The Fourth Kind: New Kind of Hollywood Horror Film Hype?

Fire the Sky: Real Alien Abduction, or “Fourth Kind” Hoax?

“I am actress Milla Jovovich and I will be portraying Dr. Abigail Tyler. This film is a dramatization of events that occurred October 2000. Every scene in this movie is supported by archive footage, some of what you are about to see is extremely disturbing.”
The Fourth Kind movie trailer

There’s a lot of hype surrounding the release of The Fourth Kind. Hype which seems to infer there’s been some nasty alien abduction business going on in Nome, Alaska “based on actual events”. The following review has nothing to do with whether or not The Fourth Kind is worth the price of admission. Instead, we wanted to compare TFK to another alleged alien abduction film, Paramount’s 1993 Fire in the Sky, based on the book of purported alien abductee, Travis Walton. We wanted to find out if both films were based on “actual” alien abduction “Fourth Kind” events, or, whether either film is a hoax perpetrated by either the studio, or those involved in the “actual event”.

The best analysis that we could find on whether The Fourth Kind is “based on actual events” or a Hollywood “hoax” is Peter Hall’s Sci-Fi Science: What’s The Real Truth Behind ‘The Fourth Kind’?, posted at SciFi Squad.

Hall did some excellent research, while his observations regarding TFK’s “validity” are spot on.

Peter Hall:

I am a bubble burster, always have been. My first experience with The Fourth Kind was writing up the trailer for SciFiSquad with the slug “Trailer for ‘The Fourth Kind’ Might be Lying to You”. I have no innate grudge against the film, but I am aware that we live in the year 2009 and that I am surrounded by magical Interweb-enabled devices that can tell me whether or not I should believe a movie that purports to be “based on actual case studies”. Immediately after watching the trailer I set out for confirmation as to whether or not its claims about alien abductions in Nome, Alaska had any basis in this world. I found nothing.

However, I have since then seen The Fourth Kind and I can tell you flat out that it is fascinating. Not because the film is, in fact, fact, but because of how intentionally delusional it is in its approach.

Rather than revealing what Hall discovered, follow this link.

In regards to 1993’s Fire in the Sky, we loved the film. Even so, there is some skepticism as to whether the basis for the film, Travis Walton’s book, Fire in the Sky, was based on an “actual event”. Walton’s website has an accounting of the story, An Ordinary Day, which is an excerpt of the book. Travis’s story, of being abducted by aliens after spying a flying saucer, allegedly occurred in Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in eastern Arizona in November of 1975. There were six witnesses, at least in regards to seeing the saucer: the six man crew Travis worked with thinning trees. Travis claimed that after encountering the saucer, he was “suddenly seized with the urgency to see the craft at close range”.

From An Ordinary Day:

I shot a fleeting look at the pickup parked in the road, then turned my attention back to studying the incredible ship.

Suddenly I was startled by a powerful, thunderous swell in the volume of the vibrations from the craft. I jumped at the sound, like that of a multitude of turbine generators starting up. I saw the saucer start wobbling on its axis with a quickening motion, in a pattern like the erratic spin of an unstabilized top. The same side continued to face me as the craft remained hovering at approximately the same height while it wobbled.

I ducked into a crouch when a tremendously bright, blue-green ray shot from the bottom of the craft. I saw and heard nothing. All I felt was the numbing force of a blow that felt like a high-voltage electrocution. The intense bolt made a sharp cracking, or popping, sound. The stunning concussion of the foot-wide beam struck me full in the head and chest. My mind sank quickly into unfeeling blackness. I didn’t even see what hit me; but from the instant I felt that paralyzing blow, I did not see, hear, or feel anything more.

The men in the truck saw my body arch backward, arms and legs outstretched, as the force of the blow lifted me off the ground. I was hurled backward through the air ten feet. They saw my right shoulder hit the hard rocky earth of the ridgetop. My body landed limply and lay motionless, spread out on the ground.

Walton was purportedly abducted by aliens while the work crew came under suspicion of causing foul play. Travis reappeared 5 days later. In the interim, all six of the men were given lie detector tests. Five passed while one was inconclusive.

The site, Skeptoid.com, published in 2008, Fire in the Sky: A Real UFO Abduction?.

Skeptoid found where Travis and his older brother Duane “lifelong UFO buffs” who had discussed what to do if either were abducted by aliens. Skeptoid also alleged that there had been no “evidential” proof: no disturbance of “pine needles” at the scene, or, any “injuries” to Travis Walton. Even so, it’s an interesting read, and shows that Fire in the Sky was, indeed, based on an “actual event”, even though there remains skepticism as to whether the event actually occurred.

Peter Hall found an extreme lack of “evidence” regarding the claims by the filmmakers of The Fourth Kind. That the “actual events”, which the film is purportedly “based” on, do not exist. And, that the filmmakers performed a “tactic” designed to “create an illusion of truth”, that the “illusion of truth” began in the movie trailer by way of the star of movie, Milla Jovovich, claiming the movie was based on “actual events”.

By LBG

Image – Weird Tales

By LBG