Our ongoing series reviewing the greatest Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror movies. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.

Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Produced by: Julia Phillips, Michael Phillips
Written by: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Richard Dreyfuss, François Truffaut, Melinda Dillon,Teri Garr
Original Release: 1977

Reviewed by: John J. Joex

Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

Synopsis: Several unexplained events occur around the globe as a squadron of fighters lost since World War II mysteriously reappears, the lost ship SS Cotopaxi shows up in a desert, and two airliners nearly collided with an unidentified flying object. Also, a small boy is awakened in the middle of the night as his toys come alive and he ultimately gets abducted by the aliens causing the commotion. Not far from where the boy is abducted, electrical worker Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) is buzzed by a U.F.O. while investigating a power outage. Following this, Roy becomes obsessed with images he sees in his mind of a large mountain, and he tries to recreate it in some manifest form, much to the dismay of his family. Jillian, the mother of the abducted boy, also succumbs to these mental images which eventually draw her and Roy to Devil’s Tower in Wyoming (which is the mountain they have been invisioning). After evading government forces trying to keep unauthorized personnel away (many others have been drawn to the site as well), they discover a station that has been set up to welcome alien visitors and to attempt to make first contact with them. The officials there use a sequence of musical notes (the infamous five-note CE3K theme) as well as a series of hand gestures to communicate. And Roy finds that he has a destiny he never expected.

Review/Commentary: Close Encounters of the Third Kind was the third of the trio of genre films that sealed the deal and led the charge for the new wave of sfx-heavy blockbusters that would dominate Hollywood from that point forward (the other two were of course Jaws and Star Wars). This film offered yet another Box Office-friendly spectacle that delivered a realization of Science Fiction and Fantasy themes that fans could have only previously dreamed about. Far from the painted paper plate flying saucers of B-Movies or the brief, budget-conscious glimpses of alien hardware in more accomplished early alien encounter films like The Day the Earth Stood Still or This Island Earth, CE3K delivered big-time on its aliens and their spaceships. It gave audiences a phantasmagoria of special effects that wowed them and finally delivered on the visuals that the genre has teased us with for so many years.

But this movie has many flaws, often forgotten by those caught up in its onscreen magic years ago and who still look back on it with fond memories. The movie starts very strong with the early mysterious appearances of craft long thought gone and with the initial alien encounters. But then it derails in its middle section as we see Dreyfuss’s character Roy descend into near hysteria. I understand that Spielberg wanted to convey the powerful draw that the aliens had on him, but this whole sequence and the way his actions impact his family nearly causes the audience to divest from the character. And it doesn’t help that Spielberg parades television commercials across the screen (Roy has the TV on in the background, but the directer puts it in our faces) in a blatant and gratuitous early example of product placement. To make matters worse, when Roy meets up with Jillian, the romantic connection between the two seems just thrown in and superfluous. Sure, you could say they were just caught up in the emotion of the moment, but it just didn’t fit.

The film gets saved by its ending though. This is where Spielberg really shines and commits to celluloid some of his best moments ever as a filmmaker. Even though early on the aliens are given somewhat of a threatening demeanor, in truth they are a peaceful species that just wants to make contact with us (or at least that is what we take away from the ending). This movie gives us a very rare example of peaceful contact with extraterrestrials and it does so with at least some scientific plausibility along with plenty of cinematic grandeur. The idea of bridging the communication gap with a universal constant like musical tones I thought was brilliant and great touch of speculative fiction. True, Spielberg handled this with grand cinematic flourishes, but he does not take this to excess and this time around he also avoids the smarminess that later weighted down his film E.T. In fact, the ending is one of the most poetic moments in cinematic history and a must-see for all fans of good film-craft.  Too often genre films parade an excess of violence, sometimes justified, sometimes not so much.  So it’s nice to have a movie once in a while that resolves its story while still engrossing the audience without having to resort to battles, fight scenes, or excess carnage.

So if you have not seen this movie, or have not seen it in a long time, go in knowing that it has a bit of a schizophrenic nature about it. Don’t let the middle section detract you, though, and feel free to fastforward through much of that part as well as the commercials (just like when watching regular TV). But the ending brings it all together and ultimately delivers a satisfying movie experience.

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