Artivels Undescribable Perfection

Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Joe Robinson The abysmal rating this film has is completely undeserved, if you view it in the context of other UFO films of that period and in the context of SF films generally. You cannot tell me that Spielberg and those guys didn't watch this film before they did the big extravaganza, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, three years later. This film has a low budget, and the characters and the plot are poorly developed. It also contains a closing scene that is a pathetic attempt to emulate Kubrick's masterful SF film -- I know, I know. But, it's not in the IMDb 2 range. It deserves more -- not a whole lot more, but a little more. It's a fun film to watch on a Saturday afternoon, if you have nothing else to do and you can manage to keep your expectations suitably low.

Polaris01313-1 WARNING! THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS!!! I can remember watching this film for the first time. It was on a rainy Saturday afternoon, and my mother and I were visiting one of our neighbors(who was bed-ridden with pneumonia). While my mother and I were speaking with the neighbor's wife, the husband was watching this unusual science fiction film on the local independent station. When I caught the film, I was pretty surprised and haunted at the same time.Years later, after having viewed the film twice on the same station, I told the local pharmacist about it. When she saw it, she said the film blew her mind away.To sum up UFO: Target Earth the best, it was a cerebral '70's science fiction film.Like George Romero, Dan O'Bannon, and John Carpenter did for independent films concerning the science fiction/horror genre(i.e. the original Night Of The Living Dead, Dark Star, and Halloween), Michael DeGaetano does the same thing with the subject about UFOs.The plot follows a university communications researcher/electronics expert, Alan Grimes on his quest to find a UFO that apparently crashed into a remote, back country lake near a power plant many years past. Residents of a small community remember strange and bright lights that appeared in the night sky. The population of the small town also begins to suffer from what appears to be communal flashbacks. Soon there are citizens who believe that the cause for this disturbing phenomenon might be from the same UFO that crash landed in the lake. When the electronics specialist accidentally intercepts a military call about UFO sightings and accidentally overhears two military types authorizing a scramble of jets to investigate, he decides to investigate the phenomenon near the lake. The young man stares out of the window for a long time then phones someone else to make an appointment.Meeting with the local college's resident astronomer, Alan inquires about the logical possibility of flying saucers, an idea the professor quickly shoots down as anything but scientific. The professor lectures him at great length about the possibility of Life in the Universe. He goes to see 'Dr Mansfield and they have a conversation. A chance encounter with a mysterious psychic woman, Vivian fuels Alan's questioning, as she feels a strong electrical pull to a nearby reservoir. It turns out she has a mental connection to alien presences. After being denied access to the military's communication equipment, an undaunted Alan finds help from his fellow colleagues, who along with Vivian, set out for the body of water that some believe hides the long forgotten crashed Alien craft. While searching for evidence of aliens, he picks up signals that he believes are being emitted from the alien spacecraft--and they are coming from under the depths of the lake near the small town. Unknown to the town's residents, themselves. Could it be that the aliens within are still alive? If so, is this also a possible government cover-up? Hoping to discover the source of the mysterious signals and the secrets contained within the alien ship(SPOILER ALERT), Alan wanders about with the small group of scientists into a forest before they encounter some aliens that are able to get their ship airborne again, thanks to the power of Alan's imagination. As a result, Alan grows old as he is exposed to the alien presence as the UFO takes off into a brilliant starfield.A real oddity this one - made for peanuts (reputedly $70,000), it's an ambitious attempt to translate the mid-70s passion for ufology to the big screen that writer/director Michael DeGaetano had the resources, imagination, or ability to carry off his lofty ambitions. Three years later, Steven Spielberg would come along and show him how it should be done with Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Still, for an independent movie released in 1974(and re-released in 1978), that's made this cheaply, it certainly doesn't lack ambition. It's one that tries to tap in to the mystical qualities of certain aspects of UFOlogy. I can't really say the movie is successful; there's something about the eccentric use of music, the oddball pacing and characters, and the confused plotting that is more likely to get you scratching your head than anything else.Still, there's a quality to this movie that I find quite unique, and as a result, I can't quite bring myself to just dismiss the movie. Maybe it's just because the movie took me somewhere that I've never been before, and given how many movies I've seen that seem like rehashes of other movies, I've learned to value that. And even though I found the computer-generated abstract special effects to be somewhat laser light show and psychedelic in origin, they were rather hypnotic all the same. Action and thriller fans will definitely be disappointed, but those looking for something a little different with a mystical edge, there's something to be appreciated here.

dizzhrt I kind of enjoyed the leisurely pace of the movie; it was sort of a nostalgic flashback to a time when movies moved slowly enough for me to absorb all elements in a scene, instead of flashing through at such a breakneck speed that much information is lost. It was a dopey movie with mostly inept acting and a dopey premise (the aliens' speeches at the end sounded like any given night on George Noory), but it wasn't totally a waste of time. The music was pleasant; the whole movie had a kind of amateurish charm to it. I wouldn't ever watch it again, but I don't regret the time I spent on it. I have sat through far worse. And it is a little time capsule of 1974.

Hitchcoc This is really a terrible movie. I remember years ago when 2001: A Space Odyssey came out. All the heads would go to it to see the colors when the guy goes through the star gate. This one has colored geometric shapes. Far out. There is this silly subplot with this guy hooking up with one of his own kind and morphing into another dimension. It actually sounds intelligent until you see it. It is dull, dull, dull. It is thoughtless, thoughtless, thoughtless. As this young man searches for his own meaning, others move around him, confused. Just like the audience. There are long, pontificating speeches. "I'll know it when I see it." "I know I'm destined for it." Gee, I wonder what it is. I'm sure that the makers of this really saw it as an artistic endeavor. However, Stanley Kubrick, they ain't.