In “Men in Black,” the year’s biggest box office hit which will be released on video Nov. 25, Tommy Lee Jones informs new partner Will Smith that aliens landed on Earth in 1962, and have lived here, mostly anonymously and peacefully, ever since.
Ufologists and conspiracy buffs know better. They insist that in 1947 a spacecraft crashed in Roswell, N.M., and that the military spirited away an actual extraterrestrial. As recently as last June, the Pentagon released what it called the final report on Roswell. The so-called flying saucer, it claimed, was in reality an Air Force weather balloon, and the supposed alien creature a crash-test dummy.
But as “Roswell: Cover Ups & Close Encounters” vividly illustrates, this case is far from closed.
Originally broadcast on the Sci-Fi Channel, this 93-minute documentary available on the Rhino Home Video label explores “Roswell-mania,” the cultural phenomenon that intensified this year with the observance of the 50th anniversary of the incident that has become synonymous with alien visitation and government cover-up.
Hosted by Jonathan Frakes of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” fame, this program does a thorough job of presenting what is known and unknown about what happened in “the small town with the intergalactic past.” What is known is that something crashed. What might never be known for sure is what.
The Army itself fueled speculation initially by issuing a press release that it had recovered a flying saucer, then quickly reversed itself. “For a few brief hours, the lid was off one of the most fantastic stories of human existence,” a Shatneresque Frakes intones. “Then, the lid was slammed shut.”
The interviews with believers and non-believers are nowhere near as fun as glimpses of Roswell partying like it’s 1947, clips from classic sci-fi films and recent amateur footage of unidentified aircraft hovering in the New Mexico sky.
More intriguing, “Roswell” recalls a litany of conspiracies from Iran-contra to the Tuskegee syphilis study and asks, “How paranoid is it to believe the government would withhold knowledge of extraterrestrials?”
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“Roswell: Cover Ups & Close Encounters” retails for $19.95. To order directly call 800-432-0020. Also available on video is “Roswell,” the 1994 made-for-cable dramatization starring Kyle MacLachlan.
