This is one of my all time classic sci-fi favorites for feature film. I remember when this first came out in 77. We went to the theaters to see it and wow, what a great film it was. In the mid seventies this was cutting edge. I can’t even recall how many times I have seen it now!
The Story :
In Mexico’s Sonoran Desert, French scientist Claude Lacombe, and his American interpreter David Laughlin, along with other government scientific researchers, discover Flight 19, a squadron of World War II airplanes that disappeared more than 30 years earlier in the Bermuda Triangle. The planes are intact and operational, but there is no sign of the pilots. An old man who witnessed the event claimed that “the sun came out at night, and sang to him”. Meanwhile, at an air traffic control center in Indianapolis, controllers listen as two commercial airline flights narrowly avoid a mid-air collision with an unidentified flying object (UFO). In Muncie, Indiana, 3-year-old Barry Guiler is awakened in the night when his toys start operating on their own. Fascinated, he gets out of bed and discovers someone or something (off-screen) in the kitchen. Playfully, he runs away from the house, forcing his mother, Jillian, to chase after him.
While most of the civilians who are drawn to the site are apprehended by the Army, Roy and Jillian persist and make it to the secret landing zone just as dozens of UFOs appear in the night sky. Scientific specialists at the site begin to try to communicate with the UFOs by the use of light and sound from a large electrical billboard that is being controlled by a synthesizer. After the UFOs leave, an enormous mothership lands at the site, also using light and sound to teach the specialists the aliens’ basic tonal vocabulary. It then releases the missing pilots from Flight 19, as well as the missing sailors from the Cotopaxi and many other long-missing people, all from different past eras and all of whom have not aged since their abductions. Barry is also returned and reunited with a relieved Jillian.
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Cast : | Richard Dreyfuss | François Truffaut | Teri Garr | Melinda Dillon | Bob Balaban | Warren Kemmerling | Roberts Blossom | Philip Dodds | Cary Guffey | Lance Henriksen | Merrill Connally | George DiCenzo | Gene Dynarski | Josef Sommer | Carl Weathers | Written and Directed by Steven Spielberg
Production Credits : Julia Phillips and Michael Phillips Productions | EMI Films
Article credits : YouTube, IMDB, Wikipidea screenshots from the film and my own recollections.