Hangar 18

Consider some of the flying saucer films we have seen over the years. The occupants speak perfect English, often with American accents to boot.

In this film we never get to see the aliens; they have a kind of Satanic presence. Instead we have a control panel that displays photographs of military and civilian installations, weird hieroglyphics, and a synthesised voice that speaks an unknown language. Now that is much better than a couple of humanoids with detectable Boston accents who carry away chloroformed females to father the next generation when they get them home.

Robert Vaughn sheds his affable Man from UNCLE image and makes a vicious government agent.

This is the only UFO film that I have ever taken seriously.

I was flipping through, looking for something to watch & I came across this movie.I'm not normally into movies about outer space, UFO's & stuff like that but after seeing all the names that were in it, Gary Collins, Robert Vaughn, Joseph Campanella but most of all, Darren McGavin (Sorry if I forgot anybody else) I knew I had to check it out.Hangar 18 turned out to be pretty good (Kinda makes you wonder, what do they know that they don't want us to know? Know what I'm saying?) It was interesting to see the outside & inside of the ship, everybody trying to figure out how & what made it work, the 2 astronauts who were accused of causing the accident trying to clear their names & the officials doing everything they can to keep the UFO under wraps.The best part of the movie had to be the ending, the twist within a twist.I also read on IMDb that in 1983 Hangar 18 was released under the name Invasion Force which had an alternate ending.I wouldn't mind seeing the alternate ending but if I don't, no bother.Hangar 18 isn't a movie I'd buy but it is worth watching, if you're a fan of extraterrestrial movies or not

This film was made in my hometown of Big Spring, Texas....my father is in the movie as an extra..he is one of the guys in the hanger around the ship ..look for the white dude with an afro...lol..I was going to get to be in the movie but they decided to scrap that scene for a night crash instead. If you visit the hanger on the old air base it still has the 18 on it. I love the movie. Its pretty good for being such a low budget film but its cool. The ship was sold to one of the rich people in town back then for his kid to have to have fun in. I always remember my parents telling me about Robert Vaughn, they told me that he thought he was this big time actor from Hollywood and he thought he was the coolest thing walking the earth. The other actors and a lot of the higher up towns people would have parties all get together...it was interesting.

Some parts of the film were done in Midland, Texas and Odessa, Texas...so when watching the film its like looking in my back yard.

It is common to bash this 1980 sci-fi/conspiracy movie for its admittedly not-top-notch special effects and pretty much everything else; the limited budget has a lot to do with it. But with the exception of the 1978 film CAPRICORN ONE, nobody else was trying to mix the two elements (sci-fi and conspiracy) together for the big screen. In essence, HANGAR 18 can indeed be said to presage "The X Files" by a decade and a half.

The film begins with two astronauts (Collins, Hampton) encountering a UFO in orbit while launching a military satellite. The satellite collides with the UFO, causing an explosion and killing a third astronaut in the cargo bay who had been watching the satellite's progress. But the UFO makes a surprisingly controlled landing in the Arizona desert, thus necessitating its quick removal and forcing the president's chief of staff (Vaughn, an absolutely steely performance) to concoct a cover story to avoid serious damage to his boss's chances for re-election.

Naturally, both Collins and Hampton are fingered by Vaughn and his staff for blame in the incident. This forces them to gather hard evidence to clear themselves, but it also means that they'll be pursued by government agents the entire way. Meanwhile, at Hangar 18, located at an air force base in Texas, a team of scientists, led by McGavin, are learning everything they possibly can about the UFO and its alien occupants. What they find about those aliens is how uncannily similar they are to humans.

Despite the film's technical imperfections, HANGAR 18 is still a pretty good and speculative science fiction film from Sunn Pictures, the same Utah-based film company that was known for making speculative documentaries during the 70s and early 80s. McGavin is at his usual best, as he was in the 1972 TV film THE NIGHT STALKER. In terms of plot, HANGAR 18 seems to use Watergate as a starting point and then mixes in elements of Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and Spielberg's CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. And although it is hardly on a level with those two great movies, it nevertheless works because of the approach it takes to the debate not only over UFOs in our present day but also the possibility that visitors from another world have visited Earth before.

This movie is the first "government conspiracy" flicks I ever saw and frankly it spooked me at the time. The story about the accidental encounter with aliens and the consequent cover-up and framing of the astronauts was as eerie as any later X-Files show. Remember this movie came out in 1980, the only other movie with the concept of government cover-ups at the time was Capricorn One. I'm glad it was made in 1980, if it was done today it wouldn't have had the same punch.