Reviews
[REVIEW] Is ‘Fire in the Sky’ (1993) The Greatest Sci-Fi Movie Ever Made?
Nowadays, if you asked a casual fan of High Strangeness if they knew of any high-profile alien/UAP-related stories, they’d probably mention Chris Bledsoe and his book UFO of God. But if you asked that question two or three years ago, they would mention one of two people: Betty/Barney Hill or Travis Walton. I’ve read both Fire in the Sky and The Walton Experience (both are basically the same book) and listened to the times when Art Bell had Travis Walton on his show. The story is fascinating! But…there is information under the surface that makes me question Travis’s experience. Nonetheless, Fire in the Sky was a blind spot on my watchlist, and I figured what better month than “based on a true story” to give it a watch?
It should be noted there are many issues with this story from both Travis Walton and Mike Rogers. While I’m more familiar with everything regarding this story pre-2021, I will discuss the post-2021 issues to the best of my ability.
Fire in the Sky and the Night Travis Walton Vanished
Fire in the Sky follows a group of six loggers (there were seven in the true story): Travis Walton (D. B. Sweeney), Mike Rogers (Robert Patrick), Allan Dallis (Craig Sheffer), David Whitlock (Peter Berg), Greg Hayes (Henry Thomas), and Bobby Cogdill (Bradley Gregg). This group, led by Travis, is working on clearing brush in the White Mountains in Snowflake, Alaska. Due to a tight deadline, they find themselves working long shifts. At the end of the night, the six men pack into Mike Rogers’s truck and head home through mountain paths. Allan Dallis makes note of a “fire” in the sky, prompting Mike to stop his truck. Travis jumps out and decides to check out the object. Suddenly, he’s consumed by a beam of light and thrown backward. Thinking he’s dead and freaked out by this object, Mike guns it out of there. By the time he gets the guts to go back and check on Travis…he realizes Travis is gone.
Once back in town, Mike calls the cops, and the five of them wait for the police. A search party is called the very next day, to no avail. The town descends into chaos, reporters flood this small town, and a witch hunt ensues. Many of the townsfolk think the other loggers killed Travis and nearly begin to march with pitchforks and torches. Travis eventually reappears five days later…but he is nothing more than the shell of the man he once was.
How the Film Treats Travis Walton’s Story
What’s very clear from the film is that neither writer Tracy Tormé nor director Robert Lieberman believes a single ounce of Travis’s story. Part of me believes that if Tracy and Robert lived in this town when this happened, they’d be a part of the angry mob. It’s frustrating that Lt. Frank Waters (James Garner) is given more credibility than any of the men involved in the incident. Rather than giving proper justice to both sides of the story, the writer and director make their allegiance to their respective sides well-known.
That being said, the film is a joy to watch. Robert Patrick is, and always has been, one hell of an actor. Funnily enough, Robert Patrick learned, not too long before the making of this film, that he is related to Mike Rogers! You can feel Patrick’s passion in every second of screen time. Most notable is the polygraph scene. Tired of being looked down upon and hated by everyone in town, he loses it when asked to come back for a second polygraph test. In the most “I know what I saw!” moment in the film, Mike Rogers has told his truth and is frustrated that it’s not enough.
The Infamous Alien Testing Scene and ILM’s Lasting Impact
While the film does a great job at fomenting the hoax angle, there is one scene specifically this film is known for: the testing scene. Coordinated by Industrial Lights & Magic, the scene where Travis explores the spaceship and gets tests run on him is both exhilarating and terrifying. From the gooey space pods to the skin-like wrap and eye needle, this scene hasn’t been topped in Sci-Fi horror. ILM has long been known for pushing the boundaries of visual effects, and this scene is particularly gorgeous. I can’t imagine what it would be like to watch this in theaters in 1993.
All that being said, this film takes way too many liberties for my liking. The scene where Travis wakes up in the spaceship and is tested on is the most notable of exaggerations. In Travis’s story, he was initially knocked out by the beam of light. He then woke up in an almost hospital-like room. Three short, hairless aliens surrounded him. Travis attempted to fight them off and was eventually taken to another room by a human wearing a helmet. The room he was taken to was the last thing he remembers, as three other humans put a plastic sheet over his face. From there, the next thing he remembered was walking down a highway.
I can understand why that might not be too exciting for a feature film, but it’s very different from what we get in Fire in the Sky.
Evidence Suggesting the Travis Walton Abduction May Be a Hoax
Now, we should get to the evidence that points to this being a possible hoax. The UAP was described as your classic two-pie saucer. I wholeheartedly believe that UAPs are not the classic UFOs we see in 50s sci-fi movies, so that’s a red flag for me. Next, we have the fact that Travis and Duane’s father was a huge fan of Ufology (and there are reports that the brothers believe their father was abducted, but that could be heresy). Also, we have real reports that Travis and his brother Duane wanted to be abducted. When Travis went missing, his brother was definitely worried but didn’t seem as worried as a brother should be. This could possibly be because Travis and Duane [reportedly] had a pact that should one of them be abducted, the one who was taken would try and talk the aliens into coming back and taking the second brother.
There’s also the fact that Travis’s company was behind schedule and on the verge of losing their contract to finish the logging job. An abduction would be a great way to prolong that contract! What type of person would cancel a contract when there’s an investigation into a missing person? While the team was working late to finish their job, it was noted by a crew member that on the night of the abduction they stayed longer past dark than they had before.
Mike Rogers Recants and Retracts
In 2021, things get messy…kind of. Mike Rogers posts on Facebook denouncing The Walton Experience and stating that he no longer considers himself a witness. A month later, he spoke with a producer making a new documentary about Travis Walton. In this conversation, which the producer recorded, Rogers mentioned that the incident was a staged hoax. Rogers was upset that Walton did not include him in discussions regarding the film’s remake–the two would eventually make amends with each other, and Mike Rogers retracted his statement.
Take that information for what you will.
Fire in the Sky as Sci-Non-Fi Horror
Fire in the Sky is lighting in a bottle. It was a time when filmmaking was preparing to break into a new spectrum of filmmaking. It’s not just a fascinating look at a supposed real-life story, it’s scary. It’s authentic. It’s emotional. There are parts of Travis’s story I believe, and parts I don’t. While Fire in the Sky may be exaggerated, it’s a beautiful film that tells a beautiful story in a timeless way. If you’re a fan of Ufology, aliens, or High Strangeness in general, you must check this film out. To me, Fire in the Sky is the greatest Sci-non-Fi about alien abductions.
No way it’s the horror of 2026, but Hokum could be this year’s most solid “welcome to the big leagues, kid” horror. It’s a pill that’s got the potential to draw in new horror fans, but has enough flavor to satisfy a veteran for 101 minutes. Damian McCarthy definitely learned to polish up his idea of a nightmare from Caveat (2020), to Oddity (2024), to his best feature yet. Literally, sort of. With a single watch of each under my belt… Hokum has the same theme and tone as the previous two, just waxed and remixed. I’m not mad at it, though.
Hokum That Bridges Indie and Mainstream Appeal
Even the freaks like us who live in the underground horror tunnels can understand the public’s genre fatigue. I agree- it can seem like all these remakes and re-hashes are seriously weighing down blockbuster horror these days. The good indie stuff gets looked over, but McCarthy’s most recent film is a decent little in-between. It won’t bother you with a high cinema monologue, but it knows how to make you cringe, and will lock you in a dusty room with it.
It’s vague in exposition, not that a simple idea like this really needs to be super fleshed out. It stars Severance’s Adam Scott as Ohm Bauman, a famous Yankee novelist, a guy who grieves, and a big jerk. He arrives at a boutique Irish inn to scatter the ashes of his parents, and finish the last book in his trilogy. The challenge of writing an asshole lead that still has to convince the audience to root for them is damn refreshing. Scott’s performance holds it up too. He’s got a great jerk-face even without dialogue. He’s easy to pity, though- somewhere between Paul Sheldon from Misery, and a real life Stephen King, who shares the suspiciously balanced atmosphere that drove Jack Torrence nuts in The Shining.
Familiar Horror Influences with a Refined Execution
McCarthy borrows a lot from those two, and probably a catalog of blockbuster peek-a-boo scary movies. The reason Hokum is a good challenge for the horror gateway, is that it doesn’t try too hard to “elevate” (it does, though only a little) the genre. It listens and learns from its elders to complete the haunted hotel play-by-play. Not a repeat, but a re-do of the things that work for paranormal and folk horror. The aspect that Hokum brings home is the solid polycule made of production design, sound mixing, and cinematography. A happy, creepy home of cobwebs and jump scares.
The only hotel staff spared from Ohm’s terrible attitude is Fiona. When he learns she’s gone missing after a Halloween party he was famously blackout drunk for, he feels a responsibility to return the kindness and effort she had shown him. The last person to speak to Fiona was local kooky guy, Jerry (David Wilmot). His local status is confirmed by Ohm after Jerry claims Fiona is most likely dead in the honeymoon suite… because her ghost approached him and told him so. Jerry might be crazy, but Ohm has nothing to live for, apparently. Ohm agrees to investigate the suite that the hotel staff keep locked and out of service. It’s haunted by a witch, they say. Obviously.
Production Design and Sound Craft a Claustrophobic Nightmare
The suite, and the source of Hokum’s nightmares, is stunning work in the macabre department. Despite my distaste for them, it really is a playground for jump scares. Lighting and sound design do some real respectable heavy lifting that the viewer is forced (complimentary) to sit through. My personal playground, though, would be the dumbwaiter. The last time I had that much fun with one of those was when lowering Danny into the den of lizard aliens in Zathura (2005). Hokum’s dumbwaiter plays as much of a role as Adam Scott does in his.
Besides the horrors that persist in it, the honeymoon suite really comes alive with the one or two Resident Evil-esque puzzles in order to reach the meat of the mystery. A super engaging focus from cinematographer Colm Hogan to use frame ratio, and other visual camera tricks to induce the claustrophobia of the epicenter of scares. Bring back the dumbwaiter please.
Where Hokum Falls Short
What doesn’t work is excusable. The thin background information on Ohm’s trauma presents itself too often through a jump scare/flashback cocktail. Did this movie need to be 101 minutes, or could it have been 90? Did the viewer need to understand the weight of Ohm’s undesirable childhood? Not to this degree. I think these moments also risk confusion as to what supernatural thing we’re dealing with at the moment: the witch of the honeymoon suite, Fiona’s ghost, or the lasting haunt of Ohm’s mother’s tragic death? The film takes the “less is more” rule at about 70%- not awesome, but a passing grade, no doubt.
One of the most entertaining aspects of horror is its subgenres. Zombie films have an ever-branching group of sub-subgenres, as do slashers and paranormal films. It’s honestly exhausting to try to classify some of these films. Hell, my favorite bigfoot film, Night of the Demon, is a cryptid slasher film! Who knew that the slasher subgenre would ever have a cryptid branch to it?! But the straight-to-DVD times of the mid-aughts brought a series of weird slasher-ish films to the shelves of Walmart and FYE’s across the United States. One of those films that caught my eye (at too young an age) was a genuinely weird, trailer park, splatterpunk remake called 2001 Maniacs. (Would this technically fall under the Hellbilly slasher subgenre?)
What Is 2001 Maniacs About?
Anderson Lee (Jay Gillespie), Corey Jones (Matthew Carey), and Nelson Elliot (Dylan Edrington) are three college kids on their way to Daytona for Spring Break. As their college graduation looms, or lack of graduation, they want to go out with a bang. Literally. A detour leads the three and two other groups into the overly cheery town of Pleasant Valley. But this stuck-in-their-ways town has danger lurking beneath it. The town’s mayor, George W. Buckman (Robert Englund), who dons a Confederate flag eye patch, welcomes the eight travelers in with open arms. And just like that, the Guts n’ Glory festival is set to begin! Though who will make it out alive, and who will get turned into tonight’s pot roast?
A Movie that Shares Some Odd Company
I’ll be completely honest. I haven’t watched this movie in over a decade. There was a time in my life when I was hellbent on finding the most messed-up movies I could. As my watchlist grew, so did my desensitization. Movies like this, Freakshow (which proudly boasted it was banned in 47 countries), August Underground, and The Girl Next Door filled out my formative film-viewing years. While I can understand why some of these disgusting movies were made, some completely befuddled me as to why they were even made. Out of all of these films, 2001 Maniacs stuck in my head as the most perplexing of the bunch.
Writers Tim Sullivan and Chris Kobin, with direction from Tim Sullivan, are very competent voices in horror. They co-wrote Driftwood together, which, while not amazing, is better than the reviews suggest. Their work on Snoop Dogg’s Hood of Horror resulted in a great anthology film that gets overlooked in most conversations about anthologies. And Tim Sullivan wrote/directed the second-best segment in Chillerama, “I was a Teenage Werebear”. So, why this movie? Why remake Herschell Gordon Lewis’s just as perplexing Two Thousand Maniacs!?
2001 Maniacs’ Surprising Connection to Cabin Fever
Quick aside, since we’re also covering Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever this month. What’s interesting is that this film stars Giuseppe Andrews as Harper Alexander (who reprises his role of Deputy Winston in Cabin Fever 2). And towards the beginning of this film, Eli Roth reprises his role of Justin from Cabin Fever. So, Eli Roth exists in this world as his character from Cabin Fever, but Giuseppe Andrews exists as a completely different entity. That’s neither here nor there. Just an interesting observation that implies the flesh-eating disease also exists within this world. What are the odds? As much as I despise Eli Roth, it would have been fascinating to see this group of characters battle Confederate ghosts AND a flesh-eating disease.
Okay, where were we?
The Incredibly Shaky Acting in 2001 Maniacs
Nothing about this film works, except for a handful of practical effects. You can all hate me for what I’m about to say…and that’s okay. Robert Englund and Lin Shaye are not good actors. I will concede that Englud is great as Freddy, and he has worked his way into his legendary status. Beyond that? Not so much. Lin Shaye just…she’s a nepo sister who got in while the getting was good. Her high-pitched, high-energy line readings get old after more than 30 seconds of screentime. It’s easy to see why she has so many fans, and I’m happy that they have thousands of films to watch her in. I just think she took the spot of a potentially better actor. Though you should not mistake what I said as me saying the other actors in this movie are great. Because that is simply untrue. Nearly every scene feels as if the actors are reading their lines from a teleprompter slightly off-screen.
Do the Kills Make it Worth Sitting Through?
“But the point of this movie is the gory kills!” Okay, and? A few of the kills in 2001 Maniacs are fun and inventive, but you have to sit through endless filler until you get there. It gets to a point where this movie’s horniness becomes so over the top that even a hypersexual Joe Bob Briggs fan would become annoyed. You can say that it’s because this movie is a horror comedy, or that it’s supposed to be tongue-in-cheek. And I can come right back and say that there is not a single bit of ‘comedy’ in this movie that works. Vampires Suck is funnier than this. Hell, Disaster Movie is funnier than this.
2001 Maniacs is a Big Skip
2001 Maniacs is the closest I’ve come to a DNF when covering a film for Horror Press. The movie’s blatant racism-played-for-jokes becomes old before it even gets started. Decent practical effects are ruined by mid-aughts digital effects that would make the SciFi Channel cringe. God, how many times can you scream, “The South’s gonna rise again,” before it stops becoming satire and becomes weird? Calling this movie satire would be unfair because there is not a single moment of awareness throughout. Yes, they make Southerners look like pig-screwing dimwits, but it feels like it’s only done to cover their asses.
Do not watch 2001 Maniacs. It is a truly terrible movie. And that’s coming from someone who has watched nearly every SciFi Original, Mongolian Deathworm, and has sat through Verotika eight times.
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Overlook Film Festival: ‘Hokum’ Review
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‘Lee Cronin’s The Mummy’ Review: A Reboot With Mixed Results
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