UFO: Target Earth (1974) User Reviews

In space no one can hear you SNORE

[15231 · 2/10 · 23 June 2003]

This was an incredible sleeper that was hyped as some type of spooky, mysterious story regarding a UFO encounter. Instead it was a boring, painfully slow yarn lacking any special effects or visual excitement. The script called for the characters to talk about something in a lab; then go to a wilderness location, sit down and talk about something; then go to another location, sit down and talk about something; then go to another location, sit down and talk some more; then maybe decide to sit down in a forest location and rehash what they just talked about. Had the dialogue been any good or even slightly stimulating, then perhaps this would have been OK; but this dull script felt as though it had been written in haste or just ad-libbed by the actors in order to get it released quickly to take advantage of the UFO craze of the seventies.

By the time of the "climactic" final scene, the audience expected to maybe finally have a glimpse of some spectacular space craft relic or alien body part, but instead all that was presented was one character shouting "for god's sake" numerous times at another who decides to follow some "imaginative call" to go into a lake believed to be a UFO crash site. The ultimate fates of these two characters are not discussed here so as to avoid "spoiling" this for anyone desperate enough to sit through the whole thing; but suffice it to say, those still awake in the audience by this point yet again were not treated to anything interesting.

For a very good reason, this is a film probably never to be found on video.

Can a "movie" really exist? Yes--but do you want it to?

[Scaarge · 3/10 · 15 September 2010]

To say this movie is terrible is not only an insult to the word "terrible," it's also not quite accurate. I mean, don't get me wrong, it is terrible, but it's terrible in its own unique way. You've never seen terrible quite like this, and if you're lucky, you never well.

The characters are colorless, the story (if I may be so bold) slow-moving, the cinematography is murky and the camera work inexplicable. Just as an example, there are extreme close-ups and sudden shock zooms when nothing is happening on screen. The acting is competent, though it's hard to tell, given the script. The lead guy, who sounds like Kyle McLaughlin, reads his lines without any trouble. The others are just kind of there, except for the woman who plays the professor. She really bites the cake with her awful flat acting, easily outdistancing everyone else in smashing any interest into a thin, watery paste.

What really stands out, though, is the dialog. Not since Edward D. Wood, Jr, has such utter blather been essayed about with such abandon. In fairness to Mr. Wood, at least his dialog had some relevance to the story. Here, there are endless, pointless discussions about everything under the sun, only occasionally straying into relevant territory. "Would you like a donut?" "Can anyone really ever 'have' a donut? Don't we actually just take one more moment from a happy childhood and cloak it in our concept of 'donut'?" That's not actual dialog from the film, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a deleted scene out there....

The whole film strikes me as a movie made by someone who had never actually seen a movie, but had heard them mentioned casually by other people from time to time. One day, this person comes across a camera abandoned in the woods. Rather than tell a story, he just films his friends saying things. He invites them on a camping holiday and films them saying some more things. He gets a couple of them jump into the lake, because he'd heard people did those sorts of things in movies.

Really, the level of ineptitude on display is astonishing--unbelievable, almost. You would have to work hard to reach these heights (or depths) and I don't think anyone connected to this worked that hard. Thus, the incredible ending strikes me not so much as an obvious rip-off of "2001" but rather an attempt to remake that ending after only being told an incomplete, rambling description by someone who'd seen it while drunk.

Wow ...

[Steve_Nyland · 3/10 · 24 August 2006]

Aside from a really cool title and a neato disco UFO trip movie opening titles sequence, this movie sucks. Ever hear of a movie called BOG about a swamp monster that goes on the rampage and starts tearing apart ply-board movie sets? BOG is a better movie that UFO: TARGET EARTH. Ever seen Larry Buchanan's ZONTAR, THING FROM VENUS? ZONTAR: THING FROM VENUS is a better movie than UFO: TARGET EARTH.

I very fondly remember the UFO craze that gripped Amercia around the time of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, and while a bit early (1974) this film is surely a part of that craze. There were a bunch of faux documentary films on UFOs & other worldly phenomenon at about the same time -- my favorite will always be IN SEARCH OF NOAH'S ARK -- and I was kind of hoping this would be one of them. It isn't, and the last 20 minutes of TV blending feedback color head trip space junk might be great free-form visual expression, but please.

I wish I could be kinder on this film: The only UFOs you see are still photos used for the opening credits, which I come back to again as the high point of the film. I suppose if you were zonked out of your mind on blotter acid this might be somewhat engaging, it has a sort of naive earnestness about itself that is charming in a slack-jawed kind of way. I also dig the cheapo 70s interiors, editing room (literally) production design, and the idea of trying to make a movie about UFOs that essentially consists of people sitting around talking about them, followed by endless sequences of pre CAD or Apple Mac computer renderings instead of showing us space aliens. Kind of like the end of 2001 (complete with an ambiguous close-up of a star person's eye) but without all the fuss & bother involved with getting us there.

Something tells me also that the three 8/10 votes dragging this movie's user ratings curve up to 4/10 are in on the plot to deprive target audience viewers of a film with a name like UFO: TARGET EARTH of 83 minutes of their life that could be spent doing constructive things like playing golf, masturbating, or strangling small animals.

3/10; I did just raise it a point after reconsidering the movie. It's awful but then again like eating snails, awful movies can be an acquired taste. Try lemon butter sauce, or better yet a case of beer.

Agree with Kenneth Eagle Spirit

[dizzhrt · 5/10 · 19 May 2008]

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.

Cerebral '70's science fiction film

[Polaris01313-1 · 5/10 · 21 June 2008]

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.

2001, A Space Catastrophe

[Hitchcoc · 1/10 · 18 April 2007]

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.

Absolutely the worst movie ever made!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[jtp21455 · 1/10 · 18 April 2006]

I have always been very interested in the UFO phenomenon and i couldn't wait to see this movie when it came out in 1974, so my ex-wife and i went to see it at a drive-in movie, and at first i thought it was going to be OK, but as it dragged on, it got worse instead of better, the whole movie made no sense at all to me.

This movie was so bad i looked around and everyone else left, and we were the only ones left, i finally couldn't take it anymore and we also left, i can only hope this disaster of a movie never comes out on DVD or video, only someone who had never saw this sorry excuse for a movie would rent it or buy it!!!!

Thank goodness much better UFO movies came out later such as ''Close Encounters of the third kind'' and '' The interrupted journey'' and ''Fire in the Sky''

for those interested in UFO movies

[ds0559 · 4/10 · 15 April 2013]

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.

Non-Encounters of the Blurred Kind

[jcaraway3 · 3/10 · 24 December 2009]

So I was in the mood for a cheesy sci fi movie last night...and I got more than I bargained for. I found this movie on a 50 pack I'd had for awhile and popped it into the ol' DVD player. I remembered I'd tried to watch it before and gave up, but I decided to try again. I noticed the lavish opening credits sequence, with its fancy colors and real music. If I made this film, I would've just used white block letters and stock music to save time. It's obvious the filmmaker wasted his money on the expensive credits sequence, rather than saving it for good actors, non-blurry film, better editing...I think you get the point. The writer has written a fairly intelligent and thought provoking script, but a good script doesn't amount to a hill of beans in a movie with bad lighting, direction, editing... again, I think you get the point.

I think this movie attempted to be sort of cerebral sci fi, but only ends up being dull. It would have made a much better book than movie. And boy, the movie looks terrible. At one point, a boom mike enters the shot. And stays there. And stays there. For a minute at least! And the ending! It looked nice considering what movie it was, but one gets the feeling that it was more than "inspired" by "2001: A Space Odyssey".

Overall, I think this could've been much better. With a less cheesy title, better acting, etc, etc.

Good for non bias sci fi geeks, but to everyone else, it's probably like sitting through a boring Physics class.

One of the worst movies I've ever seen ...

[vigilante407-1 · 1/10 · 21 December 2006]

... and I've seen everything Phil Tucker and Ed Wood directed.

UFO Target Earth is, quite simply, the single most boring movie I've ever seen. It tries to be artsy, but falls flat on its face. It tries to be a mini-2001 A Space Odyssey, but fails again. It tries to be slow and tedious and tries to go nowhere, which is succeeds in spectacularly.

The story is somewhat indecipherable (becoming more so at the end) and the acting is leaden - particularly the star.

The special effects are limited to some lame colors and shapes appearing on a video monitor, a 2001-esque ride to the "beyond" ala a planetarium laser light show, one cartoony spaceship at the end.

I can almost always find something to recommend about a movie, particularly a sci-fi movie, but this one just left me sleepy. Don't waste your time with UFO Target Earth ... and if you had the misfortune to purchase a copy, do your best to get your money back.

A weirdly enjoyable chunk of lovably lousy low-budget sci-fi schlock

[Woodyanders · 8/10 · 8 July 2010]

There are certain bad movies that have a strangely hypnotic quality to them. Offering a wonderfully wretched and hence oddly winning combination of sincere, yet terrible acting from a game, yet lame no-name cast, dippy dialogue, an alternately funky or moody wonky score, plodding pace, fumbling (mis)direction, a nonsensical script, chintzy (less than) special effects, sporadic instances of the boom microphone dropping into the frame, a heavy-handed theme about believers versus nonbelievers, an insanely groovy theme song called "Between the Attic and the Moon," clumsy mock interviews with ordinary folks who claim to have seen UFOs, a meandering and borderline incomprehensible muddled narrative, grainy cinematography, and, best of all, a gloriously trippy and ridiculous "what the hell?" psychedelic light show conclusion that attempts to recreate the mind-blowing climax of "2001" on a $1.50 dimestore budget, this singularly inept tale of a dedicated field researcher (an endearingly wooden performance by Nick Plakias) who discovers that he's some kind of chosen one whose key purpose in life is to help a bunch of aliens trapped in a lake get back to their home planet through the power of his imagination (!) is often so incredibly cheesy and absurd that all you hardcore aficionados of choice crummy cinema will be in hog heaven while watching it. A deliciously dreadful doozy.

OK , Who's The Shortest Person Here? OK - You're The Boom Op.

[junk-monkey · 7/10 · 14 February 2007]

This is an incredible movie. It's not got everything! No plot, no tension, no character (let alone character development) - what it HAS got is a virtuoso display of incredibly bad direction and a script that gives the word meaningless a new... er... meaning.

I suspect the director must have once had the concept of the Line of Interest (or the Centre Line, Director's Line call it what you will*) explained to him at some time but either forgot it almost immediately or just didn't get it because the camera is plonked down any old place and they shot whatever came into the viewfinder. Several times we get to watch people have long telephone conversations, but only from one end so we get to watch them say things like: "Yes I know all that." without having any idea what they have just been told. There are boom mikes in shot, tracks clearly visible, the DP does a great line in camera flares over people's faces and the sound levels are all over the place whole swathes of "dialogue" obscured by lousy songs. Though to be fair the sound problems may just be the quality of the DVD copy I saw; there was a lot of extraneous noise on the soundtrack (the songs ARE pretty sh1tty though). The script is bizarre; I honestly had no idea what was going on for the entire length of the film.

The film opens with 3 minutes of mocumentary footage of people relating UFO experiences to a TV reporter. Then the opening credits (which were illegible on the copy I watched). Open on a young man trying to make a phone call then a portentous Voice Over (a la Ed Wood) tells us this young man is about to overhear something that will change his life forever. He somehow accidentally overhears two military types authorising a scramble of jets to investigate a UFO. The young man stares out of the window for a long time then phones someone else to make an appointment with someone else who turns out to be a psychic UFO spotter (or something). He then goes to meet his professor who lectures him (and us) at great length about the possibility of Life in the Universe. He goes to see 'Dr Mansfield' (whoever she is, we aren't told) and they have a conversation that really started the 'What the hell are they talking about?' ball rolling. The last line of the scene is "When a circle is drawn - they meet." Work backwards from there. After that it was a downhill slide into utter incomprehensibility. Ending in a low rent 2001: A Space Odyssey rip-off and the final bars of Khachaturian's Spartacus playing as the alien's space ship, trapped under a lake for a thousand years, zooms off to the stars powered only by Alan's imagination. Yep, you read that right, a bunch of aliens sat at the bottom of a lake for a thousand years waiting for a bad actor with a bald wig on to come and power their spaceship with his imagination. Insane.

Favourite shot: Vivian and Alan sit in the back of the van excitedly telling each other some incomprehensible facts that are supposed to make the audience sit up and pay attention. They stop and the camera slowly zooms out leaving two bad actors sitting there waiting for the director to shout 'cut'. Luckily a huge lens flare obliterates them for most of it so we don't have to see them suffer too much.

Favourite lines (favourite as in they made more sense than most. Three whole lines before I went WTF? )

Prof: What do we know about electricity?

Alan: We know it's an energy source.

Prof: Like the imagination.

This is sublime stuff. Thoroughly recommended as a true awful classic. Seven out of ten on the Awfulometer.

* An imaginary line drawn between two or more actors (and / or objects). Keeping the camera on one side of that line for several angles on one scene will allow those shots to be edited together with ease. Cross the line during shooting and you start having real problems as the on screen relationship between characters changes. Edit between the two and you get characters swapping places with each other and jumping from left to right of each other etc. Trust me, it's an easy concept to grasp, I'm just not explaining it very well.

Wow. That was.... unique.

[krachtm · 5/10 · 10 September 2011]

I don't really think I've ever seen anything like this before. It was like a surreal mix of Ed Wood, Stanley Kubrick, and Ken Russell. The micro-budget keeps things murky and confusing, heightening the surrealism. The directing is a bit poor, with sluggish pacing, pointless scenes of people philosophically discussing the nature of electricity and life on other planets, and special effects that come across like a fan-film homage to 2001.

It's not a good movie. In fact, I'd say it's technically inept. However, despite that, I still found myself enjoying it, to some degree, because it was just so damn weird. In fact, I'd say that the incompetence only makes it more enthralling. As each scene was set up, I found myself wondering, "WTF?" There was some puzzling, obvious problem with the scene (like the boom mic being in the shot), the scene made no sense, or bad music was blaring, making the dialogue too difficult to hear. It's like they were in the woods one day, happened to have some filmmaking equipment, and decided to shoot a movie, doing everything in one take.

Do I recommend this movie? Well, not on its merits. In order to enjoy it, I think you need to be the kind of person who watches a movie because he wants to see just how incomprehensible and incompetent it can get. You have to be the kind of person who, when he finds something that tastes awful, keeps eating it, eagerly, because he's so enthralled by the awfulness of it.

Either that or you'd have to have a serious love for UFOs.

I rate this a 5/10, because it's so amazingly incompetent that it becomes enjoyable on whole different level than was intended. If you're into Kubrick and Russell, you'll probably have fun finding homages and rip-offs, as well.

cure for insomnia

[vampi1960 · 1/10 · 3 October 2006]

i took a chance on this one not knowing what to expect.its probably the worst movie about UFOs ever made.its boring mumbo jumbo about an electronics expert investigating a UFO sighting.even agent Mulder from the x-files would avoid this one.its even worse then invasion from inner earth.low budget and it shows./imagine all the people that seen this at the movie theater.i got this one as part of the 50 movie collection;nightmare worlds,which should have a warning label that says;contains stinkers.well thats the chance you take with those DVD sets.if you have trouble sleeping,put this in your DVD player.it'll cure your insomnia.well one good thing about this movie its less then 80 minutes long.but thats 80 minutes that you'll never get back.incidentally there was a 50's movie called target earth and that one was actually pretty good.UFO target earth is painfull.1 out of 10.

Horrible

[Michael_Elliott · 27 February 2008]

UFO: Target Earth (1974)

BOMB (out of 4)

Incredibly stupid and silly sci-fi flick about a dorky young man who starts to investigate UFO's and then hears strange noises coming from a local lake where it was reported decades earlier that a spaceship crashed. This is a really stupid and really, really silly little film that doesn't have a single thing going for it. The movie runs under 80-minutes and for the life of me a story never starts. The film opens with various locals talking about their encounters with UFOs but even these stories are boring and what follows just gets even worse. The acting is off the map bad as is the direction and I swear my 3-year-old cousin could have came up with better dialogue. And let's not even talk about the special effects. The one interesting thing is that the ending somewhat resembles Close Encounters of the Third Kind and knowing Spielberg loves these types of films I'm rather curious if he had seen this or been influenced by it.

Ghastly!

[zillabob · 1/10 · 13 December 2006]

Terrible film, suffered from not just being long, and boring, but it appeared it was some kind of 16mm film, made by college students on a shoestring budget and transferred to 35mm-not an uncommon practice at the time for low-budget films, turned into potboilers for drive-in 2nd features. I remember it was "hyped" as a docudrama and double billed with The Devil's Triangle, another documentary that was narrated by Vincent Price and was at least,entertaining but both cashed in on,in then-1974, hype over UFOs and Bermuda Triangle lore. The plot is basically an electronics expert determines that strange signals may be coming from a rural area where he grew up-and a possible UFO crash site- at the bottom of a lake. The ship crashed possibly many years ago and it's occupants-or their psychic energies- have apparently been alive all that time and been attempting to communicate. An old-timer recalls when he was a boy, a "star falling into the lake". We never really see anything but an attempt is made to create a creepy, "too quiet" lake in many shots. The whole thing reeks of poor film-making-everyone in one shot, talking-lots of glib talking- as if they are reading the script, and extremely poor FX(what there are of them). Most seem to be just video tricks such as high contrast/video blending images of the alien's face on a monitor and a cheap bit of animation showing a ship in space-something like a dime store 2001. Interesting opening titles sequence with a strange but catchy electro-smooth "70's sounding" song called "Between The Attic and The Sky" and a montage of UFO photos we have all seen before. Everything is shot at night, or in a perpetual sunset-across-the-lake mode. This film oddly had a huge play in many areas in 1974, and wound up as a prime-time TV syndicated film the next year in many markets.

Go Jump in a Lake

[wes-connors · 1/10 · 30 June 2008]

"Under the depths of a lake located near a small town, lies a strange alien spacecraft that is unknown to the town's residents. An electronics expert picks up signals emitted by the spacecraft and begins to investigate the source of these mysterious transmissions. The electronics expert hopes to recruit a group of scientists to aid him in investigating the signals, hoping to discover the secrets contained within the alien ship," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.

Young teaching fellow Nick Plakias (as Alan Grimes) has a startling change-of-life UFO experience. Extra sensory perceptive Cynthia Cline (as Vivian) unfortunately gets swept up in his investigation. "UFO Target Earth" plays like a stretched-out "Outer Limits" episode, with one-tenth of the old show's budget. But, in this case, there IS something wrong with your television set. Brooks Clift (as General Gallagher) appears in a brief, uninteresting role; he was Montgomery Clift's brother.

* UFO Target Earth (1974) Michael A. de Gaetano ~ Nick Plakias, Cynthia Cline, Brooks Clift

If Tommy Wiseau Made A Sci Fi Film...

[tarheelpup · 2/10 · 13 May 2016]

WARNING: This review does not contain spoilers, as there is no discernible plot to spoil.

I'm pleased to say that, as something of a connoisseur of bad films, this one goes straight into my top ten worst I've ever seen. Generally these films appear as one-offs. The crew manage to cobble together a script, borrow some equipment, find a local businessman with deep pockets to give them some cash and they make a movie. In this case, writer/director/producer Michael DeGaetano somehow managed to make three films! I sincerely hope (and seriously doubt) the others are better. As for "UFO:Target Earth", where does one start? -Characters constantly appearing out of nowhere with no description of who they are or why they are there.

-A character begins to deliver a line and just...stops. Later,the same character blows a line but the take was kept.

-Boom mics, camera tracks, out of sync audio, strange zooms and pans, jarring edits, time-shifts, .

-A horrible prequel to the orgasm scene from "When Harry Met Sally".

-Characters standing half obscured by trees.

-Constant rumbling crackle and pop in the soundtrack which I assume must have been real aliens desperately trying to stop the production for the sake of mankind.

-Bad '70s music of every stripe, creepy electronic music for no reason whatsoever and I swear during the final scene, music stolen from much better films.

-A General having a serious conversation while seated at his desk, twiddling a letter opener. No, wait...(pause)...THAT'S A BUTTER KNIFE! But the question that will bug me forever is this: Where did they get the power to run the equipment at the lake, and why choose to bring several televisions but Coleman lanterns instead of electric lights? The dialogue is trying desperately to be deep and meaningful, but the total lack of characterization and story line makes it laugh out loud funny.

Some of my favorite lines: "I feel as though you are trying to bind my soul with your technology." "It's that light. No, it was like a big star.It was coming all...It was making me all naked". "That was just your waking star, son. Everyone has a waking star". (No, that's actually a desperate plea for help from an abused child.)

"Somehow, I feel like I'm teetering on the edge of an enormous chasm of time, and space. It's a swaying sensation as if I was about to fall in."

Hard to sum up the movie any better than that. The idea for the film isn't the worst I've ever seen, but this is one of the two or three most inept attempts at movie-making I've seen. And, yes, I've seen "Manos:The Hands Of Fate". If you like bad film, or just want to see what happens when a filmmaker leaves out every element necessary for a watchable movie, you should see this. Two stars, because it's too entertainingly bad to call "awful".

Steer clear of this snorefest as much as humanly possible!

[talisencrw · 3/10 · 22 April 2016]

Though this had a decent beginning with truly intriguing metaphysical ideas; a dated but fine psychedelic soundtrack; an interesting pseudo-documentary technique; complete with the requisite narration, to start things off with; decent surroundings and I liked the charm and 'Ivory Girl' beauty of the medium (played by Cynthia Cline--this seems to be her only film credit), this low-budget creeper has no momentum, and no idea in either how to build those ideas into something worthwhile, or where to go with them. The fractal graphics that are supposed to overwhelm us as no-cost special effects are horribly dated and left on-screen for way too long.

I haven't seen director DeGaetano's other, later two films, but I hope they're not the snoozefests that this was. Steer clear of this with all of your might--the poster is the best thing about the movie.

A contender for worst sci-fi film of all time

[Leofwine_draca · 1/10 · 23 November 2016]

One of the sorriest excuses I've ever seen for a movie, UFO: TARGET EARTH is the pits. Playing like a '70s-era X-FILES without any of the suspense, interest, or action, this is an endless series of conversations between boring non-actors: people chat on the telephone, people camp out and talk in a tent, people talk in vehicles, people talk over tables. It's all talk, and meaningless talk at that. Seriously, I wonder whether there was a script involved or whether the whole film was ad-libbed, because the film's full of pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo that's completely laughable. Some of it's quite funny, actually, in a completely nonsensical way, but that's no recommendation to watch the film.

When I read film reviews I often see people stating "this is an hour and a half of your life that you'll never get back". I usually don't agree, and find at least some merit in every film. No so here. There isn't even any of the sub-exotic cheesiness in duds like THE THIRSTY DEAD. Just a guy filming people out in Hicksville, USA, people who can't act for toffee. In fact, there was only one guy in the whole film – a college professor – who fit his role, and that's probably because he WAS a professor in real life. The main guy, Nick Plakias, reminded me of Dean Stockwell in THE DUNWICH HORROR, but there the similarity ends. I like Dean Stockwell, but this guy is just a boring nerd.

So, what of the aliens or the UFO of the title? Well, it lurks beneath a lake for the entire picture, until the last fifteen minutes. Then the alien shows up, its head part of a pretty pattern on someone's TV set. Said pretty patterns play out until the end of the film, sometimes on screen for minutes on end without any type of dialogue. Even the UFO itself, when it rises from the lake, is produced via the same pattern. The patterns are pretty, but nothing you won't see on an everyday Windows screen saver. I suppose they must have been remarkable back in the day, but modern technology has robbed them of their impact. They're just generated patterns on a screen. I did find the hero's fate funny, though; he dons a succession of joke-shop wigs and descends into the lake, leaving just a polished skull behind. So funny, but not worth sitting the film out for. This one's a stinker, with no redemption anywhere. The bad news was that director Michael A. DeGaetano didn't call it a day – instead he felt the need to churn out another three flicks before realising he wasn't going anywhere.

The 1,000 year Itch

[kapelusznik18 · 4/10 · 18 August 2016]

***SPOILERS**** Laughable film about UFO's that starts off like a documentary on the subject with realistic TV interviews of people who saw UFO's and ends with a cheap l"2001" like light show of mostly figure eights as it descends into total chaos. That in trying to figure out, by its filmmakers, a way to finally ends it before the outraged audience storms the projection room- As well as demand their money back-and lynches the projectionist as well as burns the theater down. It's electronic student Alan Grimes who picks up a series of messages from outer space that seem to be from a UFO that's also sucking the power out of the local power station in the area outside of Atlanta Georgia.

Checking with the local military Alan is told by Gen Gallgher-who's played by the late Montgomery Cliff's big brother Brooks- to just forget about it and let the US Army take care of the situation. Refusing to take no for an answer Alan checks out collage astronomy professor-Wearing a very obvious as well as embarrassing looking cheap sliver wig-Ed Lynch who tells Alan that the sightings of UFO's have to do with the appearance of "Haley's Comet" that will bring in a new age of enlightenment for the human race! It's much later when by now a totally confused Alan gets in touch with local psychic to the stars Vivian that she taps into, by going into a trance, with the UFO entities brain waves that have been trapped at the bottom of a local lake since before the year 1,000 A.D.

****SPOILERS*** It's then that a spaced out and out of touch with the real world Vivian tells Alan-Through her alien contacts-that it's him that been chosen! Chosen to save the human race like the previous trio of historical figures Enoch Elijah & Jesus by having or getting himself offed or killed for the good of all humanity! As well as have the stuck in the mud or at the bottom of the lake aliens be able to finally go airborne and back to the far off home planet from where they originally came from! Alan who by now want's to end this whole insanity walks into the lake as he slowly ages some 50 years in the blink of an eye! And despite Allan's friend Alan II, they both share the same first name, trying to save him he dissolves into a skeleton to be used at the local medical collage for the students to study anatomy.

Film as dream

[markwood272 · 8/10 · 15 May 2020]

Not all "good" movies are especially interesting. They may simply have been made competently enough to be called "good" And not all interesting movies are really very good, at least in terms of technical competence. For me UFO: Target Earth is an example of a "bad (very) but interesting" (also very) movie. My rating reflects how much this movie interests me.

Yes, this one is cheap. But not all movies are cheap in the same way. This movie seem to have its own peculiar kind of cheapness that for me produces a unique effect, a state of (what is left of my) mind that I will not easily forget.

Reactions online are pretty much either "like it for what it is" or expressions of deep contempt usually shading into ridicule and hatred. One of the more favorable comments describes the movie's effect as "hypnotic". I agree and will go well beyond that: After the first few minutes with "UFO: Target Earth" I was close to being convinced I was having a dream. The dream was the movie.

Other viewers have supplied the storyline/plot/whatever it is, so here I will list a few points about the dream that is "UFO: Target Earth":

1. "UFO..." begins with documentary-ish interviews with witnesses claiming to have encountered UFO's and extraterrestrial beings. The drab footage is typical of 70's local news cinematography (that also may have been left on the cutting room floor, ok). And then right after that the loopy, trippy, mesmerizing music and opening credits.

Start dream.

2. With the music overlapping to a very leisurely fade, there follows what for me has been a classic dream motif, eavesdropping. Protagonist Alan Grimes accidentally listens to a secret, mistakenly unscrambled communication between military personnel somehow related to the movie's title.

3. In that sequence and throughout the film the dialog, both as written and as performed, is bad, but bad in a consistent way, the lines exhibiting a relentless dream logic. In dreams people converse in just the manner of the colloquies between Professor Wheeler and Grimes, or Grimes and Dr. Mansfield. Some movies achieve a dream like effect through manipulation of image, sound, post production pyrotechnics. This is the first movie I've seen in which of the characters actually talk in the manner that you would expect people to talk in a dream. This is the dialogue that you hear (at least I hear) while dreaming. The effect deepens during the "seizure" sequence with Grimes and Vivian, where the dream's dialog, music, and cinematography combine.

4. I cannot believe that the movie produces this mental state by design. Like the entire film, the effect on this viewer's mind is probably from inadvertence. Still, it is interesting to consider how powerful that effect is, how consistently it is done.

5. Maybe the movie's unintended dream logic is best illustrated by the clear, prolonged presence of mic boom during the veranda interview sequence. An accident, an error - right? Well, the overall quality of film making on display seems to support that explanation. But then again, equipment intrusions that I have seen in other movies are usually fleeting, ashamed moments. Here the boom doesn't merely make an appearance - it stays as part of the shot (according to a note on this website the shot lasts over a minute!). Okay, the intrusion probably remained in the final print because there wasn't money to re-shoot. Or maybe not. Whatever - the effect is consistent with the mental state produced by the dialog, the acting, the direction, the trippy music. A movie intended for distribution, commercial or otherwise, avoids the boom. A dream will just as easily make sure the boom is there.

6. Maybe it is time to take "UFO..." more seriously, at least as long as the influence of dreams remains cinematically important. After seeing works by surrealist and avant garde film makers - Brakhage, Kubelka, Deren, and others, recognized dream-explorers all - I can only say that compared to "UFO: Target Earth" Bunuel's "L'Age D'or" is an exercise.

7. For comparison, here are other examples of film as dream experience:

"Invaders from Mars" (1953) "House (aka Hausu", 1977) "Nothing Lasts Forever" (1984) "Zentropa" (1991) "Brand Upon the Brain" (2006)

8. The movie made me aware of this unique property of the medium. No other art form I know have has ever done this to me. I'd be interested to read other comments from viewers of this film, which I can only hope will reassure me that I am not losing my mind.

It ain't half bad ...

[KennethEagleSpirit · 6/10 · 26 December 2006]

Which is why I rate it a 6. The acting? Not so good. The photography? Not as good as the acting. The bright spots? Well, if you like that smooth musical sound of the 60s and 70s the title song is really pretty good. Really. The plot is functional, and having someone with a less than scientific connection and more of a psychic one as a part of the scientific investigation is a plus. Said psychic connection is Cynthia Cline, who is pretty, the kind of pretty that you would feel comfortable taking home to Mom. This is, bluntly, just another one of those so so movies. Its not all that bad, its not really all that good. Its just ... OK. But the music, that theme song, is worth something by itself.

El Bombo

[arfdawg-1 · 1/10 · 1 April 2014]

An electronics expert searching for evidence of aliens picks up signals that he believes are from an alien spacecraft.

And they are coming from a lake near town.

You will never care.

This movie is directed like a TV film and is completely unwatchable.

There's even a professor with the worst silver wig you'll ever see.

The only saving grace is the 1hr 16 min short running time.

The story is horrible, writing worse.

Acting non existent.

How financing for it was ever obtained is beyond me.

Another movie ideal for dosing off during

[vonnoosh · 31 August 2021]

2001 A Space Odyssey had the same effect on sci fi movies as Velvet Underground & Nico had on rock music. Seems like alot of movies in the early 70s were inspired to go the philosophical route with Sci Fi movies after 2001. Solaris is the best example. Star Trek the Motion Picture was probably written in the early 70s years before it debuted in 1979, you can tell by its plot. The first season of Space 1999 and many low Low LOW budget movies like this were like 2001 sans the budget and Strauss

This movie tries too hard to be a no budget 2001 type sci fi movie. If you can make it to the ending, you will see exactly what I mean. The impact of the ending is on par with the tacked on ending to Doomsday Machine. Its all set in Georgia and its about alien vistors seeking some kind of chosen prophet or whatever. They conveniently land their ship underwater so the filmmakers never have to make a cheap little ship to film with forced perspective. You also never see a single actor in a rubbery alien costume. Actors fool around with equipment and act all goofy to establish the aliens are already here making contact. In alot of ways, it is an ultra low budget (and boring) precursor to Close Encounters of a Third Kind. Basically its the same story but with 2001 influences showing all over the ending. It is really close to Close Encounters now that I think of it but without subplots like family squabbles and government interference.

I have this movie on a double DVD with Unknown World which was an early 50s movie about fruitcake scientists burrowing to the center of the earth thinking atomic war will inevitably destroy everything on the surface and they'll be perfectly safe thousands of miles underground and discover beaches and waterfalls there. If I can't sleep, I put that dvd on. There is not much going on to get too interested in but just enough to have on, same effect as slightly interesting new age music. No campy fun like the Milpitas Monster, Giant Spider Invasion or Night of the Lepus. Good thing the TV has a timer.....