Widely regarded as a science fiction movie milestone, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" is a film I generally used to enjoy until I was struck with the realisation of what a really stupid film it is. I mean, stupid as in "bad stupid" rather than say "good stupid" (like "Meteor").

The actual plot, visual effects and acting are great, I'm a big fan of Doug Trumball's work (trivia note - his movie "Brainstorm" was Natalie Wood's last film) and there are some nice sequences that I enjoy greatly.

But.

But I think the biggest sticking point for me with the film is how totally evil these supposedly "benign" and "intelligent" aliens are supposed to be.

Where to start? Ok, for one thing they kidnap people! Old ladies, school kids, Flight 19, you name it, ET has whisked them away without a by-your-leave. And not only do they kidnap a small boy, they also terrorise his single mother in the process, bring toys to life, the washing machine to go ape-mental, screws to unscrew and generally wreck up the place for added fun. Cheese and crackers, what kind of "friendly" aliens act like that?!

(Note: the sequence did scare the braunviolet out of me as a kid, but then I assumed the aliens were evil!)

Secondly, they also cause power cuts - that's not very socially responsible is it? They also play a "funny" prank on Richard Dreyfuss at a crossroads (the lights coming up behind) before terrorising him and giving them some kind of radiation induced sunburn in the process. They also cause traffic accidents and don't pay state toll fares. THEY DON'T PAY STATE TOLL FARES.

They also drive Dreyfuss' character (Roy Neary) to the point of insanity, losing him his job and breaking up his family before they invite him to come aboard their spaceship - note they invite him, rather than just snatching him. The perps don't even have a consistent MO.

But hey, its OK because at the end of the film the aliens return the abductees - and that's what they are folks, people who have been forcibly taken away against their own will - who range from US Navy pilots and 1950s teenagers to old people, small toddlers to a dog. Yes, Scruffers has come back though his owner has porbably long grown old or passed on. And the whole thing is played out with a sense of awe and joy as the returnees (read VICTIMS) are ticked off the missing persons lists.

Sorry, rewind a little there, a sense of awe and joy?!

These people were abducted!! What happened to the families in the meantime? Grieving over loved ones who went missing, perhaps passing on not knowing what happened? Imagine seeing mom again only she's still 21 and you're now pushing 70! Sheesh! And yet everyone in the movie treats the return of these people as something wonderful and benevolent! Thank you ET, thank you for returning my daughter after 40 years, her father isn't around to see her, he topped himself in '58 unable to cope with the loss, but still, its nice of you to return her and oh, she hasn't aged a bit...

I wonder if Patty Hearst's kidnappers were ever treated with the same geniality? And surely these "intelligent" aliens must realise the anguish and suffering they have caused. And yet the whole thing is treated lightly, that these people are our "friends - eh?! Worse still, these aliens seem to have been doing this and the government knew all about it. They. Knew.

Then we come to perhaps the films dumbest piece of dumbery when its decided to clear a huge area around the Devils Tower in anticipation of ET putting in an appearance. Its not a bad idea except that ET's idea of discretion is to turn up in a spaceship the size of a small town and all lit up like a Christmas tree, making big farty sounds that break glass, not to mention all the other little Tinkerbell's zooming around. Now, with a media scrum surrounding the area given the "nerve gas" cover story, having ET lighting up the sky for tens of miles around might not go unnoticed.

And in one scene that does-not-make-sense, said large Christmas tree spaceship crests the Devils Tower and casts a shadow over the onlookers below. How?! Its taking place at night, the only source of ground illumination are spotlights that are about 20 feet off the ground and the mothership is pumping out enough ambient light to flood the ground, not cast a shadow! Jesus H!

And then we have the aliens themselves. Now, for a supposedly superior race that can build huge spaceships and travel billions and billion of miles, you'd think they'd make the hatch to their ship a bit bigger so that the chief alien (the one with the long legs and arms) doesn't have to get down on all fours in order to climb out. They can build a faster-than-light drive, but not a decent door way. I can only imagine they kidnapped a builder from England who promised to come round Monday to fix the door and never did.

At least you know where you are with the aliens in "ID4", "WotW" or even "Alien", they are evil and don't muck about letting us know that, whereas the ET's in "CE3K" seem to wrap their totally unacceptable terrorist behaviour up in some benevolent coating that mankind swallows - check out Lance Henrikson looking all doughy-eyed in one of the film's final pull-back shots. We need Frank Black's cynicism at that point! You want final proof? When the big alien stands before assembled crowd he gives a Hitler salute!



Heck, we even give these kidnapping, irradiating, house wrecking, family destroying ET terrorists more people for their troubles - sadly Spielberg never showed the smile on Neary's face dropping when he saw the probe machine heading towards his butt, or how his wife, reduced to a single mother on limited means, became hooked on painkillers and booze to numb a string of meaningless relationships while the kids end up in care and or prison, its only a matter of time and its all because daddy fruitloop would rather go live with the space aliens than his own family. Son of a b....

It could be argued that Spielberg's aliens are meant to be naive and childlike, that's why they look a little like Cary Guffy (the kid in the film), and that perhaps they don't realise the consequences of their actions. Maybe, but you'd hope that a race advanced enough to build flying chandeliers might show us apes a thing or two when it comes to emotional development and evolution. I can only imagine that on the way to earth, they were all saying "are we there yet? Tell him to sit on his side of the spaceship. I want an ice cream."

Sorry, but "CE3K" is just such a totally stupid film. "ID4" is a totally stupid film as well, but at least the aliens intentions are clear, we get cool dogfights between spaceships and aeroplanes and the film has no pretensions other than lots of spectacle. "CE3K" tries to present contact between us and 'friendly' aliens as being a really cool thing, but clearly these aliens are no more friendly than a shark with Hitler's brain, and you have to ask what do we get out of the relationship?

A huge ARP synthesiser.

We wanted a MOOG with Taurus pedals, dammit!

One of my favourite "worst' films of all time, "Meteor" is an cream slice of a movie - you know its not good for you but it tastes good every time. I got to see it in proper widescreen today which made its naffness all the more alluring.


It boasts an all star cast (Sean Connery, Trevor Howard, Henry Fonda, Natalie Wood, Karl Malden, Brian Keith and Martin Landau) and locations varied from Switzerland to Hong Kong in order to bring you the world wide cataclysm. On paper, it should have been a hit - in reality the letter "s" got added and the rest is history.


What the budget (around $18 million in 1970s money) didn't stretch to was a script that made any sense whatsoever in any way, and some special effects... no sorry effects, the word "special" does not apply.


An example of the scripts dumbery manifests early on when Karl Malden relays the tale of what happened to a US space mission "Challenger" - NASA diverts the crew and their crappy model Skylab spaceship to observe a comet that is going to fly through the asteroid belt. It is made very plain that said comet - quoted as being several hundred kilometres large - is going to cause much damage and collide with a large rock called "Orpheus" said to be some twenty miles wide. At key points characters say "its heading for Orpheus" and "it'll go through it like a dose of salts", so when said comet turns up and heads straight towards Orpheus, one of the astronauts suddenly blurts out "its gonna hit!".


Er, yeah, that was pretty much the idea of re-routing you and your buddies there in the first place - were you on the can at the time and miss that briefing?


We'll never know as a splinter of Orpheus breaks off and destroys the crews and their crappy model Skylab spaceship, whatever.


Now, one point that even I overlooked, given that I've taken this film more times for the team than anyone should do, is that the comet is said to be "several hundred kilometres" and Oprheus "20 miles" so, as a visual aid to relative scale, imagine the former would be a football and the latter a golfball. Except on screen the comet is shown as much smaller than Orpheus - clearly the spec... sorry effects guys were not paying much attention to the script, or science or anything really.


A five mile chunk of Orpheus then heads to Earth and a lot of other splinters along or ahead of it - everyone then grits their teeth and looks macho that is more ham than the meat counter at Safeway. Which brings me to another point about the script - everyone has to say "hell" and "dammit" that makes you think of Spock's misuse of "colourful language" in "ST IV", its like the script has been written by an eight year old who throws these words in thinking that's how adults talk - reminiscent of the Fry and Laurie characters who used to drink and say "damn!" a lot. Marjorie!


Connery does deliver the best line of the film when, unimpressed by the way his every move has been planned out, says "why don't you stick a broom up my arse, I'll sweep the floor as I go out!" - it has the feel of a Connery ad-lib though most TV screenings edit the cuss word out. Dammit!


It seems Connery's character foresaw this very event and designed an orbiting plastic model kit missile platform - Hercules - to see off said threat but the military, in the guise of Martin Landau, thought it would be a wizard prank to point it at the Russians instead - oh those guys... The Russians thought likewise and built their own orbiting plastic model kit missile platform - Peter The Great - except they pointed it at the US - oh those guys...


As everyone wrestles with their jaws about letting the world know about the impending armageddon, the BBC blow the story and an irate US news-reader says "it is deplorable that America should get the facts from the BBC" - no change there 30 years later (boom tish).


So in an act of international lurve that foreshadowed Perestroika, the Russians send Natalie Wood and Brian Keith to win over everyone's hearts and minds and show that the Soviets are not cliched stick-in-the-muds who would be wowed by something as simple as a telephone or a pretty scarf - except they are. Oh those guys...


Everyone gets together at the secret base used to operate Hercules which is right under New York City. Connery wonders whether that was sensible but its explained away as being ideal and right underneath the worlds largest telecommunications hub. "Its the last place anyone would suspect" er yeah Karl for good reason because its a dumb idea! Were they thinking that the Russians would not nuke NYC or something? We get introduced to several unimportant characters who may well as wear the red tunic from Star Trek - you know they are not going to make it to the end of the film.


Martin Landau objects to having the reds under his bed (literally) and has several twitchy, hysterical, emotional episodes in front of the ensemble which leads to another point that has also been picked up by critics of the film - how did someone someone as clearly unhinged as Landau's character ever get put in charge of an orbiting angel of death like Hercules? Come to think of it, Laundau's previous track record with large chunks of space rock should have been a warning sign (oh you figure it out).


Talking of which we come to another faux pas in the film that is sure to have all the astronomy fanboys and Prof Brian Cox foaming at the beard - Oprheus is not a "meteor" it is an asteroid as are all the other bits until they get down and make it with atmosphere of Earth. But throughout the film it gets referred to a "Meteor".


As the US/Soviet lurve axis re-points the orbiting plastic model kit missile platforms into outer space, several bits of Orpheus make it with mother Earth and the effects boys go into overdrive. First of all they nuke the Swiss Alps, then they destroy Hong Kong in a tidal wave in a welter of truly bad effects. Now here's the rub - apparently the producers decided that the original FX were not good enough and spent extra millions (millions?!) on new footage. Where?! And if the "improved" footage is this bad, how terrible was the original stuff?


The Hong Kong sequence does feature some impressive stampede scenes, spoiled somewhat by large crowds of onlookers watching the extras do their stuff, though there is one nice gag when a guy runs past a shop and steals a painting - yeah, that's really be of use when the tsunami hits.


Then the bad news arrives - a big chunk is heading for NYC and will hit any moment. Will they be able to launch the missiles in time? Talking of which, the Russians are pretty trusting in this film, they are the first to realign their missiles, they are the first to launch theirs. I can only imagine that Mr D. Rumsfeld sat in the cinema shouting "nuke 'em while you got the chance!" before being asked to leave.


Luckily the US missiles are launched in time, in a sequence that looks like an advert for Ann Summers, before a meteorite slams into the WTC and blows most of NYC to bits - the brief shots of the WTC being destroyed have understandably been removed from some TV screenings, the irony is that they are about the best FX shots in the film. The rest of NYC is laid waste via stock footage of demolitions, all tinted through a red filter. The end matte paintings are not too bad, at least they show a modicum of care.


The control centre is all but destroyed, which makes you wonder how it would have survived a Russian nuke, thus exposing the folly of building it in NYC in the first place. Sadly some of the minor characters don't make and the survivors have to scrabble over rubble and the remains of the subway where the walls are breached by mud from the Hudson river and everyone ends up covered head to toe in what looks like faeces, which is also ironic given how the film eventually turned out.


The US and Russian plastic model kit rockets then meet up and converge on Orpheus in a cold-war thawing group hug. About the only thing missing here is Joan Baez singing a song about "the missiles can show us the way" or something. Owing to some cack handed in-camera compositing, when most of the missiles zoom towards the camera they seem to be about to collide! Eventually enough missiles get through and Orpheus gets zapped in a pretty awesome explosion that is... pretty awesome. Before it bizarrely turns into a small universe of some sort. Still it looks pretty.


The Sovs go back to their snow-bound austerity clutching their duty-free, Connery gets to snog Wood (who wouldn't) and the voice over at the end says they really did think of something called Project Icarus in the 60s, blah something, as if that somehow lends the film some kind of verisimilitude.


One review has pointed that that "Meteor" does seem to have some kind of creepy prescience to it - not only does the film feature some kind of Glasnost a good few years before Gorbochev came to power, but it also sees the destruction of a spaceship called Challenger, the WTC and a tsunami hitting the far east. The film was also amongst the very last to be made by Wood who then tragically drowned some years later.


If the movie is playing on a channel near you, watch it with your brain switched off, preferably your TV too. Its one saving grace? Its a lot more fun than "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon" combined.