shit.

Like this is, this is. this is fucking cool now. Right. Oh, cool. Great. It's different than the weird owl experience, but it's the same thing. Like you all of a sudden like, here's a community. And now people like get that community and think it's cool or want to know more about it.

We in the UFO community are living that right now. Since the Pentagon came out and said UFOs are real, we investigated them. We're going to now invest. They're opening a permanent office to investigate UFOs. That's awesome. That's right. It's happening. So, I mean, talk about validity.

That's what we needed. What we don't need is shit like this to muddy the waters and exploit it to an extent that the Fourth Kind did. I don't like alien abduction, McPherson tape. Like we know, we get it. With this movie, they tried to manipulate us so much and force it down our throats that this is real, this is real. It was the least real of all of these because of A, the budget. And B, they tried so damn hard to convince us. that that footage was real when

oh god is so so frustrated i do want to say the filming of it is fucking gorgeous no there's again i i i don't think anybody here is saying that anybody involved with this film is not talented i just and i said i was going to use this term

earlier i find it ill-advised what they decided to do if that makes sense artistically unethical yeah i get a man well um but i guess let's let's kind of get to the end. So her blind daughter is abducted.

We see some dash cam footage again, which was okay, but here's my problem. We see in the dash cam footage, the police are watching the house, and a UFO goes over the house, and then it goes staticky. And then all we hear is the cop being like, oh my God, they're being,

she's being lifted out of the house. Ryan, is that a thing like... Statici cameras? Is that like a thing too? Oh, totally. Yeah, it's the same in the paranormal community. Like, these these phenomena have a way of messing with with cameras. They drain batteries very easily, blah, blah, blah. Here's my problem. Like, I don't know if it was a budgetary thing, but the camera goes static and we don't see the girl getting lifted out of the house.

I'm like, come on. That was like your one moment to show us something truly cool. But that would make it seem less real. That would make it too much real. I get what you're saying. But at the same time, I was like, what a cop out. Like, that's when you're going to make the camera go. static, come on.

I don't know, but then we get that too, where the guy's literally floating out of his bed, it starts going staticy too. So maybe the more intense, the phenomena, the more it messes with the cameras. That was messed up. Anytime we see like their mouth agape and they kind of look like they're possessed, it was frightening. And then, oh, don't get me started on the like ancient Samarian voice or whatever. The hell that thing was.

that was very unnerving. I don't know. What did you guys think of this part where we hear this weird, kind of dis, what would you say? Disconnected voice. Yeah. Start saying all this really crazy stuff

that they finally decipher. I was actually kind of interested in that because I feel like that's usually more of like a demon possession trope. Isn't there like, people think that like aliens and demons can be the same thing? Like there's that connection to...

That's big too. There's a big movement in the alien abduction lore and everything of spiritual people believing that aliens could be demonic or angelic. Like take your pick. Whatever lens you want to look at the alien phenomena through, that's the problem. It's so amorphous and so unexplained that like you could look at it from any lens. Again, I go back to like Jacques Valle who said like yesterday's fairies are today's aliens. It's possible they could be the same thing. Or it could be an angel.

It could be a demon. It could be interdimensional. It could be us from the future. That's the stuff that keeps me going in this field is asking those questions. Because I don't personally think they're aliens. I don't. I never have, really. And I don't think they are now.

But this movie seems to be going with that, I guess. I don't know. There's some talk of God and ancient alien stuff. But I don't know. That's my tangent. Matthew, Ryan and I actually reviewed both arrival. And the arrival last year in an episode. That was fun.

Prometheus we haven't hit. Prometheus we haven't hit. The three of us got into that. That would be a fun franchise to hit up. And we're getting an alien TV series I saw, too. Pretty sex about that. I like Noah Holly. I love those movies.

I like Noah Holly quite a bit. That guy knows how to make a good TV show. Yeah, absolutely, man. Oh, I'm excited for that. Again, like this topic of aliens, it's been around forever. it's ripe for television. But I think this is an example, the fourth kind of where it just, it swung for the fences, and I just, it was too messy.

Like they didn't, they didn't really have like a message to say, I think. Or like a plot kind of like, I mean, there was stuff that went that happened, but it all just felt like a loose assemblance of events. And again, I, it's hard for me to say anything about it because I really was so turned off by the first five, ten minutes that I don't think there was any way that I was going to enjoy myself. So I don't want to, I don't think that's super fair to, there's a lot of people that worked really hard on this movie, including the people that, like the director and Millie Yovovic. Is it Yolkavitch? She pronounced it that way at the beginning of the movie, right?

I don't think I ever heard it. Yeah, like, I don't think I've ever heard it pronounced that way. But if anybody's going to know how to fucking say it, it's a. person of the self. I hope it's sure. Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, everybody clearly worked hard on this. So I don't, it's hard for me to discuss it either way.

And I hope that doesn't feel like a cop out. But I just, I stand by the stuff that I said earlier and the rest of the movie just kind of went by me and waves. Even saying things that I disliked about it just don't seem fair because I don't think I was going to like it. Yeah. Yeah. And that's not fair to the people who worked on. Exactly. And, you know, I mean, let's just go to the end to try to figure out where her daughter is or whatever. They put Abby, the psychologist, under hypnotic regression, which was weird. I'm like, are these memories or are you trying to literally make contact consciously? I don't know.

Yeah, I didn't understand what was going on. But then she's like getting abducted herself and I guess the guys in the room did too. I don't know for sure. And then she comes back and she's back with the director of the fourth kind telling her story. Like this is all real. Yeah. Like my daughter's still missing. Like I don't care if people think I'm crazy. This is my truth.

Blah, blah, blah. And then, and then like you said, we get Miliyukovic coming back on. And again, same. And the director. And the director. And they say that same. It's up to you to decide what's real and not real thing. And I just.

Okay. And here's the only real thing in the entire movie. During the credits, they're playing audio tapes of people reporting UFOs to... Oh, were those all real? UFO Reporting Center. Those are real audio tapes of people reporting UFOs. And some of them are pretty startling. Are they all from Nome, Alaska?

No. No. Then it doesn't matter. If anything, that makes it worse. Because if I were to watch the film, I would assume that those are calls that are coming from Nome, Alaska. Good point. That's insane. That's insane.

I really thought those were fake, and I clicked away anyway because I had stuff to do. But I, and like, and if those, that's, if those are real, I would almost feel, I feel for those people who had to deal with that, who were dragged in this thing to serve this other narrative. Totally, man. Like, that's, that's fucked. So frustrating. That's so crazy. We're going on three and a half hours.

This has been a freaking epic marathon. But let's talk about the controversy before we wrap this. Please tell me what happened. So here's what I got. I wanted to more discover in real time. I only did lose research. Yeah, fair enough. I figured you had it.

I figured you'd help me out. Oh, I've got you covered. Well, before the controversy, I do want to say the first time I watched this movie all the way through was like on the, I don't know, fourth or fifth date I had with my girlfriend. We watched the movie. We were spooked. It was nighttime. Whatever. There's some disturbing stuff in the movie.

I fell asleep. and I'm a very deep sleeper. Like I could probably sleep through like a nuclear attack, I swear. And apparently she told me in this deep sleep, I started whimpering and I started like almost the way she described it, like I was almost like talking backwards. And this is after watching the movie. And she like woke me up terrified because she's like,

you've never done that before. I've never had a history of sleepwalking, sleep talking, nothing like that. And apparently, after watching the fourth kind, I had the first ever experience of this. It was probably a nightmare I was having, but I thought that was pretty

interesting to add it. You decide what's real or not. You decide. Fellow. Kimmo says the Fourth Kind is outstanding. There are a lot of fans of this movie, and I understand. It's a beautiful movie. It's like

I said earlier, if I do not, if I enjoy something, I don't deny myself of that and I would not want anyone else to to deny themselves of that. Absolutely. First time I watched it, I'd like it. Awesome. That sounds great. Who doesn't like sitting down and enjoying a movie?

Exactly. Apparently that one guy in the chat who's never seen a movie. But moving on. Here's the controversy. Universal heavily pushed the based on true events approach when it came to the viral marketing campaign for the fourth kind. Studio had fake news articles written up about the events depicted in the film, using them alongside real articles from Alaskan publications about the string of

disappearances related to the town. Universal attributed its fake articles to real publications, like the Anchorage Chronicle, the No Nugget, and the Fairbanks Daily News. That's more on Universal, too. I don't put that on the filmmakers. That's a good point. Unless they were directly involved, but I hope not. I know, I hope not.

In 2009, the Anchorage Daily News reported that the Alaskan Press Club hired Anchorage Attorney John McKay to sue Universal for the false news report and for using real missing person cases to promote the movie. Nugget publisher Nancy McGuire said, I really was concerned about it because I didn't write these things. They think that they can get away with this because we're Alaska. They don't think of us as having any brains or being upset about what they do. The company settled the matter and issued a statement at the time saying

Universal agrees to permanently disabling the removal of and of the articles and represents and warrants that it has already permanently disabled access to and removed everything from the internet. Yeah, because you can permanently remove things from the internet. In 2009, there's probably a little bit better chance. Maybe. the Alaskan Press Club received $20,000 along Setta 2,500 donation to its Callista Scholarship Fund in Alaska. So they clearly were doing damage control, but are you kidding me? The fact that they got sued for what they did.

What about all people are missing persons? Yeah. I don't know. I feel bad if you have a missing person that family, Andrew is saying this. If they used someone who's actually missing someone that is a loved one. Oh, Nick. Nick's getting abducted. Uh-oh.

We lost it. Oh, no. Oh, boy. Nick, um... Oh, there is. There is. You paused, man. We thought you got abducted.

Well, you just, you decide. You just... Oh, my God. I love it. I love it. Oh, man. We are running out of steam. But, yeah, what do you guys think?

What do you think about that? That whole... I was just saying, like, if you were... It just adds. It adds to everything else. I just, yeah. Yeah. I think that was something you've seen and they use that.

Right. Exactly. So yeah, that's called. It's cold, man. It is. You know, but then I look at things like all these serial killer movies and stuff. And I'm like based on real events.

And I'm like, okay. Like, it's been done in other ways. But with this, I think they were so aggressive in their marketing that it just came off super cold. And like, let me. Super manipulative.

When you do like a serial killer thing or a reenactment, right? Then like, yes, there's people who will make that argument. Like, you listening to this stuff is bad. However, it was also an opportunity because where, like, a victim can be remembered, right? So, like, if you are, like, pointing out the horrificness of Ted Bundy, just, like, how fucking horrific that human being was, and you honor the victims of him, like, in some ways, you can maybe see, like, we're trying to, like, show the horrificness. because people are interested in that shit, but like you're taking someone who is missing and it shouldn't get this,

unsolved to this fake thing. And like, how hard is that on the person who is like dealing with that? I'm still trying to find that love. True. That's such a good point, Nick. Playing devil's advocate,

I can't believe I'm doing this. What if they were abducted by aliens? Well, no, I think... It's a possibility out of a million possibilities. I think that I agree with that and I understand giving people hope for that. I think the problem is that they are purposely creating here a false narrative where they have literally invented people to be stand-ins. It's not like they're even examining one case.

They are making up their own case so then they can load in all the evidence that they need and put in all the owls and have all the things that are going to hit those little buzzers for people that really follow this stuff. And then all of a sudden this becomes this narrative for this situation. And I'm sure, like, look, if they fucking took like a, like a disappearance story and it had a whole bunch of circumstantial evidence or regular evidence that pointed to this and that's what they used as their case, that's fine. But they didn't. They built one from the ground up and then made reenactments of the thing that they faked. Like, you know, I just, yeah, it's no.

I think the problem here is that everything. about this is not true. Everything about the movie that we saw is not true, but they attach it to a town where something really happened and they use a phenomena that people really care about. Yeah. And they got sued. Like that really says it all right there. All right, guys, final verdict on the fourth kind. What are you going to give? Whatever the lowest number is. Can we do zero? Can I do zero? Can I do zero? I'm going to do zero out of time. I really didn't enjoy it. I really didn't enjoy it. Actually, you know, I'm going to mark myself as present. for this. That's how I'm going to handle this. Fair enough. Fair enough. I'll give it like a three because I did think that like the craftsmanship of the film. Oh yeah. Cinema talk. And it was made in Florence was really good. And so I'm good. My beef is with none of those things.

What's that? I said my beef is with none of those things. And so I'm giving the credit because I want to give the artist that made a really technically sound thing credit. Elias Coteus is fine. Thank you very much. Dude, Casey Jones was in this movie. Come on. Goethe's is great. Will Patton's fucking great. Millie Yulovits is fucking great. Like, everybody in this movie is, they killed it. They killed it. That owl. They did their job.

So, man, I'm going to get people doing their job. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But yeah, but. Which is why I am here. I am here for this. You're present. I'm present. Fair enough, guys. All right. Wow. This turned into a epic conversation.

I did not know we were going to go this long. Thank you to both of you for sticking around this song. Love you, buddy. you to everyone. Watched, some closing questions for you guys. What was your favorite film out of the four we watched? Andrew Go.

Oh, oh, that's a tough one. I really, you know what? When I came into it, I would have said McPherson tape, but I really liked the slumber party one. Cool. I'm going to say those two together. I felt like I was watching one movie. I really did.

Nice. Because I'm not joking when I say McPherson tape ended, and I started, thank you, UFO. O.T. McPherson tape ended and I started Slumber Party. So that little combo, that was my favorite movie of the things we lost. Little main course and dessert. Yeah, exactly.

I'm going to go to UFO Slumber Party. I love the Teps. Do you ever sit there. The UFO Slumber Party just felt like it knew exactly what it wanted to be. And I got that. Yeah. And it had a lot of history to build off of, which I think is cool. Sure.

A lot of these can be traced back to it. the McPherson tape. Totally. McPherson tape. And then that was inspired by actual events as well. So yeah, it's a good lineage for sure. Let's see. LTT wing says what is number one tonight? I'm going to go with, it is tight again between slumber party and McPherson tape. I'm going to say McPherson tape. Maybe I'm biased, obviously. But again, it was the first of its kind. It was experimental. It was highly effective and authentic. So, For me, it was definitely, I'm going to say McPherson tape. But slumber party is like my new go-to. I'm going to be watching that thing every Halloween. I can't wait to see what Jason does next. She watched the rest of VHS too. Ooh, I'm going to.

And right. I'd be interested. Let's see. What is both of your favorite alien-themed movie in general? Not in the found footage. Like, do you have one? I do. Yeah.

I fucking love a rival. My wife did not hang out for that one for me. I thought that one, like, hit me in the, like, crazy linguistic. Because I teach communications, too. Like, I just thought that was a great film. I really loved it. The alien, the alien, uh, Bocaface, Bocaface. Where can you find McPherson too?

It's on, uh, it's on Shudder right now. It's on Shudder. Yeah. Amazon Prime. Oh, Dean wanted me to mention, if you get the, um, the Blu-ray, there's a director commentary and a special featurette, like, Make me. Buy that Blu-ray, I might get that

Blu-ray. That sounds like a bit. It sounds like a steal. Yeah. Google MacPherson tape. It should show up for sure. If you go to Amazon Prime, too, Amazon Prime, it'll take you to shut it over.

You can watch. That's what I did. Perfect. Awesome. A rival. Great choice, Nick. How about you, Andrew? I love Arrival, too, but for the, for the sake of, like, mixing things up a little bit.

And I, yeah, I look, like, Joy and I, my wife and I both, we love that movie. That's, I got to see that. that and then see Amy Adams do a talk back afterwards. Oh, that's awesome. It was awesome. Wow. It's that, I think that movie is really something special. I'm hyped for doing.

But I'll say slither. Oh, good choice. Wow. Good choice. Yeah, that's a good one. Oh, make the Indians gun action. Love slither. Love it.

Well, arrival. I'm going to go with the arrival, starring Charlie John. I got to go. Carl Sheen and Ron. Silva. Can't forget Rod Silva. I'm going to go with my boy, Stephen Spielberg. Close encounters of the third kind. I've never seen that movie. I saw it for the first time last year. It's kind of funny that you say that. Yeah, I just did that one had escaped to me for some reason. Funny little trivia. There's a one of the scientists at the end of that movie when the aliens like land and the scientists like go up to the ship. One of those scientists was Jay Allen Heineck, who created the Coast Encounter scale and worked for Project Blue Book. That's right. That's right. That's. It's pretty bad. They actually got him.

Like, that movie was inspired by his. Sure, sure. That's cool. So they put him in the movie. A little trivia for you guys. But I'm going to go with close the counters. A lot of people are saying arrival as well. That was a great one.

And, okay. Let's see. One more question, guys, I promise, before you can get back to your beautiful families. What is your number one? I'm going to sleep. Me too. I have to eat something. I have to eat something.

More like bed. Yeah. What is your number. number one horror movie that you want our audience to check out this Halloween season. Watch Lost lost boys. Ryan,

you were yours because I have to think. Lost boys. Lost boys. I wonder what which one is the answer. Watch the lost boys. However, the movie that I had originally pitched to Ryan for us to talk about this year

is a little film called Society. I'm trying to get more people to watch this movie. It was made by Brian Usenah, who was a producer on a reanimator. And I believe he directed the second reanimator. and reanimator is another one. My favorite movie, Society is one of the more interesting, and I think a little bit ahead of its time movies that I've seen a lot of time.

So watch Society, that movie's rad. But, yeah, Lost Boys is my favorite horror movie of all time, and I think it's, I'm almost crushed that they're going to remake it. But we'll see what happens. Look, look. Who knows? It could be good. But I think there's something so incredibly special about that movie that I think would be hard to recapture.

I could be wrong. I would love for it to be good. I love the kids at the cast, the people behind. I'm super happy that it's a writer of color who's doing the script. There's a lot of cool things around it, so hopefully it's good.

I hope it's good. I do hope it's good. But watch the original. Fingers crossed me. You want to see some sexy muscle trumpet or sex-focles players? Yeah, yeah. His name is Timmy Capello,

and he used to play. a saxophone for a Tina Turner. Okay. He looks like Sean Michaels. I think he's on Thunderdome. I think he's on a Thunderdome song. Reminds me so much of Sean Michaels. There's your deep...

He's got the hit. He's like the geration going in that scene. Oh, he's got it going, man. He's Kenny G. style. Nick. He's so good. Where have you seen Kenny G. thrusting his pelvis up?

Town hall. Bich. Town hall in New York City. That dude, Kenny G. He came up to me and I-Han. My bar manager. for those who don't know, I'm a bartender. I work at a concert venue.

And I have a music producer. Yep. And Kenny G. came right up to me and my boss, and he serenated us, and it was beautiful. That's very awesome. That's pretty fucking cool, because that dude is talented as fuck. No matter what people say. I'm switching headphones.

They ran out of power. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, Nick, what's your favorite horror movie? Okay, so this is going to be, so have to justify us a little bit. Stand by me. And of course I didn't hear it because I was plugging in my headphones. What did you say? Stand by me.

Ooh, good choice. It's my favorite movie of all time. Nice. The idea of going and finding a body. Andrew looks a little mixed by that choice. I'm just interested in that it's being classified as a horror movie. I'm actually kind of, that's interesting. How do you classify horror?

That's all I went back. Yes, I would agree with that. But I would say like that would feel so firmly coming of age. to me. It's both, but that's why I felt about it too. When I watched it on my core movie, a coming of age movie, just with a fucking monster clown. Yeah. That's fair. But that's also why I liked

it. You're right. Samo Meas very much coming of age. That's why it's my favorite movie. I've watched it since I before, I should have been able to watch it up into an adult. And it has resonated with me. I've read the novella. But the idea of it, and maybe on Pepper because I'm a big Stephen King fan and I've read

his like synopsis of the story. But like, the horror for me is like you are going to find a dead body and it's a dead kit. That's fair. Yeah, that would be a huge fear. I get it. I totally get that. In confronting death for the first time and all these things that like, to me, can be

horrific or, or, I don't know. Andrew is not, Andrew's not on board with my. I'm not, buddy. I'm sorry. I look, yeah, it doesn't matter. But yeah, it's still a great movie. There was a movie. It's a phenomenal movie. Barbara Hershey, where she was possessed. Anyone know that one? I don't know. Oh, shit.

I can't remember off the top of my head. It's going to drive me nuts. It's going to drive me nuts. Not horror. I'm tired. Listen, you can justify it. I justified it. That's my reason name. I gave you a Y. I gave you a Y. You don't have to agree with my why. You know what? I'm going to go with a movie that we did on Shoktober. It follows. Oh, that's good. That movie stuck with that. me um this kind of unseen force kind of you know that is never ending and keeps going no matter what slowly doesn't matter it's you know in all these other movies we see like the killer getting to the people and killing them but with this one it's like it could take them years to finally find you

to try to kill you so you're going to live your whole freaking life paranoid about it unless you transmit this thing to somebody else So I thought that was super inventive. I thought it was very scary. It really affected me. So I'm going to have to go with It Follows as a more current porn movie to watch. Here you go. And kind of I'm copping out.

I'm going to go also with the birds. I love the birds. That's a good one. That's a great movie. Yeah. Yeah. Those are my two. All right, guys.

Last question of the night for you before we go. God, go to bed. Where can we find everything you guys are up to? and all that. If I'm like on Twitter at Sanford Mine's Son, you can listen to episodes with these guys that we did of Shacktober if you're interested. A lot of them are still up under Half White Son of the Black Man. You're awesome.

And yeah, just keep your eyes peeled. Like you can read a lot of my stuff at Pagiba.com. P-A-J-I-B-A-com. I usually cover late-night talk shows for them, but every now and then I'll drop. some other pieces like I wrote about watching Child's play as a father for the first time and how it really

messed me up. Theater stuff in New York. Yes, yeah. Well, I'm just not sure what random access theater is up to right now, so I don't want to speak for them. But if you go to their Facebook page, it's this thing called the drunk texts where they do staged readings

of either classical works or current works made classical. I have adapted Ghostbusters for them called it the Merry Busters of Ghosts. Halloween, which I think I just called All Hallows Eve. And then I did the New Hope, which I think it was a hope renewed. But yeah, I just take those things, those movies, and mash them down to 30 pages of

Viambic pentameter. And then we get drunk and do staged readings of them, and we drink with the audience, and we play drinking games. And they're a whole lot of fun. They were doing it on Zoom. They've done a couple live performances, but I think they're all just like, like everybody's trying to recollect and figure out what that's going to be

here in New York. Thanks, buddy. So yeah, that stuff's out there and I'm around. At Sanford minus Sun on Twitter. Perfect. Thanks, buddy. Nick, what do you got for us, my man? So I'm more active on Instagram and Facebook and I'm real bad at Twitter, guys.

I'm at at and Westemeyer on Instagram and then Facebook's just my name. So, yeah, this is you can find me and then doing stuff and things. Lots of each time. And if go to his Instagram, if you are hungry, my God. This dude is like a master baker. Master baker is what I said.

Ryan, Ryan, before we do close out things here, I would like to air a grievance. Please. I was told two years ago. Oh, fine. No, no, no, no. I was told two years ago, now. that we, the plan was we were going to watch and discuss it chapter two. And I was going to talk about how.

Did we not do that? No, we did not. No, we did not. Oh my God. I would talk about how much I would even say, I prefer it to the first one. My wife does too. And she doesn't even like it. It's a better, it's a better adaptation.

It's a better adaptation of the material. I'd be happy to expound on that. You just let me know when and where. We'll do that. I just bought it on Bluery the other day. I'm so excited because it's not streaming anywhere right now, so I needed to have it for Shoxover, and I owned the first one already.

It's not on HBO Max? No, they took it off right beforehand, I think. That happens a lot of time. That's, well, no, look, every October, it rolls around and they do the smart thing. People will pay for it. Yeah, exactly. They pull shit to get people to pay for it, certain things.

Like Dr. Sleep, I had to get Dr. Sleep, too. The director's cut. That movie, Andrew, I, I, again, love Steve. King, but like you, like, raved all that and I went and watched it and was like, that Mike Flanagan's a fucking genius. If you guys haven't watched Midnight Mass. I love Midnight Mass. I love

Midnight Mass. I don't want to talk about that shit, man. Stephen Greer said, Emily. Yeah, buddy. Watch the archive, my man. You got four hours ahead of you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that being said. Yeah, that being said. Ryan, thank you so much for having us on.

Yeah, thank you. It was really great to do this little shots over reunion. Absolutely. I'm going to let you guys go. Thank you to everybody who watched. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Absolutely.

I'm going to remove you guys here and just do a little closing, but thank you to both of you for- Love you, buddy. Have a good night. Good night. Have a great night, guys. Good night. Have a great night, guys.

Wow. That was incredible. Guys, this was so much fun. These are two of my best friends here in New York. And as you can tell, we have a lot of fun stuff to talk about when it comes to movies. I want to thank all of you guys. UFOT. Alien, Bocaface, Kimo, Stephen. Who else did we have? Elias LTT, Wings. We had Anthony earlier, Matthew Riot, of course, Luis Jimenez, all you guys, Vincent, Christopher, thank you. If I didn't mention your name, I do apologize. I'm trying to

scroll up here. Morcavi Studios. Thank you so much for sticking with us. This was so much fun. go check out all the movies we talked about. And yeah, if you're just tuning in now, go watch the archive. And if you want to help out Summer in the Skies, Super Chat is there for good. I think it turns into like an applause button or something. If you want to help out the show, you can do that. Or you can join our Patreon campaign for Summer in the Skies, where you give a monthly contribution and you get bonus episodes,

one-on-ones with me. You can pick my guests and topics for the show. And a bunch of cool stuff over on Patreon as well if you want to help out someone in the skies. So go to patreon.com slash somewhere skies. But other than that, happy Halloween season, guys. I hope this is fun for you as much as it was for us to watch all these movies tonight. Again, my special thanks to Jillian, to Jason, and to Dean, who sent in those videos for us. And of course, to our co-hosts, Nick and Andrew.

And other than that, we're at Somewhere Somewhere Somewhere. Skies on Twitter at SummerSkies on Instagram. Make sure you're subscribed to the YouTube channel that you are watching this on right now and everything in between. Stay tuned for a very special witch episode that we're going to be doing. And as usual, the show is every Monday. That's all I got, guys. Have a wonderful night.

Have a great Halloween, safe Halloween season. And I will see you here soon. And remember, keep your feet on the ground, but never stop searching somewhere in the skies. Here are your listener reviews of the movies we discussed tonight. Thank you for submitting your thoughts on these alien abduction films. Enjoy. Hey everybody. This is Chrissy from the debrief.org and the Alpop Repeat podcast.

Okay, let's be honest here. The fourth kind is probably one of the scariest movies ever made. Some people are not going to agree with me on that one, but for me it was. It was petrifying. I think I blocked out certain scenes in my brain because I was so. scared. So I agree. I would also say that it's comparable to the ring. Like 100% it's comparable to the ring in scariness. Maybe not in storyline, but in scariness. Also, the acting was amazing. Milozovich killed it. If you are a fifth element fan, you will know how fabulous she is. And so I,

I love that movie just because she's in it and she does a really, really great role. I also going to add that I like the fact that they tried to play this off based on this real story that happened in Alaska in a town called Nome. So what I did, because I wasn't 100% sure if that was true or not, I went to the Google machine and went in doubt, check it out. And I googled to actually see if it was a true story. So what I found out is that it was like loosely based off a true story. So that a whole bunch of people went missing. And then what happened was that the story about these people going missing and certain amount of people not found, they decided to connect it to this alien abduction theory, which I thought was interesting and smart for Hollywood. But the mayor called it, Mayor Dennis

Michael called it hoopla. And he quotes by saying, people need to realize that this is a science fiction thriller. So good job, Hollywood, because he scared the crap out of me. But I'm not always a fan taking making fake abduction stories from an actual story that was probably true with real people, but it wasn't based on actual abductions. So that's my only negative in that. But positives, I'm going to say it scared the crap out of me, and that's what it's supposed to do. So it did its job. Hey, oh, slumber party abduction.

Rock on, Rye guy, like this one. Mr. Sprock, big fan, first time caller, long time listener. G. Dub. My name's Garrett and, uh, no, big fan of the show. A lot of my friends are. Not enough for sure. Always trying to spread the gospel, you know, be like, hey, listen. You know, there's a few people in the game we got to listen to.

And it is definitely, you know, your show is one of those in the upper echelon of, um, not whether it's just disclosure, but again, just great entertainment, but also information on the topic. So I needed to commend you on that, first and foremost. As for the alien sleepover party, your instructions say to tell us what you liked about it. I'm going to flip the script. I've got to be honest. I've only seen two of the four and the alien abduction and then the fifth kind or the fourth kind

with the kid floating out of the bed. Going to be honest, both of them kind of turned, you know, did. do it for me specifically, just some weak, you know, some glaring plot holes and just the lack of continuity in the stories. That being said, though, still entertaining. I would still tell anybody to at least see them once, you know, and it wasn't that bad where I would ever say, oh, trash. Can't say that. Can't say that. Nice little plot twist at the end of a couple of them. Interesting stuff, special effects, you know, high quality, no denying it. Didn't hit it. Didn't hit it for me the way I wanted. Didn't slap me different, but I'm not mad at it. So definitely

recommend anybody to at least see him once. And first and foremost, let's hear Ryan's review of this stuff. And then maybe he'll have an angle or perspective that I didn't see. Anyway, best wishes, G, bro. Please keep up the good work. We're out here listening and supporting. Keep it coming, man. Thank you. Hi, Ryan. Hi, hi listeners. It's Andy from That UFO podcast. And loving the discussion. that's going on with these movies, seen some of the stuff online as well. The McPherson tape, so I sent this over to you, Ryan, as a suggestion as well, I think, that you were maybe going to do it anyway, but this is one that scared me.

So I found this when I was younger. I was up late waiting on a wrestling pay-per-view starting in the UK, which obviously they usually start about 1 o'clock in the morning over here, and me and my friend were sitting just kind of flicking through the TV channels. And then I remember coming across on Sky Movies, this weird found footage movie. And it was the MacPherson tape and Alien Abduction story, I think, was the tag alongside it. And it just, it was so odd. Even though you had all these talking heads that were supposedly real people,

the footage itself I thought was done really well, and the bit that really stands out for me. And it gave me the chills, and I'm not good for watching horror at all. I'm a bit of a scared of cat, was when they're running through the house at some point, and a bedroom door closes, and the room's in dark, and the only source of light is coming from the hallway. and just as the bedroom door closes, you see this little grey being standing behind it. But because of the lighting, you only see the quickest flash. That terrified me and I remember still the jump I had at that point. For me, it's a really well-made little piece of film.

For what would have been a very small budget, I think it covers the topic quite well. And it's a good little horror piece. So yeah, the McPherson tape for me is definitely the scariest of those. and gives you some good easy freights as well. Thanks, Ryan. What if I told you that one of the very first found footage movies ever was made in the 1980s, probably never seen it before, and in my opinion is better than paranormal activity and Blair Witch Project combined?

What if I also told you that this found footage movie may not be a movie at all, but actual real found footage showing a real, actual alien invasion of a home? Okay, well, that's what viewers of the 1989 movie the McPherson Tapes originally thought. And here's why. The original movie wasn't called the McPherson Tapes. It wasn't even a movie you could buy at your local video store. It first circulated among ephologists and even ended up on the local news, according to my followers who saw the footage.

And it was referred to as UFO abduction. There are, in fact, two versions, at least, of the film that exist online. Now, the McPherson tapes or UFO abduction, whatever you want to call it, is not to be confused with the remake, Alien Abduction Incident in Lake County, which was released as a traditional, obvious movie in 1998, and has the same director. Are you confused yet? Let's just say, I had the pleasure of interviewing the director and star of the McPherson tapes, Dean Aliotto, and Tommy Giavecini, and I hope to clear up a lot of this confusion. But I'm afraid I came away from that interview with even more questions than before, making the McPherson tapes, aka UFO abduction, one of the most intriguing and entertaining movies I've ever watched. Hi, folks, this is Dan from that UFO podcast. The fourth kind is one of those experiences that just sticks with you.

With some mysterious kind of sleep paralysis and nighttime mysteries in my past, it hit a lot of spots that kind of just me, never want to watch it ever again, to be honest. I thought it was very well made, and it was terrifying to me, especially the scene towards the end of the film. I don't know if you're putting spoilers in here, but spoiler warning when you hear the, essentially the abduction take place through a voice recording. And it's one of those moments where I thought, you know what, sans cameras, you know, this is probably the, probably the kind of evidence that we would get from a nighttime abduction and it just shook me up and I only ever watched that film once but it stuck with me through and through it is however kind of unfortunate that the aliens are painted in

such a bad light or the ET I should say thank you demi Lovato um I worry sometimes that films like that could paints how we see them in a negative light and that's not how we all see E.T. Some of us are a bit more hopeful, but that was a terrifying experience, and I hope that it is wrong. Out of all the kind of found footage, alien films that you're looking at in this episode, the fourth kind is definitely the one that stuck out the most to me. I'd also recommend one that isn't in this list called The Phoenix Forgotten, which very much surprised me and justified the use of the video camera gimmick extremely well, I thought. Hello, this is my review of VHS2 from 2013, the third story, which is called Slumber Party

Alien Abduction. Let me preface by saying, I'm not a huge horror fan. This story is part of an anthology of four short horror films. We observed the action through the point of view of a go-camera attached to the family dog. My first impression was that it was hard to follow what's going on. We see some animosity between two young brothers and their sister's friends. This leads to pranks between groups of people, and I'm still not sure who's who. The footage is shaky and low quality. They see something that looks like a UFO in the water, but no one pays attention. A guy takes a prankster's camera away, but the actions required to continue filming the scene become unrealistic to me. There's yet another prank which is interrupted

by a loud noise. As they investigate, they are attacked by a fake-looking grey alien in a plastic-looking suit. Somehow they end up in a lake, one boy almost drowns. More aliens attack the group on a pier. The aliens chase the survivors until one boy gets taken by a tractor beam and drops the dog, who unfortunately dies. I didn't like watching the people play mean pranks on each other, and it was sad to see the dog die. The actions needed to keep filming were unrealistic, Loud noises occurred several times during the film and were annoying. Trying to make sense of anything was difficult, and I don't see why aliens would need to physically hunt the humans.

There was one point where people were hiding in the woods, and the aliens seemed unable to locate them. I don't believe they would be fooled that easily. At the end, we see this is meant to be a found footage style of movie, as the dog's cam is somehow found. honestly, I just wanted it to be over. For a horror fan, I would say there were some jump scares. I don't know what else fans would look for.

It may be fine for you, but it wasn't for me. Thanks for listening. I remember the first time I saw The Fourth Kind. You know, I wasn't sure if I was watching a horror movie or drama or a thriller or a quote-unquote UFO movie. But I just remember after the movie, it had really long-lasting effects in terms of feeling like legit spout. And ever since I saw that movie, I do not look at owls the same way. And then, you know, from years later, obviously, you know, becoming more well research on the UFO topic as well.

You know, the whole owl thing really kind of ties together for sure. Hey, Ryan, it's Bruce, co-host of the Cryptkeepers podcast and a UFO horror movie aficionado. I love, love this particular subgenre of horror and sci-fi. and like UFO believers searching for that evidence that proves once and for all that we are being visited, I've been searching for what I call the Great American Alien Abduction film. None quite have reached that pinnacle yet, but there is one movie I do unashamedly love. And that's the fourth kind. It's terribly, terribly messy.

Bouncing back and forth between found footage and reenactments, it's like the director couldn't decide what kind of movie he wanted to make. But to its credit, it does things different than most alien abduction films. Most of those films are just the same kind of plot over and over again. He does something a lot different here, which I can appreciate. And when the movie works, which often is not the case, but when it does work, it works well. It hits hard. There are genuine, creepy, and terrifying moments in the film that stand up against the greats of the horror genre.

I saw the movie 12 years ago, and they still stick with me. And I love the fact that none of the central mysteries to the film are ever resolved. These people brush up against the unknown, and it has a devastating effect on their lives, without providing them the answers they seek. To me, that feels real. But the best part of the movie, to me, is the end credits. I know that sounds weird, but listening to what I assume are real phone calls to the National UFO Reporting Center and hearing the terror in these people's voices, It's chilling. To me, it's the scariest part of the movie.

So, yeah, while the great American alien abduction film still alludes us, the fourth kind isn't a bad entry into the UFO horror genre. I think it's very well worth the watch. So hi, Orion. This is Marcus from Frequency Dip on D-side Radio. My thoughts on the fourth kind very quickly were when it first came out, I thought this was the most amazing film. How could it be a true story? The Anukai were returning.

owls everywhere. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. I thought the show, the actual film was really good and well filmed and got me quite hooked. I think from seeing the other four films, you've got advertised on the things. I'll definitely have a look. I'm sure I've seen the Macpherson tapes, but I'm not sure. But yeah, it's a cool eight out of ten. Still got a bit upset when I found out, though, that it wasn't real. This is Joshua P. Warren, and I think I was first contacted by the director of the movie Alien Abduction, Maddie Beckerman, around 2011. He told me he was making a mockumentary about people being abducted around Brown Mountain. And it was called at that time Project Blue Book.

That was the initial name of the movie. And he explained how that he wanted to interview real experts and real witnesses to make the documentary film more genuine. And I thought it was a cool idea. I mean, I was impressed that Lawrence Bender was one of the producers. I mean, he's a big one. He produced a lot of Quentin Tarantino stuff. So we made arrangements for his crew to come to my museum in Asheville, North Carolina, which sadly no longer exists because it was flooded. But anyway, he came to the museum to interview me about the real phenomenon. They actually made a lot of the real phenomenon. They actually made a generous donation to the museum and when his crew arrived everyone was great it was it was small

it was just a handful of people but they were sincerely interested and i talked to them for probably a couple of hours about the brown mountain lights phenomenon in general pretty much the same kind of interview i do for an actual documentary and then i referred them to some other people I am probably the one who hooked them up with Angela Moore, a witness in the movie, who lives in the area. And she's also a quite well-known psychic. What's kind of weird is that afterward, I never heard another thing about this movie project for a long time. I think it was years. And I would occasionally remember the project and then think, well, I guess that must have fizzled out.

and I really kind of forgot about it. And then I suppose Maddie probably contacted me to let me know it was finally coming out. But now it was going to be called alien abduction. And one thing he told me that amazes me to this day is that when they were shooting, they attached a camera. It might have just been an iPhone or something to a balloon and sent it up into the sky as it was recording video and that thing crashed back to earth and landed somewhere deep in the middle of the wilderness and his crew found it and were able to retrieve that footage so when you

watch the opening of that movie and you see the footage from the alien throwing the camera out of the UFO and the view as it's soaring back to earth that's real that's real original footage they got. And to this day, as you can tell, I'm extremely impressed by that. But I thought the way the film was put together was brilliant. In fact, to this day, even though it clearly seems like a mockumentary to me, I still get contacted by people, including reporters, that think this may be real. And I have to explain that this is a mockumentary for entertainment purposes.

and that's why some of the information in the movie is exaggerated. So, for example, in the opening, when it says that in October of 2011, 27 people went missing after hundreds of witnesses saw the brown mountain lights, well, that didn't happen. I mean, that would have been big news, of course. But it is true that over the years, people have disappeared around the Limbaugh Gorge, but that's pretty common for national parks. And even though thousands of people have seen the lights and experienced weird things up there, including myself, the only real abduction story that comes to mind right now is that of Ralph Lale, a guy who owned a tourism shop in the area back in the 1960s. And he said that he'd been abducted by aliens many times up there. He even wrote a booklet about it. although you can't really properly call it abduction because he agreed to go.

So in a nutshell, the premise of the movie is rooted in a lot of real stories, and some of those are just exaggerated, of course, to create the fictional experience of the film and give it a more believable framework, which is what a mockumentary style is all about. But Maddie and I are friends to this day. I feel honored to have been part of a movie that so many people have enjoyed. And, you know, people know me for a lot of things. So it's interesting when I meet someone who says, hey, you're the guy who was an alien abduction.

And then, of course, they usually ask, how much of that was real? So that's pretty cool. Obviously, Maddie achieved his goal.