This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
UFO Truth Lost in Time
Plot Overview
On June 6, 1947, nine flying discs
were observed over Mt. Ranier, Washington state, USA. On July
2, in the aftermath of a severe storm, Major Jesse Marcel of
the USAF discovered
out-of-this-world saucer wreckage near his home in Roswell, New Mexico.
He showed it to his wife and eleven-year-old son Jesse Jr. before
the authorities came and confiscated it, taking it to Wright Patterson
AFB in Ohio. In “Alien
Crash” Scottish historian Philip Coppens, author of The
Ancient Alien Question, interviews Jesse III
about what he knows from family lore.
The local newspaper originally reported the crashed saucer story but later under pressure changed it to one of a downed weather balloon. When bodies (and one live creature) were discovered at another nearby site, the story morphed into one of crash test dummies. This is reporting similar to what we see on TV today. As novelist John Sandford writes, “The thing about TV is, every single story is wrong. Nothing is ever quite right. If you go into TV work, you'll spend your life telling lies” (48).
Without giving specifics the movie wonders “whether we have benefited from the material” by deriving from it “technology important to the government.” Some of the material got returned to the Major; it had alien writing embossed on it—approx. 30 symbols resembling abstract chess pieces. He claims, “What I saw wasn't from here.” Roswell lore from other sources has it that semiconductors (i.e. transistors), LASER technology, and fiber optics were all developed through reverse engineering recovered flying saucer technology.
Ideology
Having had saucer relics gave the Marcel family a leg up for believing in UFOs. One might draw an analogy to when Joshua led the Israelites through the Jordan. God wanted relics preserved (Joshua 4:1-3) so Joshua told the Israelites to gather some Jordanian rocks (Joshua 4:4-7). That facilitated the passing down of belief to future generations: (Joshua 4:20-23)
And those twelve stones, which they took out of Jordan, did Joshua pitch in Gilgal. And he spake unto the children of Israel, saying, When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones? Then ye shall let your children know, saying, Israel came over this Jordan on dry land. For the LORD your God dried up the waters of Jordan from before you, until ye were passed over, as the LORD your God did to the Red sea, which he dried up from before us, until we were gone over.
Their belief in the drying-up-of-Jordan miracle could then be passed on to the nations: (Joshua 4:24).
Production Values
This documentary, “” (2013) was directed by Philip Coppens who with O H Krill and Jesse Marcel wrote it. Both Coppens and Marcel starred in it, as well. Coppens was a satisfactory emcee and Marcel a presentable interviewee. The material circles around a lot, so if you come in in the middle of it, you won't have missed much. It's all of 70 minutes long and includes old pictures, desert scenery, tacky special effects, and portions of an interview with Jesse Marcel Jr. It's rated TV–14. The soft music can put you asleep if you're watching it late at night.
Review Conclusion w/ Christian Recommendation
The movie mentions that Jesse Marcel Sr was a ham radio operator. Senator Barry Goldwater who got rebuffed trying to find some Roswell answers was also a ham operator, though the movie doesn't mention it. I who was born in 1947 have also been a ham since the early 1960s. We hams think nothing of using technology from one realm in another. The first transmitter I built used my mother's cake pan for a chassis, tubes from my dad's hi-fi set, and a tank coil wound on the cardboard tube from inside a roll of toilet paper.
I liked to read my old man's books stashed away in the basement. He worked for Bell Telephone Co., and I discovered an in-house cloth-bound book written by one of the engineers at Bell Labs who invented the transistor. While Thomas Edison (1837–1931) claimed invention was 10% inspiration & 90% perspiration, and the brilliant Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) relied more on inspiration, the Bell scientist who invented the transistor did it through appropriation—at least it seemed that way to me. This movie provides a technology source, which I accept in a fringe science kind of way—there's no official acknowledgment.
Towards the end of high school I visited Wright Patterson with my USAF Reserves dad over a weekend to explore an Air Force career option. Before we left we saw the movie they were showing on base, “Strange Bedfellows.” When my mom inquired about our trip and asked the name of the movie we saw, my dad couldn't remember. Strangely, I couldn't remember it, either. The military keeps close what information it doesn't think citizens can handle. That's just the way it is.
As far as it goes, “Alien Crash” documents some debris from the sky, but it doesn't say who the saucer pilots were, where they came from, or what they were doing here. I haven't the foggiest; perhaps the referenced book, The Roswell Incident by Charles Berlitz would say, but I haven't read it.
Movie Ratings
Suitability for Children: Suitable for children 14+ years with guidance. Action Factor: Weak action scenes Special effects: Well, at least you can't see the strings Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day Suspense: Predictable Overall movie rating: three stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611. Rev. 1769. Software.
Sandford, John. Stolen Prey. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2012. Print.
bibles.n7nz.org