The 3 Great UFO Movies You Haven’t Heard Of

Note: you might also want to check out some great UFO documentaries that are on YouTube.

I don’t know about you, but when I’m not busy researching or reading about strange phenomena, I like to kick back and enjoy a TV show or movie about some of my favorite subjects –– whether it’s catching Ancient Aliens, Curse of Oak Island or Finding Bigfoot during the week or making time on the weekends to watch an oldie but a goodie from the Area 51 movie archives.

Here are some of our favorites that, like the UFOs they describe, have flown under the radar. All three are based on true stories.

Roswell: The UFO Cover-Up (1994)

The crash at Roswell, for many UFOlogists, is the grandaddy of the whole phenomena. Whatever happened back on Mac Brazel’s New Mexico ranch back in 1947 touched off a series of events that forever changed the way we look at the skies, as well as how we look at our own government.

This is a serious film with serious actors. Kyle MacLachlan and Martin Sheen each do an outstanding job with the material which is presented in a series of flashbacks at a military reunion 30 years after the crash. The storytelling is intelligent and compelling; this isn’t a dry documentary. If you care about why Roswell was such a big deal, you need to see this movie.

Communion (1989)

If you don’t know Whitley Strieber, you owe it to yourself to check him out. He’s the author of horror/paranormal classics The Wolfen (werewolves) and The Hunger (vampires) as well as the book behind this movie, Communion. But Communion isn’t a work of fiction, or is it?

In Communion, published as non-fiction, Strieber claims he was abducted from his cabin in upstate New York on the evening of December 26, 1985 by non-human beings who may or may not have been of extraterrestrial origin. Although the book is seen as an account of alien abduction, Strieber himself merely refers to the beings as “the visitors,” a name meant to suggest that the beings witnessed as part of these events may exist in reality or only in his own mind—a twist worthy of Philip K. Dick.

The movie is bizarre, disturbing and deeply uncomfortable to watch, which is precisely why you need to see it. If you have even a passing interest in the alien abduction phenomenon or in the permeable veil between sanity and insanity, you will enjoy Communion. Plus, it stars one of the most bizarre and haunting actors of all time, Christopher Walken, in the main role.

Strieber has gone on to be a luminary in the paranormal research world. See his latest at Unknown Country or listen to him at Dreamland.

Fire in the Sky (1993)

Fire in the Sky is a completely different look at the UFO abduction phenomenon. Where Communion is cerebral and introspective, Fire in the Sky is grounded in the real world of human jealousy, rivalry and frailty.

In 1975, Travis Walton was driving home from his logging job in the White Mountains of Arizona with some of his co-workers. That evening, they encountered an unidentified object in the sky. Walton gets out of the truck to have a look and is struck by a beam of light from the object, sending him flying backwards with great force. His co-workers flee the scene; when they later return, Walton is missing.

What ensues is a cross between a missing persons investigation and a murder mystery, with back-and-forth between the police and the loggers who stick to their UFO story. Walton finally turns up days later alive—naked, dehydrated and babbling—at a gas station.

We finally learn Walton’s ominous fate in a horrifying flashback to what happened aboard the craft. It is everything that alien abduction nightmares are made of.