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To
celebrate my recent pilgrimage down
Highway 375 -- a/k/a the Extraterrestrial
Highway -- to Rachel, Nevada -- home of
the Little
A'Le'Inn and Area 51 -- I decided to
tackle this little documentary about the
McPherson families' harrowing alien
abduction caught on video tape. Alleging
that it really happened and the McPhersons
are still missing to this day, the program
was aired by the UPN network in 1998 and
had the nation buzzing, wondering if it
was real or a hoax. Let's examine the
evidence and then decide for ourselves.
*
* * *
It's
Thanksgiving, and the McPherson clan has
gathered at Mom McPherson's in Lake
County, Minnestota for the traditional
turkey dinner: Eldest son Kurt, his wife
Linda and their six year old daughter Rose;
Eldest daughter Melanie, and her boyfriend
Matthew Wilson; middle son Brian, and his
girlfriend Renee Laurent; and youngest son
Tommy and his video camera rounds out the
family unit. (We
find out later that Mom is a widower.)
Things
start out innocently enough. The dining
table is brimming with food and family
chicanery. Tommy is being a nuisance with
his camera and is scolded by his mother. (I
think the camera is permanently attached
to his left hand and is constantly on so
everything is seen from Tommy's
perspective.)
As the family sits down to eat, the power
conks out. Kurt
and Brian leave to check the fuse box in
the garage, and Tommy tags along. Brian
tries to open it, but is burned by the hot
metal and quickly pulls his hand away. His
brothers laugh at his misfortune until
their attention is drawn outside. Down the
road, the transformer on top of the power
pole is fried and throwing off sparks. All
rational explanations go out the window
when Tommy's camera spies some eerie
lights flashing in the woods. They decide
to investigate and the camera shuts off.
The
camera comes back on and the McPherson
boys are in a highly agitated state.
They've stumbled upon a UFO that has
landed in a nearby field. Tommy tries to
keep the camera still and in focus, when
two alien figures exit the ship and start
zapping a cow with ray gun. The men
hightail it back to the house,
and find the women have been busy breaking
out about a million candles (?!) The
phones are also knocked out, and everything
electrical (except
the camera, he said suspiciously)
is on the fritz. Kurt heads to the den and
breaks out some shotguns (and
the family obviously does a lot of hunting
judging by the number of guns),
while the women demand to know what's
going on and what they saw.
Suddenly,
the house is swamped by a high-pitched
sonic attack. Everyone covers there ears,
except for Rose, who seems strangely
unaffected. The noise finally subsides and
there are sounds that something is outside
the house running amok. Kurt tapes a
flashlight to the barrel of his gun and
takes the keys to the largest vehicle. He
tells everyone they're all leaving, then
to sit tight and he'll bring the SUV to
the front door. (And
in a nice realistic touch, Mom is worried
about all the food. I worked hard on that
turkey dammit!)
Tommy
follows Kurt outside but they spot
nothing. Tommy confesses that he soiled
himself when he saw the aliens (and
proves it by panning down to his crotch.)
Kurt assures him everybody's that scared.
The truck won't start. The older brother
pops the hood, but before he can open it,
there is a flash of light and smoke erupts
from the engine. Using the gun barrel, he
raises the hot hood to discover the
battery has melted into a steaming gob of
goo. Trapped, they
retreat back into the house.
The
tape jumps ahead: The family is gathered
in the living room. Panic hasn't quite got
them hysterical yet, but they're real
close. Mom is nursing a glass of wine and
frightfully asks "What do THEY want?"
The only answer she gets are the sounds of
something crawling on the roof. Tommy runs
outside and trains his camera up to the
roof and catches a fleeting glimpse of
something crawling into an upstairs window.
He tells Kurt who leads the way upstairs.
After several suspenseful turns, a ray of
light shoots at him from the darkness. He
fires back and the light stops. Kurt
orders everyone back downstairs.
The
family regroups in the kitchen and tries
to plan a course of action, when the
majority of the group comes down with a
massive nosebleed. Only the McPhersons are
affected, except, again, for young Rose (Matthew
and Renee, the non-family members aren't
affected either, but Linda, Kurt's wife,
is.) Everyone crams toilet paper
into their noses, trying to staunch the
flow.
The
tape jumps ahead again: Kurt and Brian are
going to try and make it to the highway on
foot for help. When they head to the door,
a ball of light crashes into the house and
raises holy hell, shrieking though every
nook and cranny. It's erratic flight plan
continues until it slams into Renee,
knocking her down. The light blast has put
her into a deep sleep that they can't wake
her up from. Kurt must work to get Brian
away from her so they can make a run for
the highway. This time, Kurt, Brian and
Matthew will go for the highway, leaving
Tommy in charge of the womenfolk so they
can look after Renee.
The
men leave.
The
tape jumps ahead about an hour, according
to the camera's clock, but the remaining
family only feel a few minutes have
passed. (Meaning
they've lost an hour, or experienced
"missing time.")
Linda is getting a little panicky, Mom's
on her fourth or fifth glass of wine, and
Melanie has yet another shotgun. They
hear gunshots outside. Melanie and Tommy
head out but see nothing. Once back inside,
the power starts flickering on and off
again, as if teasing them. The phone
starts ringing but no one is there. The
teasing continues with rogue appliances --
ice makers and stove tops -- until the
house plunges into darkness again.
Everyone
starts feeling very hot, and it gets worse
when they all get a burning sensation on
the back of their necks. Tommy pulls
Linda's collar back, revealing a
triangular burn mark. The pain becomes
unbearable. Rose assures everyone that it
will be over in a minute. (What
is with this kid?)
She proves right as the pain quickly
subsides. Linda asks how did she know, but
before she can answer, the appliances
start going haywire again.
That's
the last straw for everyone. Panic has
given away to hysteria. There are more
gunshots heard outside. Tommy heads out
and films the remains of two shotguns:
One's barrel is melted down, while the
other has been surgically sliced in two.
There are no signs of his brothers or
Matthew. He spies more weird lights in the
woods and we can make out two sinister
shapes approaching. Tommy orders everyone
back inside. Once in, Melanie tells Tommy
to put the damn camera down and help them
barricade the door. He sits it on the
bathroom vanity and the picture goes dark.
A
short time later, the camera comes back on
and Tommy gives a tearful testimonial,
recaps the days events and prophesizes
that he probably won't live to see
tomorrow. He takes up his camera, but
finds an empty house. His search continues
to his darkened bedroom, but it's empty
too. He pans around to leave and comes
face to face with an alien. He's cut off
in mid-sentence. The alien approaches him.
He drops the camera and it reveals Tommy
is frozen in a trance like state. The
alien closes in and the tape stops.
The
McPhersons and they're guests haven't been
seen since.
The
End
So.
Did this really happen? Is the tape
authentic or a hoax?
Well,
if you stick around long enough, you'll
get your answer with the closing credits.
Especially the particular credits of Shari
Khademi as Alien #1 and Myles Wolf
as Alien #2. In fact, the actors
who played the entire family are credited
in the credits as well.
So
it was all a hoax brought to you by
executive producer Dick Clark. I guess his
lack of aging could suggest that he is one
of THEM, or a result of one of their
genetic experiments. The
program debuted almost a full year before The
Blair Witch Project,
but remember, there was a rash of films
around this time dealing with "This
really happened" subjects as seen
through video-taped accounts of their
characters filming their own descent into
madness or their eventual demise. (See
also The
Last Broadcast.)
After
it's premiere, UPN called for a web poll
where you could vote on whether you
thought the tape was authentic or not. The
network caught holy hell from viewers who
didn't find it very funny but blasphemous.
I guess they didn't stick around for the
credits.
Even
without the credits, there are plenty of
clues that the film is a hoax. Thanks to
the X-Files,
alien abductions and the little green
men's agendas have become so much a part
of pop culture that everyone knows all the
components that consists of one. And Alien
Abduction: ILC
does it's damndest to cram them all in to
the point where it becomes ridiculous:
First
is the snafu in all the electrical
equipment; or the blackout phase. Second,
is the nosebleeds, suggesting that the
family has been abducted before and been
implanted with tracking devices in their
noses. The aliens have upgraded, too, with
more triangular shaped implants stuck in
the body at strategic points for more data
collection -- the triangles in their necks.
There's
also the lost time effect; where the
victim is zapped with a bad case of jet-lag
after losing the set amount of time. And
I'm surprised that they left out the most
popular form alien probe -- you know the
one I'm talking about, and was sorely
disappointed that no one complained that
their butt hurt after experiencing lost
time.
Then
there was the whole thing with young Rose.
At the beginning of the program, they
showed us pictures of all the missing
people. When Rose's picture came up, I
think we were supposed to notice her HUGE,
almost alien like eyes. (They
attacked the photo with Adobe Photoshop to
make sure we noticed.)
Is Rose an experiment of seedy alien
breeding purposes? I think they want us to
think so. Why else would she be so calm,
unaffected and clairvoyant during the
proceedings?
While
watching the recent alien invasion movie Signs,
the little girl in that movie reminded me
of the little girl in this movie. In fact,
I thought the little water fetishist was
an alien experiment, too. I
was wrong, but at least the aliens in AA:
ILC
brought a ray gun with them in case they
ran into a closed door.
With the memories of this program drudged
up, I had a hankering to watch it again. I
thought I had this thing taped, and have
been digging through my huge pile of
unlabeled tapes ever since. Two months
later, I finally found it.
To
try and give the McPherson's tape some
credibility, the program is interrupted
several times by experts and other alien
abductees to try and explain things. The
McPherson film is creepily effective, but
completely falls apart during these
interruptions by these experts. The actors
in the staged film hold the bluff, while
the experts appear to be on the verge of
laughing at us at any moment:
There
are the medical and psychological experts
who've had experiences with abductees.
Then there's the special-effects expert
who claims the effects are impossible to
fake, followed by the scientific skeptic
with a pocketful of rational explanations
-- who must be smart because he's got the
complete set of World Book Encyclopedias
stacked behind him, and the obligatory man
in shadow screaming it's all a government
conspiracy. (And
everyone of them is bogus, too, as
confirmed by the film's credits.
The
only exception is Stanton Friedman.
Friedman is a nuclear physicist who was a
regular on Art Bell's radio program before
old Art got a little too preoccupied with
the end of the world around Y2K. Friedman
believes in the existence of
extraterrestrials, and has some
interesting theories on why they're here
and the effects of electro-magnetism and
microwaves on the human body. Friedman
was duped into being on the program, not
realizing he was the only real expert, but
holds no animosity toward the producers.
He still believes what he believes.
Do
I believe in extraterrestrials? Yep.
Do
I believe that they're here, running amok,
mutilating cattle, giving people anal
probes, and in cahoots with the government
trying to assimilate their way in and take
over? Maaaaaybe.
My
personal theory is that all alien visitors
are just lost, rubbernecking, or seeing
the sights. It's an awful big universe. To
suggest that we're the only life in it is
a trifle small minded in my book. Who
knows. Somewhere, out there, somebody
could be watching a mockumentary about
strange creatures on the third rock from a
sun somewhere in the Milky Way galaxy.
Noodle that one for awhile.
Naked
Bill and the Beerman lost in Nevada
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