So, back in January I made you a promise and I am absolutely about to break it into pieces. My apologies in advance, but I just couldn’t help myself!
I’ve talked about the many incarnations of filmmaker Dean Alioto’s UFO films, UFO Abduction and Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County, both the TV and alternate film version, so I’ve clearly beaten this horse to death.
I acknowledge that, but it turns out this horse has a little life left! When I wrote about UFO Abduction, Dean Alioto’s first film foray – a shot-on-video found footage feature 10 years before The Blair Witch Project – I mentioned that it was difficult obtain a legit copy of the film outside of a few avenues, but that is no longer the truth!
It turns out that in October of last year POV Horror – a streaming site for found footage indie films – released a DVD copy titled The McPherson Tape: UFO Abduction, which includes the film, as well as several audio commentary tracks by the director and Found Footage Critic (which has also thoroughly covered the film), an alternate “Bootleg” version of the film, a making of featurette, and a few trailers.
I’ll be honest, I figured outside of a few limited run DVDs that Dean Alioto might print and sell himself that there would never be a full feature release of this short film, let alone one with so many extras.
What’s even more surprising is that there was also recently a Blu-ray release of the film! That’s right. The American Genre Film Archive (AGFA) and distributor Vinegar Syndrome – the place for cult film preservation and hard-to-find film releases – actually put out a high definition release of UFO Abduction in April of this year. This release contains – as far as I know – the same cut of the film as the DVD, but also comes with the Encounters TV segment about the film, which I mentioned in a previous post, and a Q&A from Fantastic Fest. As much as I wanted to pick up the Blu-ray, it’s neither easy nor inexpensive to buy Vinegar Syndrome releases in Nova Scotia, but I could get the POV Horror release at a decent price, so I opted for the DVD.
When I previously watched this movie I had to settle for a very poorly encoded YouTube video from an old VHS that was probably bootlegged and sold at UFO conventions in the early-90s. It made the experience incredibly sub-par, to say the least. Finally getting the see the film as it was intended was a real treat and I very much enjoyed it.
Here’s a video of my thoughts on the DVD!
One thing to note is that it is super weird that they branded this movie “The McPherson Tape”. The family – although I don’t think their last names are ever mentioned – are the Van Heese family. Hilariously, some of them are named Van Hesse on film’s credits. Either way, they are not the McPhersons! That name was the family name of the characters in the second of Alioto’s UFO films. I assume it was renamed this, because it gets more search hits and they wanted the DVD to sell better, but that’s speculation.
So, hopefully this is the last time – at least for a while – that I’ll cover these films. I can’t say never, because if somehow the “actual” The McPherson Tape did get a release, I would most certainly review that, as well!
Cheers,
R