Mike Gray came up with a minor masterpiece. I went to see the film because a friend whose judgement about movies I always respected suggested that I take myself down to the dollar theater and watch what can be made for little or no money and a ton of heart and soul. I wasn't disappointed. Gray must have had a particular form of charisma as the actors all seemed to be working to the full extent of their talents and his obvious ability to do so much with so little deeply impressed me. If he'd only had a budget! I wonder what he could have done if Spielberg had donated the crew for Close Encounters meal budget to Gray. As it stands he didn't need more help really. In any case, highly recommended!

An unemployed musician and his psychic girlfriend stumble on a government conspiracy involving experiments on child-like aliens in this sci-fi themed paranoia thriller from 'China Syndrome' screenwriter Mike Gray. The film is powered through by a perfectly brooding Tangerine Dream music score and haunting sound effects and Robert Carradine makes for a sympathetic lead. The choice to have young boys play the decades-old aliens works very well too; there are some great sequences in which they travel through the city with childhood wonderment in their eyes and yet adult restraint, content to just observe. The midsection of the film is nevertheless rather weak as focus turns away from Carradine and the aliens to focus on government figures debating what to do. This departure serves a purpose as it highlights how there are no real antagonists in the tale: all the government want to do is learn about these creatures and prevent panic in the general public, however, the government figures never make for interesting characters. The film also has some irksome narration to begin with but thankfully this soon disappears. 'Wavelength' might not be a perfect motion picture, but it is very well crafted as far as low to medium budget science fiction films go, and its descent into obscurity over the years is sad but understandable. Critics of the film are all too eager to jump on its similarities to 'E.T.' and 'Starman', but this is a film that deserves to be judged on its own terms - especially since it was written before 'E.T.' and released before 'Starman' came out!

From an interview on the website: projectcamelot Livermore physicist 'Henry Deacon' Q:What can you tell us about the ET presence? A: Look up the movie Wavelength. It's based on a totally true story. Have you seen it? It's based on an incident that took place at Hunter Liggett. This is a hot one.Q: No. Where's Hunter Liggett? A: 90 miles south-south-east of Monterey, California. My primary station at the time was Fort Ord.I was working there back in the early 70s, when I was in the military, and I was working under CDCEC, which is Combat Developments Command Experimentation Command. You can go look that up.We were doing testing of all kinds of devices, and we lived out in the field there. We wore laser protection goggles a lot of the time and we had our eyes dialated routinely to check our retinas for burns. Some of the cattle in the fields even wore modified goggles! This was the most bizarre sight you could ever imagine.Well, one day something happened while we were testing. A disk came into the area and it was hovering, it hovered right directly in front of us, out in a field. So we shot the ****ing thing down.Q: You shot down a disk? A: We should never have done it. It wasn't me personally, but the group did. Between us we had all this gizmo weaponry and I guess they panicked and thought they were in a movie or something. The disk was disabled and it was captured, and so were the occupants, and I saw these very briefly. They were small child-like humanoids, with no hair. And they had small eyes, not large almond-shaped eyes. I don't think anyone knows about this. As far as I know it's not on the internet.Q: This is incredible. I've never heard of this incident.A: Most of the other witnesses ended up in Vietnam and many were killed. I may be the only living witness to what happened... I don't know.The rest of the story is in a sci-fi movie called Wavelength, which was released in the early '80s. I'd never heard of it until I ran into it years later, in Arizona. Did I just say this? When I saw the video, I was expecting some, you know, light entertainment with a beer or two, but I mean, my mouth just hung wide open. The beginning of the film just completely clearly and accurately describes the incident, and the film is very close to the rest of the story, including the use of an abandoned Nike base in Southern California to store them.Go find it. It's all basically true. I was just amazed when I saw it. The person who wrote it must have been there, or knew someone who was there. But I don't know who.

I originally came to this movie with no expectations and it stayed in my top 10 list for a long time, still remaining as an all-time favorite. I liked meeting and getting to know the characters before their lives were impacted by the main events of the story. I found the three main characters (played by Robert Carradine, Cherie Currie, and Keenan Wynn) very believable and engaging. I particularly enjoyed the Native American interchanges and the words of wisdom from the travellers. I don't know what movie the other reviewer watched (or did he leave too early or fall asleep?) - because when ET phones home there is definitely an answer!