Quote:Past scrubby fields of Joshua trees down a dusty road in Landers, a gleaming white dome rises abruptly from the jagged, putty-colored horizon, a curious testament to one man’s intergalactic vision: the Integratron.

The life’s work of a onetime aircraft engineer, the bizarre 38-foot wooden structure was meant to add decades to a person’s life (not to mention warp time and suspend gravity) through frequencies generated by electrostatic energy. Now the dome, surrounded by fruit trees, grapevines, vintage trailers and miles of nothing in every direction, will be put to a more modest use -- host to the first Retro UFO convention April 29.

“It’s a new chapter in ufology,” said Harris, a graphic artist by trade. “When you go on that property ... there is something that touches your heart, that touches your soul.”

He built the dome for $150,000 over 18 years starting in 1957, claiming that he was inspired by a predawn meeting with a visitor from Venus named Solgonda.

He didn’t complete the electrostatic device at the heart of the dome before he died in 1978, and his plans and equipment to finish the 50-megavolt Integratron disappeared soon after his death.

The outlandish dome and its unlikely location are “a monument to one man’s field of dreams,” said Joanne Karl, 51, one of three sisters who own the dome and have worked to restore it.

Quote:Drama-documentary, based on the experiences of Al Chop, a reporter who served as press liaison for the Pentagon during its investigation of UFO's from 1947 to the early 1950s.

Miller, Soule, and Tremayne provide the voices for the narrated portions of the film. Although the movie contains only two brief film clips to serve as photographic evidence of UFO's, the producers build a good case based on the credibility of certain UFO witnesses (airline pilots, military personnel, radar operators, etc.).

On a more subtle level, director Winston Jones pulls off a clever trick; he begins the film as a pure documentary, but he gradually modifies this approach and focuses on reporter Al Chop's personal involvement in the UFO investigation. Chop slowly changes from UFO skeptic to UFO believer.

The climax is a gripping reenactment of a true incident which occurred in 1950, when a group of UFO's cruised above Washington DC for several hours. The voice of Harry Morgan is heard over the radio as an Air Force pilot whose plane is literally surrounded by UFO's, during which Al Chop and a group of bewildered military men cluster around the radar scope, watching in wide-eyed wonder. Dramatically speaking, this scene is far superior to its counterpart in `Close Encounters of the Third Kind'. The most amazing thing about this film is the fact that it was made with the full cooperation of the United States government, and every scrap of evidence it presents was made available to any and all scientific agency who wanted to examine it.

Watch it and make up your own mind about UFO's -- but you'll loose some sleep over it before you do. Note: Some reviews mistakenly identify the star of `Unidentified Flying Objects' as Tom Powers, a co-star of `Destination Moon' (1950). The star of `UFO' is actually a Los Angles newspaper reporter (not a professional actor) named Tom Towers, who portrays the real-life DoD, Office of Public Information, in Washington, D.C. Al Chop.

(02-24-2023, 05:51 AM)727Sky Wrote: