Hangar 18 (1980) Online

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.

Lots of bad press here for Hangar 18, but I was pleasantly surprised with its taught yet somewhat far-fetched script, believable acting(not grandiose by any standards), and fast, compelling pace. Sure, this is a lot of hokey sci-fi stuff about the government hiding an alien ship, discrediting astronauts to save one man's election, and eventually...well, can't say too much more without letting the proverbial cat out of the bag. I guess it is out of the realm of possibility that OUR government would do any of those terrible things? For a feature film, its budget is rather...OK, very small.

The film definitely has the look and feel of one of those good 70s television movies on a Friday or Saturday night. Gary Collins and James Hampton play the astronauts out to prove they have been set up after witnessing a spaceship whilst sending a satellite into orbit. Both actors are competent if nothing else in their roles. Throw in Robert Vaughn, William Schallert, Joseph Campanella and some other luminaries from the small screen. All the actors do competent jobs. The big acting bonus is Darren McGavin as the man in charge of learning about the alien spacecraft. McGavin plays the role with great credibility. Anyone else notice his Kolchak swagger and sneakers throughout the film? Hangar 18 more than anything for me made me think about certain things. The story has just enough juice to be almost profound at times. Now, I know it has cheesy effects...the aliens look like slimmed-down versions of Uncle Fester, but there are a lot of big budget sci-fi films that never generate any thought. Did you see The Matrix III?

Low-grade, but slightly riveting slow-going conspiracy-laced government cover-up thriller that sees an UFO colliding with an American satellite being launched in space and then crash-landing in the Arizona desert. To hide the truth because of an election campaign, the astronauts are blamed for the incident which saw one of their colleagues killed. So the two men go about trying to find out the truth which the government officials would do anything to keep it a secret, while studying what they have just found.

The clunky story goes about three separate parts; that of the astronauts trying to clear their names (this is when the action kicks into gear --- "Come on we got to get that rock."), the political big-heads villainously scheming (doing things behind closed doors) and then you got the NASA scientists trying to learn from their alien discovery. While ambitious in context, it just seems too simple and cautious in its presentation (a telemovie of the week feel) but it does stick to its strengths. The whole novelty of the discovery of the flying saucer and its occupants is interesting (theories are chucked around), if at times a little disappointing. A good cast is assembled. Gary Collins and James Hampton are sturdy as the two astronauts. Darrin McGavin chips in with a bright performance as the NASA official in charge of the project in investigating their new spacecraft toy and Robert Vaughn in a weasel performance heads the dirty tactics.

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.

Ok, no, this isn't one of the greatest movies of all time by any means, but it does have some very interesting theories and suggestions, ala the "X-Files". If you were between 10-14 during the late 70's and early 80's, you'll remember the movies that dealt with such mysteries as Bigfoot, Noah's Ark, and (didn't this one just scare the be-jesus out of you!) Nostradomas, narrated by Orsen Welles. I think the movie is entertaining, even though it is "dated" by today's standards. I also don't think it's a strech to say this could have been the very birth of the X-Files as we now know it.

A three man space shuttle crew (including Gary Collins and James Hampton) encounter a UFO in space while launching a satellite. The odd man out gets decapitated when the satellite and UFO collide, sending the alien ship down to Earth where the US government snags it. They place it in Hangar 18 so the head of NASA (Darren McGavin) and his team can study it. Things get complicated when the President's Chief of Staff (Robert Vaughn) goes overboard on covering the story up ("The election is just two weeks away") and creates a fake story about the two astronauts being responsible for their colleague's death (this makes things easier how?). Of course, our two heroes have seen CAPRICORN ONE and aren't going to stand for this cover-up. This is pretty standard stuff but an enjoyable 97 minutes thanks to the lead performances. Well, Collins does have one screeching bit. Vaughn probably did only a couple of days work as they always cut away to him orchestrating things in his office. The leaps the filmmakers take with him are hilarious (his team has a file on the town layabout who saw the UFO land) and the plot holes are plenty (if silence is necessary for these two weeks pre-election, why not lock up the two astronauts you already have detained). The film opens with a "this is a true story about our government" scroll so the audiences knew the real deal.

Well if your reading this your either bored, deciding on whether or not to watch it or just trying to get some perspective. So lemme' clear the air.

First off, this is a sci-fi movie in the way the smith/goldbloom blockbuster "independance day" is. In other words its not a sci-fi movie but more of a fantasy action drama. You could even consider it a kind of cop chase movie crammed with ample techno-psycho babble. But I don't think those genres are quite fitting. I personally deem it a sorta pulpy/campy flick and possibly a soon to be cult classic. That said, don't compare it to "independence day". Think more along the lines of kubrik's "dr. strange love or how i..." Who will like this movie? Well studied and open minded ufo nerds, people who laugh at things that ain't meant to be funny, film students and of course stoners. Who will hate it? People who read the book first, people who like any vin deisel movie or magnolia, film critics and of course stoners. Whats the straight dope? Its very well shot, but its pock marked with terrible and often confusing dialog. It has constant trouble pacing the scenes but the action bits seem way too cool. As a pluss the actors give a serious tour deforce and make sure to keep an eye out for Charlton Heston. By far, the most grooved out aspect is wondering how much of todays media was inspired by this movie.

The best- an astronaut spontaneously stealing a car. The worst- the first 10 minutes. The line to know- "Airplanes crash every day."

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.

(Some Spoilers) Not as bad as it looks now some 25 years after it's release. "Hanger 18" is the first major motion picture to bring on the screen the Eric Van Daniken hypothesis from his best selling book "Chariots of the Gods" and the recent, back in 1980, revelations of the mysterious 1947 Roswell crash brought out in the William Moore's UFO classic "The Roswell Incident" and fuses the two subjects together into a movie.

Out in space astronauts Bancroft Price & Gates, Garry Collins James Hampton & J.R Clark, are about to launch a satellite from their space craft when this UFO suddenly appears and hovers over their spaceship. Unable to prevent the launch it goes off and slams into the UFO. The explosion of the satellite cause Gates to be ripped from out of the craft and end up dead. The NASA crew monitoring the launch, back on earth in Huston, catches the entire scene on tape but it's soon deleted, or erased, by orders from higher ups and both Bancroft & Price are implicated in Gates death due to their negligence .

With two weeks before the presidential election President Duncon Tyler's staff headed by Gordon Cain & Frank Lafferty, Robert Vaughn & Joseph Campanella, want the incident to be kept from the public in order not to hurt Tyler's chances for re-election. The UFO that caused all this nervousness in both the White House and the Pentagon wasn't destroyed by the space-crafts satellite it landed safe on earth in Bannon County Arizona with it's two alien pilots, or spacemen, dead of asphyxiation. The news of that amazing fact can well destroy Tyler's chances.

President Tyler made a big issue of his opponent believing in UFO's now just 14 days before the election there's solid evidence that they do exist! With both Bancroft and Price trying to find NASA deputy director and friend Harry Forbes, Darren McGavin, to exonerate them in Gates' death Forbes, and his staff at NASA, are then sent to Wolf AFB in Midland Texas at the facilities Hanger 18 where the UFO is being held.

Not knowing what's happening in the outside world Forbes & Co. were kept in the dark about what was going on with both Bancroft & Price. Forbes and his assistants Paul Bannister, Steven Keats, and Neal Kelso, Andrew Bloch, decipher the alien hieroglyphs and come to the startling conclusion that their not only studying the Human Race but in fact created it tens of thousands of years ago! The aliens may well be the "missing link" between man and ape! Forbes shocked at what he found out astoundingly says of the aliens to his stunned and shocked staff: "Were Their Children!"

Back outside Bancroft & Price who are trying to get to Wolf AFB and Hanger 18 are cased by government agents which results in Price, as well as four agents, getting killed. Finally Bancroft reaching the Wolf military base and getting in touch with Forbes, who found out about what was going on by listening to a radio, and his staff to go pubic with what's been happening at Hanger 18 and how the US government is trying to cover it up.

Feeling that their control of the information about the captured UFO is slipping away from them and that it's only a matter of time before the US, and world, public will know the truth Cain & Co. have a jet, loaded with high explosives, flown into Hanger 18 by remote control in order to destroy the evidence as well as Bancroft Forbes and everyone else in there; planes crash every day a diabolical Cain tells his fellow criminals and future cell-mates.

Cain's scheme is only partly successful because what he didn't count on is that the UFO is not of this earth and thus not subject to the damage that the explosives on the runaway jet plane can do to it. Even more disturbing, to Cain & Co., Forbes Bancroft and Forbes entire NASA staff were in the UFO at the time that the plane crashed into Hanger 18.

"Hanger 18" is from Sunn Classic Pictures....a now-defunct studio that brought us some quirky, paranoid films such as "The Outer Space Connection" (a documentary that claimed ancient civilizations were in constant contact with aliens who, apparently, made their cool structures) and "In Search for Noah's Ark". I expected very, very little from a Sunn film...that's for sure. However, the longer I watched the film, the more I realized it wasn't bad at all. Paranoid...yes...bad....no.

The film begins with footage of the space shuttle that looks dated today...but was amazing stuff for 1980. Consider this...years before the creation of Pixar, the film shows a lot of high tech CGI effects of the shuttle. I didn't have any idea how Sunn could afford this. It was only in the end credits where the studio thanked both NASA and Rockwell International....and it's likely they got the footage from them, as studios of the day simply didn't have the money or HUGE computers needed for such graphics. Regardless, it was pretty good footage.

While on a routine mission to deploy a satellite, the satellite accidentally collides with a UFO...and the UFO crashes to the Earth. This portion and the scientific study of the ship...all this was very well done and interesting. But there's another plot...one which seemed too influenced by Watergate...where some presidential aids take control of how to tell...or NOT tell the public. This portion, while interesting in its own way, kept the film from being better...that is until the nice twist ending.

Overall, a solid sci-fi film masquerading as yet another lousy Sunn film. Well worth seeing and highly original.

A true UFO conspiracy film. The film is well made, with a solid setup. Actors play is what is average in this film, unfortunately, because with better acting it would have been a very enjoyable UFO movie.

It's called Hangar 18, but it's name should have been rather Area 51.

The film doesn't have much that 80's feeling, but it's script is alert, the action keeps going, and we don't get bored. It has aged fairly well, as well. The script is rather light, don't expect intense politic/military games, just basic stuff.

It shows the UFO in and out, which I believe Spielberg movies were limited to the exterior of the space ships.

The movie starts with a Shuttle space ship scene, where the Shuttle is poorly represented, but don't get mislead, the rest of the movie has better setups.

To resume, a good film to watch for the 80's nostalgic, as well as Area 51 conspiracy believers.

Yes, this film really was made!

Get out your house-sized grain of salt! Basically, a satellite emplacement goes awry because the satellite collides with an alien spaceship running on autopilot and bound for an automated landing on earth. A pair of shuttle pilots witness the event and, predictably, a government cover-up ensues which attempts to cast blame on the astronauts themselves. The alien ship lands and is dragged off for investigation in the infamous Hanger 18. NASA, the military and the US government then all have to figure out what to do about it.

While the plot is admittedly silly, the dialog sometimes ridiculous, and the characters sort of one-dimensional, the screenwriters did a decent job of pacing and developing and telling the story. There are only a few entirely absurd parts. For example - while on the run, Gary Collins seems, under any circumstances, to be able to find a car with keys in the ignition and an owner who doesn't really care if he steals it. And almost every single scene in the film has two people in it.

While not exactly gripping or engaging, this is an entertaining little film to be viewed after midnight on any sleepless weeknight. Hanger 18 is slightly more credible than most X-Files episodes and slightly less well-scripted and shot. Performances are mostly fairly good, but Darren McGavin painfully over-acts most of his scenes and the number of hypertensive yelling and fist pounding scenes by the entire cast really detracts from the overall experience in a big way. Perhaps the director had a troubled childhood or just kept a too-large pot of coffee available on the set at all times. We'll probably never know. But I know that I can rate this one "somewhat more entertaining than most X-Files episodes" which, unfortunately, is more of a comment on the X-Files than this movie.

Someone once observed that any piece of art is inherently the product of the time that it was created in. Not that I am going so far as to call the 1980 science fiction/conspiracy thriller Hangar 18 art, the very fact that it was a selection for spoofing by Mystery Science Theater 3000 should speak to the fact that it isn't. Yet between its echoes of Watergate, the still brand new NASA space shuttle, echoes of Erich Van Daniken's Chariots Of The Gods and the then recent revelation of the so-called Roswell Incident it is without a doubt very much a product of its time.

That is especially true of its cast believe it or not as many of the cast members are recognizable from their roles during the 1970s and 1980s. Gary Collins and James Hampton play the two NASA shuttle astronauts who, after themselves set up as a cover-up for a UFO incident, go on the run to try and unravel the cover-up. The movie very much follows them and that is not necessarily a good thing as neither of them seem to have a whole lot of range and are anything but convincing in their roles. Much more successful are Darren McGavin (Kolchak) as a NASA official who is charge of investigating the incident and Robert Vaughn (The Man From UNCLE, Superman III) as the President's chief of staff who is charge of the cover-up. Both McGavin and Vaughn do pretty well given the material they're given. The rest of the cast ranges from okay (William Schallert as Professor Mills) to bad (any of the actors playing a government agent) to utterly forgettable. The cast though is pretty indicative of the rest of the movie.

Hangar 18 also has a dated feel thanks to its production values, which look cheap. The entire opening sequence of the film involving the space shuttle mission gives this away blatantly: the interior set of the shuttle cockpit is ludicrous while there is a hilariously bad attempt at zero g (by having the actors walk around in slow motion) while outside the shuttle is represented by a model that looks as though it was bought right off a store shelf. Things improve somewhat when the movie comes down to Earth thankfully. Many of the Earthbound locations look pretty good including the NASA mission control room, the office of Vaughn's character and the title hanger itself while the UFO and its contents are a bit of a let down. The rest of Hangar 18 has the feel of a low-budget TV movie out of the late 1970s in every other way which bogs the film down and makes the 97 minute running length seems to be much, much longer. Cheap and definitely effective overall then.

Perhaps there is not greater place where Hangar 18 is dated then in its script. The basic premise though is interesting: during a space shuttle mission to deploy a satellite ("the first" according to dialogue but never mind), said satellite collides with a nearby UFO which then crashes to Earth. With a Presidential election just two weeks away, the White House decides to hold off announcing this and instigate a cover-up for fear of political repercussions. While a group of NASA scientists and technicians go about investigating the UFO and make surprising discoveries, the two surviving astronauts are effectively framed and set out to unravel the cover-up. A nice idea right? Maybe but definitely not in the way its done here. There are some sizable plot holes and leaps (a most unscientific examination of the UFO and its contents being a prime example) throughout that make it just a bit too difficult to suspend disbelief on top of all the aforementioned issues the movie has. Not to mention quite a bit of cringe-worthy dialogue especially from the two astronaut character's that are so much the focus of the film. There are also perhaps too many ideas being thrown into the plot as well. The script feels like a smörgåsbord of late 1970s conspiracy theories and science fiction clichés: you have the two astronauts trying to unravel the cover-up, the NASA team investigating the UFO, the political machinations of the chief of staff and then the NASA team starting confirming bits and pieces of Van Daniken and others theories about ancient astronauts. The result is that the script and the movie feel very unfocused and very dated.

Where does that leave Hangar 18? Well it's a mixed bag all around from its acting to its production values and its script. Above all else though is a dated piece of work that proves that it is very much a product of the time it was created.

This is not a great film, but a watchable one. When a satellite launched from a space shuttle collides with a UFO, exploding and killing an astronaut, his fellow astronauts are given the blame, by a White House staffer (Robert Vaughn) trying to get his president re-elected while covering up the discovery of a flying spacecraft (not a "saucer" as it is not saucer shaped. Vaughn is silkily evil as usual, but the plot starts to unravel as the two astronauts begin to try and understand why they are being framed.

The film quality is grainy, as was not unusual in films of the seventies and early eighties, and some plot points are a bit absurd, but if you like cover up plots this one works right along with the similar "Capricorn One." Makes you wonder what else they might be hiding.

Let me start out by saying I like this movie. That being said, it would probably be best for me to mention the good points of this movie first because all two of them don't make up for the rest of the things that are wrong with it. Someone went to a lot of effort to design (or borrow?) the language and symbols of the aliens. The ship is covered with them inside. And there's a nice segue into actual ancient, mysterious landmarks on Earth.

It gets you thinking a little, which earns it an extra 1/2 point in my book. There are a couple of decent stunts, but sadly, the rest of the movie is lame. The soundtrack is that awful 70's transition stuff from television and the premise of the story is beyond far-fetched. The cinematography is lack-luster and nothing will effect your senses or emotions. They don't even attempt to comment on the details of how to move a large alien object without being seen. But at least they didn't parade it through town on the back of a truck under a tarp like in Flight of the Navigator. Security and contamination protocols were poorly researched if at all. Not one military security guard held a flashlight properly (like a club folks!) And the UFO was deemed safe before they even determined why it crashed or landed. Government agents in "covert" surveillance were painfully obvious and they wee somehow amazed that a couple of astronauts would know where the nearest appropriate facility would be located to store an alien ship! I give it a 2 1/2 out of 5. A Righteous but lame effort.

I loved this movie and have been trying to find it on video. Darren McGavin is one of my favorite actors and he is marvelous in this. It is a compelling science fiction thriller and has that government corruption/cover-up element, not unlike The X-Files....long before The X-Files. I found it also to be a very believable storyline. I highly recommend it.

I first read about a coincidentally, a newspaper article regarding a strange incident/encounter with an unidentified object. When I first saw this film I was in shock really because my thoughts immediately went back to what happened behind the scenes regarding this newspaper article. The article was in the Houston Chronicle in 79 or 80. It was very, very compelling article as it was as I recall, mentioned something leaning strongly towards a UFO encounter and then nothing else was said, either in the paper or on the news although everyone was wondering what was going on. I asked everyone I personally knew at the time if they'd heard anything more about the article either on the news or anywhere for that matter. I found the film to be shocking to me personally because I remember the newspaper article and to me it made a distinct connection to this incident. The film, although it answered questions, it raised so many more as you might imagine. I was in my early 20's at the time and I was very naive about such things. My summary of the film is this: watch it and enjoy it. I'm sure a lot of it is, Hollywood, of course. Keep in mind that similar events may have already happened and that if that is true there may be chickens coming home to roost, if you get my meaning. Good flick, timely but as another person submitted, it wouldn't have "made it" in today's movie market although it has more of a message to me.

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.

Classic TV-style movie about a crashed flying saucer and a government cover-up. Gary Collins and James Hampton (how's that for two names from the illustrious past?) are two astronauts who witness the saucer from their space shuttle. On their return to Earth, they find all evidence of the saucer's existence are gone. So they go on a trek to find out what happened. Darren McGavin (yes, the Night Stalker himself!) is a government man in charge of studying the saucer, which crash landed on Earth after being struck by a satellite. It now sits in good old Hangar 18. Joe Campanella and Rober Vaughn (this just keeps getting better) are the government bad guys, intent on eliminating anyone who might know something or discover the saucer's existence. It's an election year, after all. Hokey plot, hammy acting and a great-looking saucer add up to an enjoyable hour an a half of thrills and unintentional laughs. The hairdos alone will keep you in stitches, especially Collins' Beatle bangs. No special effects to speak of, but entertaining nonetheless. And this is light years away from flying saucer films from the 1950s and early 60s.

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

Astronauts Steve Bancroft (a solid performance by Gary Collins) and Lew Price (the always affable James Hampton) witness a spaceship collide with a satellite while doing a routine mission in space. The ship crash lands on Earth and gets stashed at an Air Force base in Texas to be checked out. Moreover, several government officials led by slimy politico Gordon Cain (Robert Vaughn in peak reptilian form) decide to hush everything up and blame the whole incident on Steve and Lew.

Director James L. Conway, working from a silly script by Steve Thornley, treats the entertainingly inane premise with endearing seriousness and keeps the enjoyably asinine story moving along at a snappy pace. The priceless tin-eared dialogue ("There are airplane crashes every day. Even at military bases"), hokey (not so) special effects (the aliens turn out to be a couple of fat bald guys!), crazy speculations about human evolution, the ridiculous conspiracy plot (the rationale for the cover-up is because it's an election year and any news about alien life could somehow jeopardize the president's chances of being reelected!), and questionable science all add to this movie's considerable kitschy appeal.

The bang-up cast do an ace job of keeping straight faces: Darren McGavin as hearty NASA head honcho Harry Forbes, Joseph Campenella as Cain's sinister partner Frank Lafferty, Tom Hallick as the stalwart Phil Cameron, Pamela Bellwood as sensitive physician Sarah Michaels, Steven Keats as scruffy doctor Paul Bannister, Cliff Osmond as the skeptical Sheriff Barlow, and William Schallert as the helpful Professor Mills. Stuart Pankin supplies hilarious unintentional comic relief as excitable local yokel Sam Tate. Paul Hipp's slick cinematography provides a pleasing polished look. The spirited score by John Cacavas hits the stirring spot. A real campy hoot.

Another movied influenced by Von Daniken. I loved this as a kids and saw it at the cinema. Blown away. 35 years later Im enjoying it again courtesy YouTube!

After 38 years, you might think that everything will ring false in the depiction of an ET encounter. But actually, the film stands very well together. I was expecting a campy ET suit with an obvious human shape not too well hidden - but instead, there is a logical explanation why the ET looks almost human (spoilers...). This is one of these old movies where there was a scenario and special effects were just a support of the scenario. I also like how they portray the investigators... and how the actors portray their reactions in very realistic ways.

Worth watching!

Granted that this is an old movie, I still decided to give it a chance because of the story that it is dealing with.

I didn't have any particular high expectations for the movie before I sat down to watch it, and perhaps it was good that I didn't, because this movie wasn't particularly outstanding or entertaining actually. At best it was a less than mediocre movie experience and I doubt that it actually raised much attention even back in the 80s.

The storyline was too generic and predictable to be properly entertaining. And it was frustrating that you could sense whatever was coming a mile away.

The cast were doing an adequate job with their granted roles and characters, but they were fighting an uphill battle.

I managed to sit through "Hangar 18" to the end, and can honestly say that this is not a movie that I will be revisiting.

I saw it when it first premiered on television, Gary Collins was at KPIX in SFO at the time, it was some morning show if I remember right. Several years later I bought the movies on std VHS, it cost 85 dollars then.

The design of the craft itself was just awesome, interestingly that design of the ship is rendered in the architecture of the Yavapai Apache police HQ to an extent. It landed just below the Cliff Castle Casino in Camp Verde Arizona, so to speak.

The website for the casino at one time had a shockwave flash of a shooting star which represents the UFO's lightning speed descent. And it is the Flag-Mother-Ship of all Indian Casino's in the nation.

I am the author of the political strategy that made Indian gaming possible in California. No public declaration to that fact has been made, but I am the author without question.

Well, back to the storyline. I wish there was a sequel to Hanger 18 which begins where it left off, now the remaining surviving scientists aboard the craft had better learn to fly it. The new twist being where to park it, so it can be studied further (If you recall the Designated Landing Areas), The scientists problem has been compounded twofold and must now keep it out of the hands of both the government as well as the aliens who flew it here. If you want to see backyard footage of the real thing flying over Sonora, Calif.

Please go to sonorasightings dot com. Its the multi-lighted one on the start page. What do you think? Doesn't that look like the same pulsating ship and plasma firings similar to the craft in the movie. I did a frame by frame analysis of the video...its all authentic coverage....some frames reveal the modular shape of the pilots tower bridge, other modules, and the square plates around the perimeter of the saucer...very few frames I might add, it was filmed at night and reviewed in presence of witnesses.

Hope its of interest, enough to demand an explanation from our government, how is it "they" can fly at will anywhere including restricted airspace without FAA beacons. And note the plasma or fusion technology modes and behaviors of these various craft.

Also the elections scenario of the movie is akin to the "Four More Years" of the Republican Party Obtained by the first Bush after Reagan's two terms, interestingly enough.