Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released to theaters in 1977. It has in the intervening years become a sci-fi classic and rightfully so. It was the first movie to take the subject of alien contact seriously and give it the treatment it deserved. It also introduced the public to a subject which had previously been known mostly to aficionados of ufology and the paranormal. To the popular consciousness the movie brought the idea of different levels of alien encounters, and the whole concept of alien abduction became a topic of discussion around America's dinner tables.
Steven Spielberg was responsible for setting the wheels in motion to get the movie made. As the writer and director of the film, he more than anyone saw the potential of the story. After proposing the project in 1973, it was approved and finally began production in May 1976. Starring Richard Dreyfuss as lineman Roy Neary, Teri Garr as his wife, and François Truffaut as Claude Lacombe, a barely disguised version of UFO researcher Jacques Vallee, the movie has won several academy awards, golden globes, and assorted accolades. It has been recut and re-released on video several times.
The basic plot of the movie begins with Lacombe and colleauges investigating several strange occurences which seem to be linked to the Bermuda triangle and recent UFO sightings. Then the setting changes to the midwest where UFOs are currently being seen on radar and experienced by a 3 year old boy who tries to catch the lights he has seen outside. Roy enters the picture as he is trying to repair a power outage and has an encounter with a UFO in a rural area. He gives chase to a UFO along with local police and returns home a changed man.
Roy is now dealing with an obsession with UFOs, and keeps visualizing a mountain, making models and drawings of it. In a famous scene from the film, he causes a scene at home by taking mashed potatoes and creating a small model of the structure he has been seeing in his visions. At the same time, Barry's mother Jillian has been making sketches of a similar mountain. She and Barry soon have a scary experience with a UFO and Barry is actually abducted by alien beings.
After a return to the scientists led by Lacombe shows that the aliens have been attempting to communicate the location of a landing spot, it is revealed that the place is the Devil's Tower, a volcanic cone in Wyoming held sacred by native Americans. When Roy and Jillian see the tower on TV, they realize that this is what they have been obsessing over and they and others find themselves traveling to the location in Wyoming.
Upon arrival they make their way to the top of the tower and find it set up as a landing place for the aliens, and now in control of the military and the scientists. When the alien mothership lands and Barry, among others including the lost Bermuda triangle pilots, emerges, Roy is chosen by them to enter the ship. The final scene is the ship leaving earth with Roy aboard.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind presented its subject in a serious fashion and legitimized discussion of a topic that had been taboo in polite society. It is deservedly a classic film of the 1970s.