Hangar 18

Customer Reviews:

classic '70's movie.......2007-08-23

There is a perfect progression of Conspiracy/secret agenda movies that I think make a nice timeline for how far we have gone down the rabbit hole. Start with "Hangar 18", then "Silent Running", then "Three Days of the Condor", "Network", ", then "The Corporation", "Loose Change"....then "The End of Suburbia" or "A Crude Awakening", and watch America fall apart before your eyes.

Ahhh. The carefree naivete of those days when the worst thing we thought the government did was fake a space program or spy on the democrats.

SCI-FI CULT CLASSIC.......2007-08-02

1980 SCI-FI CULT CLASSIC A MUST FOR ANY TRUE SCI-FI FAN,KEEPING IN MIND THIS DVD HAS NOT BEEN REMASTERED AND THE SOUND IS IN MONO.
I STILL ENJOYED IT VERY MUCH THE SPACE CRAFT EFFECTS ARE TOP RATE,
BOTH INSIDE AND OUT..THE STORY LINE HAS BEEN PLAYED SO MUCH ON THE X FILES IT'S NOT EVEN FUNNY, GOVERMENT COVER UP'S!!. BUT BACK IN THE DAY IT WAS 1ST RATE..HEY FOR 5.00 DOLLARS YOU CANT GO WRONG.
DVD IS A PRODUCT OF CANADA/R1/LEGACY ENT.

1 for DVD conversion - 5 for the story.......2007-06-12

Even as a former agnostic and now one of the Christian faith, I am still intrigued by this movie and its suggestion of the aliens and their involvement with Earth. To say any more would be a big spoiler.

I watched this movie years ago and still enjoy it today. Yes, it has a bit of cheesy acting. However, it is a good story overall. The alien ship, the alien library, the Earth scientists trying to figure out how the ship works, etc. It is all interesting to watch. This sums up my 5 stars for the story.

The major disappointment is the DVD conversion. I bought a DVD of the first attempt at converting The Final Countdown to DVD. This is even worse than that was - and it was pretty bad. There is no attempt to clean up the picture or 'crisp up' the colors. Even the sound is a bit muffled that I had to turn up the volume on my laptop to hear it.

If you are DVD movie buff - especially of movies from the late 1970's and 1980's - this is one for your collection. If you are not a big fan, you may want to hold off. A company finally got a hold of The Final Countdown, cleaned it up and released an excellent DVD. I am hoping that the same happens with Hangar 18 some day / month / year / decade.

hanger 18 holds true.......2007-05-28

Dispite the fact that it has been over twenty years since I saw this movie,I would still give it a good rating.I was disappointed with the quality of the dvd all together.The sound was just as bad and hard to understand sometimes.I had the volune of my t.v. set to over 48 to be able to hear the dialogue.But enough bad points about the movie,On to the good points!The story still holds through the twenty plus years since it's release.The characters are somewhat two-dimensional,but the story itself is good enough to keep your interest through and through.The effects are typical 80's along with the sound effects.The twist about the president being a non ufo believer was a good add on to the whole of the story.Darren Mcgavin was... well Darren Mcgavin,need I say anymore?He brought his ususual character and colorfullness to this movie and it showed.Robert Vaughn plays his typical character that has good intentions gone bad.Gary Collins,plays the good guy wrongly accused along with his fellow astronaut,James Hampton.There were certain points in the movie when I thought I was watching Apollo and Starbuck from the REAL Battlestar Galactica( Not that abomination on the sci-fi channel!!!)in conversation.It also reminded me at certain points of Capricorn One without O.J.Simpson (Thank God!).If you decide to buy this movie be ready to be disappointed by the audio and video transfer quality.The story and action from it however,will make up for the down side of the movie.There are some scenes in the motion picture that leaves one to wonder how close is this movie in relation to the 1947 Roswell incident,Anyone care to comment?Overall,Hanger 18 holds true to the whole of the plot and story line.

HANGAR 18.......2007-02-20

This movie is one of the few sci-fi movies which is still one of the best
movies to come out way back, it still has the interest in the subject of
UFOs, and is a must movie to have in your collection of sci-fi films.
to me Hanger 18 is one of the classic's which has a host of stars,the late
Darren McGavin and another great actor Robert Vaughin, the dvd runs for
Approx.97min. and still is very good value for money.
a must have.

Average customer rating:

a very well made little thriller about ufo's,cover ups,and what aliens may be doind here
Prophetic and forward looking, even if a bit dated
Flawed but fun
Kinda makes you wonder ...
Watergate + "2001" + "Close Encounters" = HANGAR 18

Hangar 18
Starring: Darren McGavin , Robert Vaughn , Gary Collins , James Hampton , and Philip Abbott
Director: James L. Conway
Manufacturer: Digital 1 Stop
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B0002B54TO
Release Date: 2004-06-01

Customer Reviews:

a very well made little thriller about ufo's,cover ups,and what aliens may be doind here.......2006-05-24

this little thriller(from sunn classic studio) is a great little movie that can also be watched by your kids.
while on a mission to launch something into orbit,a space shuttle sees a ufo.when the object is launched it hits the ufo and sends it crashing to earth and kills the man outside the shuttle.
to cover up, the pilot,and co-pilot are blamed for the death and a team is sent to find and study the ship.
this is low-buget but the action and drama to come are all well handled and this is a fun and thought provokeing thriller.

Prophetic and forward looking, even if a bit dated.......2006-01-12

I first saw Hanger 18 when it played on network television years ago. I never forgot it and through the miracle of Amazon.com I was able to get it, at the time, on VHS. This is one of the best dramatic and seriously acted presentations of several reportedly real UFO stories: Roswell, Wright-Patterson AFB, etc. In this historical-fiction account, the true life stories have been somewhat conflated to produce a composite of all of them. The film shows its age in terms of the quality, the special effects, etc, but that notwithstanding, it is still an excellent production and well worth getting.

Flawed but fun.......2005-09-10

There's not much I can say about the overall plot of this movie that hasn't already been said by other helpful reviewers - shuttle astronauts accidentally collide a launched satellite with a UFO, the UFO and its occupants land in the desert, are recovered and hidden, and the death of a fellow astronaut during the collision is blamed on the shuttle crew, who must clear their names and uncover the truth.

I do have to agree that the casting seems just a bit off in some cases - Gary Collins as an astronaut? Some casting decisions were spot-on, though, such as Robert Vaughn, who seems to have been born to play a politician/bad guy in one production after another. [Fans of Vaughn and semi-cheesy early 80's sci-fi should also check out his role as the mercenary assassin Gelt in "Battle Beyond The Stars."]

The effects in this film aren't the greatest, but they're generally secondary to the story anyway. They probably could have done without the "let's-blow-up-a-tanker-truck" chase scene, though, which doesn't seem to do much more than strain the credibility of the plot. Gary Collins is an astronaut AND an expert big-rig driver?

I also have some minor complaints about the design of the UFO - it looks like a flying industrial refrigeration unit and would have been about as aerodynamic as a brick wall - but that was just the production designer and the props department at work, and who can really say what a real alien spacecraft should look like anyway? Not me, but personally, I would have gone for a more classic "UFO" look. Instead of little green men, though, we have tall pale men who look surpringly human, and for good reason. Watch the movie and find out why.

One of the aspects of this movie that fascinates me the most is the aliens' language. Although we only hear it being synthesized by a computer aboard the UFO [and sounding very much like a Cylon from the original "Battlestar Galactica" series], it's still interesting, and the more you hear it, perhaps not all that alien after all.

Overall... An entertaining and thought-provoking film marred a bit by some weak casting and a few rather unlikely plot twists. Fans of "The X-Files" should indeed like this film, and it may even have served as a bit of an inspiration for that series. Just remember that it's an old film and the art of special effects has advanced quite a bit in the past 25 years. Even its contemporaries such as "Star Wars" and "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind" had better effects, but then they were also made on much larger budgets.

I have an old VHS copy at the moment; I can't comment on the DVD release yet.

Kinda makes you wonder ..........2005-09-06

... what our government would do if it suddenly had possession of an alien spacecraft.

For a low budget film, this is actually a fairly good movie. No special effects here, just a mysterious craft which the politicians are trying to hide. The plot is captivating if somewhat, at times, trite.

Darren McGaven turns in a fine performance as NASA's Harry Forbes ... in charge of the research team exploring the craft. Ditto for Andrew Bloch as Neal Kelso and Steven Keats as Paul Bannister. The team unwinds the secrets of the space ship and the death of the aliens on board and makes a startling discovery.

Where the film falls short is with the two 'astronauts' Steve Bancroft and Lew Price. Their part in the story is to find out why they are being set up to take the fall for the death of a third astronaut, an Air Force colonel who is decapitated by wreakage from a satilite they launch inadvertently striking the alien ship. James Hampton is a little chubby and goofy for an astronaut (Lew Price) and Gary Collins (Steve Bancroft) a little too mechanical. The casting team might have done a somewhat better and vastly improved the film.

Still, in spite of its shortcomings, this is one of those 'sleeper films' which somehow captures the imagination of the viewer. Definately worth having in your film library if you like space yarns ... and you'll love the ending.

--Recommended--

~P~

Watergate + "2001" + "Close Encounters" = HANGAR 18.......2001-07-17

The Utah-based Schick Sunn Pictures corporation, known for churning out highly speculative documentaries, turns to science fiction for this interesting conspiracy sci-fi drama. The question: What would the U.S. government do if it suddenly had an alien spacecraft in its possession?

Two shuttle astronauts (Gary Collins, James Hampton) are in the process of launching a military satellite from the shuttle, when they encounter a UFO in orbit. When the satellite is launched, it hits the UFO with explosive results, killing a third man who was inside the shuttle's cargo bay watching the satellite's progress. The UFO, however, makes a controlled landing in the Arizona desert.

When they get back on the ground, Collins and Hampton soon find themselves the target of charges that the incident in orbit was their fault, and are forced to clear their names by finding the right evidence, all the while being tracked by government agents. Meanwhile, a team of scientists, led by Darren McGavin, are ensconsed at Hangar 18, located on the grounds of an Air Force base in Texas, trying to learn everything possible about the UFO and its occupants...whose appearances bear an all-too-uncanny resemblance to humans.

Thought I dock this film one star because its special effects aren't exactly up to snuff (a lowered budget is the reason), HANGAR 18 is otherwise a very good film. In basic terms, it combines a Watergate-style political scenario with elements from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, and Steven Spielberg's CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. This is not to say that HANGAR 18 is a masterpiece like those two films are. But the combination of such elements manages to work in a fairly narrow framework. The cast is also quite good, with McGavin giving one of his most memorable and stimulating performances. Robert Vaughn is equally good as the President's devious chief-of-staff, who concots the cover-up to get his boss re-elected.

To sum it up, HANGAR 18 is a somewhat imperfect movie, but it still holds up well despite its flaws.

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