The guys in mission control have the alien spaceship on their radar too. It appears as though the ship is coming down to earth to make a crash landing after being hit by the satellite. Many government and military agencies are scrambled. A military helicopter hovers over the crashed ship. The ship is saucer shaped with many flashing lights on it. Your average looking flying saucer really. The military guy at mission control and the flight director have a private meeting. The military guy tells the flight director that they're in possession of an alien spacecraft. He wants the flight director to take a team and go and investigate. Of course this is all top secret stuff. The military guy then goes to meet the president's chief of staff at the Whitehouse. The chief of staff is played by Robert Vaughn, the only actor I recognised in this film. The military guy tells Vaughn that they are in possession of a flying saucer. He says it's been moved to an air force base in Texas called Hangar 18. Vaughn says that there's an election just two weeks away, and they need to keep everything under wraps until it's over. The military guy agrees. Especially seeing as how the rival contender for the presidency has said that he'll slash the defence budget. It's agreed that they should be ready to discredit the reports of the two astronauts should they decide to talk about what they saw. Vaughn says they should "keep an eye" on both of them.
The two astronauts read the paper the next morning. The headline reads "Shuttle death blamed on NASA crew". Obviously they're not best pleased. But the two men can prove that the satellite hit something by reviewing the radar from the mission. But shock horror, the alien craft has been removed from the radar recordings. They go talk to the flight director. But of course there's now a new flight director. He says the other guy has been re-assigned and that it's all classified and top secret. So the two astronauts are at a bit of a loss. Then one of them remembers that there's a remote flight monitoring station that still might have the undoctored telemetry.
At Hangar 18 the flight director guy assembles his team. He instructs them that they must live and work at the hangar and have no contact with the outside world. Then the flight director and a couple of his team don protective suits and go and have their first proper look at the flying saucer. Cue the obligatory shot of a door opening, lots of dry ice, and a walkway extending down from the saucer. They venture on board and through what they believe to be the engine room. There's another deck above them which they access via a lift. As they reach the upper deck a couple of chairs spin around to reveal two dead "aliens". Although they're quite human looking aliens, apart from their eye colour and they're lacking a bit in the hair department.
Meanwhile the two astronauts have reached the remote tracking station. The guy there indeed shows them a radar image complete with flying saucer. The astronauts ask if they can have a copy. But the guy tells them there's no chance, he'd lose his job for sure. They ask him if he can at least project where the flying saucer came down, so he does. And hey presto, the projection shows a small area in Arizona. Back in Washington, Vaughn learns that our astronaut friends are on their way to the crash site. He asks that he receives constant updates about what the two men are up to.
Back at Hangar 18, they discover that they no longer need to wear their protective suits inside the saucer. They bring in a couple of stretchers and take the dead aliens away for examination. Flight director guy is mooching about the saucer and discovers the body of a woman. The medical team ascertain that she's still alive, but just barely and that she's in a deep coma. The medical team at the hangar don't have the facilities to treat her, so she's moved to a nearby hospital. At the hangar they're still poking around on board the saucer. They discover recordings of earth's tv; mostly news and current affairs programmes. So it looks as though the aliens have been monitoring earth closely.
The astronauts land at an airstrip near the crash site. They hire a battered old pickup truck from a local guy and then set off, closely followed by two suits in a black car. They reach the crash site, which has obviously now been cleaned up. They do however manage to find a small piece of molten rock on the ground, which would indicate that it had been subjected to an extremely high temperature. The two guys in suits appear and demand that they hand over the rock. The astronauts punch the guys and take off in the pickup. The guys in suits are quickly on their tail. There's a bit of a car chase, but the guys in suits lose control of their car and it crashes off the top of a bridge and explodes.
At the hangar, the language expert has managed to match symbols found inside the saucer with ancient symbols carved into the deserts on earth. He's also found matches with symbols found inside ancient pyramids. So he concludes that the aliens have been hanging around earth for thousands of years. The results of the alien autopsies have found them to be almost identical to humans. Sadly however they have been unable to determine exactly how they died. Meanwhile the astronauts make it back to their plane. They set off to see a professor friend of theirs in the hopes that he can analyse the rock for them. Our astronaut friends visit the professor guy, but he tells them that sadly all they have is a rock that has been subjected to a great deal of heat. He says if they want to clear their names they're going to need substantial evidence that the military are in possession of a flying saucer. Then it suddenly dawns on our astronaut friends that Hangar 18 is the closest facility of its kind to the crash site. The astronauts set off for the desert once again. At the hangar, the language expert has deciphered the alien language, including a very detailed report. The report says that the aliens lived with ancient humans and that the humans regarded the aliens as gods. It also says that the human females found it a great honour to bear the children of the aliens/gods. And so modern man evolved from aliens.Our astronaut friends hire a car, but they quickly discover that the brakes have been tampered with. It looks like someone isn't too keen for them to get to Hangar 18. They crash, but thankfully they're uninjured. Suddenly though two suits appear and start shooting at them. Our astronaut friends manage to escape in a petrol tanker. They're closely pursued by the suits. One astronaut (the one that's not driving, obviously) climbs out of the cab and makes his way to the back of the trailer. He turns on the tap at the back of the tanker and allows some petrol to spill onto the road, but very wisely turns the tap off again after. The suit guys, realising what he's trying to do shoot him, but he still manages to ignite the petrol. The suit guys drive into the burning petrol and their car blows up. Sadly though our astronaut friend dies. Bummer. Our remaining astronaut vows to continue on to Hangar 18.
Meanwhile at the hangar, they have determined that the aliens were asphyxiated. They deduce that a couple of vials of chemicals broke and mixed together when the satellite hit the saucer in orbit. The flight director guy is listening to a local radio station on board the saucer and learns that one of our astronaut friends has been killed in a "car accident". He also learns that the astronauts have been accused of causing the death of their colleague in space. Having been cut off from the outside world this is the first he has heard of it. He of course knows that this is completely untrue and makes an angry phone call to the military guy. He threatens to leave the project and go to the press. In Washington, Vaughn and the military guy have decided things have gone far enough. They can't let the secret get out. So they plan to fill a plane full of explosives and crash it into Hangar 18.
Our astronaut friend makes it to Hangar 18. The flight director guy takes him on board the saucer. Everyone is inside the saucer glued to the view screen. The language expert has determined that the aliens are coming back in large numbers as he's been able to find lots of designated landing sites. But suddenly there's the sound of a jet overhead and BOOM! A massive explosion as the plane hits the hangar. It looks like the government have got their way. But as the smoke and fire clear, in the middle of what used to be the hangar, we see a perfectly in-tact and unscathed saucer. Then we hear the local radio report that tells us everyone in the saucer survived. And oh yeah, flying saucers are real. The end.
This film isn't all that bad. Especially when you consider it was made in 1980. I'm guessing that this was probably one of the first government cover up/conspiracy type films. It's a little slow paced by today's standards. There's far too many 'old men in suits sat in offices discussing things' scenes for my liking. Robert Vaughn's character is very one dimensional and unimaginative. In fact you could say the same thing about all the characters in this film. The acting, while competent was never going to win any awards. There aren't exactly many special effects in this. The space scenes look okay for their time. The shuttle, both inside and out looks passable. Mission control looks good and is probably pretty accurate for the time. The flying saucer looks like it was designed by a three year old. But it's a saucer and it has lights. What more do you want? The aliens are just two bald guys, so there wasn't much call for the effects department there. I'll just mention again though, the guy getting suited up and out into space in two minutes was ridiculous.
The plot is okay, but then again probably a bit naive by today's standards. I don't think the government would really have two of its astronauts running around the country causing all kinds of problems for them. I'm not saying they'd be killed off or anything that sinister. But I can well imagine they'd be detained for two weeks for "quarantine and debriefing" or something like that. I'm sure keeping two astronauts out of the way for two weeks wouldn't be all that hard. I'm a bit confused by the woman found on board the saucer. That didn't really do anything to advance the plot and once she was taken to hospital there was no mention of her again. Still, overall it's not a bad effort really.
Strangely this film was really popular at the time among the Soviet youth. It was one of the few American films to be shown in the Soviet Union. There wasn't much in the way of action or sci-fi for your average Soviet kid to watch, so it kind of caught on. Considering some of the dross I've reviewed I think the Soviets got off lightly.
IMDb currently rate this at 5.3 out of 10. I think that's about right. It's a very average film with some very average performances. But it's competently average. And it doesn't do anything shockingly badly. If (like me) you have literally nothing better to do with your life then it could be worth a watch.
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