Directed by Richard A. Colla
Written by Hesper Anderson, S. Lee Pogostin, and John G. Fuller
Starring James Earl Jones, Estelle Parsons, and Barnard Hughes
Runtime: 92 minutes
Available on blu-ray from Kino Lorber

by Clayton Hayes, Staff Writer

The UFO Incident is quite the oddity: it’s a made-for-TV movie that originally aired on NBC in October of 1975 and stars two rather esteemed acting talents in James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons. Jones and Parsons play Barney and Betty Hill, whose account of alien abduction in 1961 was one of the first of its kind in the United States. Incident itself is based on the book “Interrupted Journey” by John G. Fuller, who expanded on descriptions of memories given by the Hills while under hypnosis. I don’t want to get too in the weeds talking about the source material, so I’ll just say that the Hills’ account hasn’t held up to any real scrutiny, and that we now know that the process the Hills went though constructs rather than “recovers” memories (and is now seen as a deeply unethical practice).

But I’m not here to talk about the real Hills or about “Interrupted Journey”, I’m here to talk about The UFO Incident. As I hinted in my opening, it follows a pretty odd structure. The first third of its runtime shows Barney and Betty a few years after their experience, growing more and more anxious over the seeming gap in their memory. They meet with Dr. Benjamin Simon (Hughes), a psychiatrist, who suggests treatment via hypnosis. The remainder of the movie feels almost like a documentary, with psychiatrist’s-office narration by Barney or Betty interspersed with flashbacks, existing sort of as re-enactments, to their abduction experience. It doesn’t make for the most interesting viewing experience, but for a TV movie from 1975 I suppose I shouldn’t be expecting much.

Scenes where Jones and Parsons get to act against each other were actually pretty enjoyable, though sadly there are only two or three after the thirty minute mark. The movie opts instead to focus on the head and shoulders of each as they give their separate recollections under hypnosis, interrupted only occasionally by Dr. Simon’s prompts to “go on.” The two leads end up performing some of the most bizarre, overwrought monologues I’ve seen: Parsons grimacing as she yelps in staccato, Jones bellowing and crying until snot drips down his upper lip (nearly a quarter-century before Blair Witch, at that). I suppose these scenes wouldn’t have felt too odd to seasoned stage actors like Jones and Parsons (though Jones was the only one whose scenes I felt played well), but watching them now feels like watching acting exercises and not much more.

That’s perhaps my main issue with The UFO Incident as a whole, that it spends so much time with solo scenes in the psychiatrist’s office. If you’re into that sort of thing, this could be a hidden gem, but I (and I think most viewers) were expecting a bit more time to be spent with the alien abduction. What I did find interesting about Incident is that it never actually takes a firm stand on the veracity of the Hills’ story. There’s enough shown that it could be interpreted either way, as a shared delusion or as a shared experience. This flies in the face of a short scroll at the start of the film and a voiceover at the end, which seem to indicate that the Hills’ abduction was genuine. I wonder if those weren’t added to make the movie a bit more sensational.

The movie actually spends a fair bit of time examining the Hills’ mixed-race marriage, which was fairly uncommon in the early 1960s. This was, apparently, suggested by some as a possible explanation for the experience being a shared delusion. Incident lets this lie in the background, merely drawing parallels between Barney’s anxiety over potential white hostility with his anxiety in the face of extraterrestrial contact. Whether or not it’s true to life, it was to me the most interesting theme in the film.