Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County (Dean Alioto, 1998)

I once reviewed The Asylum's fun 8213: Gacy House (and I will review it again),  a pretty standard but still entertaining take on the now very common Paranormal Activity concept. The Asylum's own Paranormal Entity is a favorite of mine and I think it works better than Activity on a couple of levels. But that's another discussion. Gacy House is far less realistic. It's more over-the-top, has some form of dark humour and yeah, it's not hard to see that it's fake. And yet, several times every week I notice that these keywords, from Google and other search engines, leads to my blog old blog:

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY AT JOHN WAYNE GRACY HOUSE IN 2006
john wayn gacy 6 bodies found 20006
6 bodies found in gacy house 2006
john wayne gacy house haunted
the six bodies found in john gacy's house

(these are from the last two days)

I would say it's a sign of success. People really want to believe and when after watching a found footage (I prefer to call it fake footage though, as a collective name of found footage, mockumentaries etc) they're trying to figure it out. I remember when I saw The Blair Witch Project for the first time, on a bootleg tape from the US - in a dark basement, in the middle of the night. It was very convincing. Then we have Ghostwatch, the UK TV-special that fooled a lot of people - and don't forget Peter Jackson's fantastic mockumentary Forgotten Silver, still one of the best.

Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County has a special story. Director Dean Alioto shot a super-cheap version of the same story in 1989. It was, I've heard, re-cut for television and aired - and somehow it ended up as "real footage", showing up in this Japanese TV-show:

This is the only material available from the original version of the story. So this also meant that the believers out there thinks there's a cover-up. This material is real and the government - and the poor director Dean Alioto - produced a better-budgeted, less realistic TV-version ten years alter, just to confuse the unsuspecting American citizens and hide the truth

I wish I could see the 1989 "U.F.O. ABDUCTION" (aka "The McPherson Tape") to compare, but I can't, so instead I will say a few words about Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County. It's one of the earliest found footage films made, not counting mockumentaries or pseudo-doc's like Cannibal Holocaust. It's made in the exact same way as The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity - especially the latter, and the similarities are stunning. But instead of ghosts we have aliens. We follow a teenage boy and his camera during thanksgiving. They hear loud bangs in the forest and goes out to look, finds a UFO and runs like hell back to the house. Soon they find out that something - little grey men - are outside the house and wants go get. The boy continues to film, mostly because he wants to be a filmmaker - but also because the lamp on his camera is strong and it's good to have when the lights suddenly stops working! We follow them all through the night, and in-between there's a couple of short interviews with police, psychologist, witnesses etc.

This is a very well-made found footage film, a bit theatrical - but the actors are still very good. Alioto and writer Paul Chitlik have written some fine, complex characters - the mother who's obviously an alcoholic, the macho brother who tries to prove his manliness all the time, the black boyfriend of one of the sisters who repeatedly hears that "You don't belong to this family!" from another sister. The secrets and worries of the family becomes more and more clear over the evening, and at the same time the alien beings outside are affecting them more and more with hallucinations (that only they see and hear, which is cool), making their skin bleed and of course destroying the electronic equipment with their power. It's a lot of details and the 90 minutes goes very.

The reason for the boy filming everything is a bit unrealistic and the acting (or maybe more the writing) is a bit too much on the nose, but it's a very creepy movie and the ending is even creepier. There's a certain amount of cheese, but the seriousness of the whole thing makes you to forget the weaknesses. There was a couple of times I got goosebumps, so that's a good sign

Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County was aired on TV and I guess it only got a VHS release, or maybe not even that. It's not out on DVD, which is a pity. Here's a suggestion: someone get the rights to this one and include the original version on a nice special edition. I bet it will still sell very good! Why not make a featurette on the paranoia around the original footage at the same time? It would be a blast!

Deeply recommended for fans of fake footage and those of us who loves UFO movies.

Comments

[Megatron]

"The Asylum's own Paranormal Entity is a favorite of mine and I think it works better than Activity on a couple of levels. But that's another discussion."

I hope you write something about this soon, Fred, I only seen Paranormal Activity(2007)so far but was not impressed....thought it was bland.

"and don't forget Peter Jackson's fantastic mockumentary Forgotten Silver, still one of the best."

Yeah.....very realistic.....see Lake Mungo(2008) soon, a very nice mockdoc.

"Director Dean Alioto shot a super-cheap version of the same story in 1989. It was, I've heard, re-cut for television and aired - and somehow it ended up as "real footage", showing up in this Japanese TV-show:"

Alioto can be proud......good marketing.....even the news went for it, albeit in Japan.

Like that Zombie warning from Montana, that hackers posted.

http://youtu.be/FTV8_dJngFg

http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/hackare-skapade-forvirring-med-zombielarm

"The reason for the boy filming everything is a bit unrealistic"

As long as you keep buying the illusion it´s fine, but as soon as you start thinking...."how the hell did he film that?.....oh wait....it´s fake!"

"Here's a suggestion: someone get the rights to this one and include the original version on a nice special edition. I bet it will still sell very good! Why not make a featurette on the paranoia around the original footage at the same time? It would be a blast!

Deeply recommended for fans of fake footage and those of us who loves UFO movies."

Who knows.....Shout! Factory, LLC, Synapse Films, etc, could release it.

I like mockumentries and found footage so this might be something for me.

I would love a review of Tape 407/Area 407(2012), very uneven and bland at times, but I think you would like it.

Great review and thanks.