swoeste's Full Review: Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Close Encounters" was one of the most sensational movies of the 1970s, in large part for its ground breaking special effects, which still look great over 20 years later. Admittedly, the movie is a bit short on plot and character development, but those of us who saw the movie in the theatres back then didn't mind, just for the experience of the majestic spaceships in the movie.
Naturally, you're not going to get a chance at home to see the movie as it was released in the theatres in 1977, on a fifty-foot screen with Dolby Stereo. Still, if you have a big screen television, you might come close. The real stars of the movie, for the most part, are the spaceships, although you don't even get to see them for the first time until about halfway through the movie. The story starts with strange, inexplicable events, like the sudden appearance of five, World War II Navy fighter planes in the dessert, in perfect condition (they start right up!), without pilots. Other equally mysterious events occur, including thousands of people in India who simultaneously witness a glowing, singing, sphere.
The movie does tend to drag a bit in the first half, as the character played by Richard Dreyfuss, a family man, slowly becomes more and more obsessed with building scale models of ……something, in his home, after a late night encounter with one of the space craft. Finally, about the time Dreyfuss' character realizes the things he's been building are models of Devil's Peak, his family leaves him, and he goes out on a solo quest to Devil's Peak. Naturally, this being a 70s movie, the military conspires against people. The military publicly denies to people that the various strange events around the world are the work of extraterrestrials, when in fact the military has been able to figure out where they are going to land, and has built a landing field and a research facility there (on Devil's Peak). The military tries to intercept people, like Dreyfuss, who have had telepathic communications from the aliens about Devil's Peak, before they can get there.
The spaceships in the movie are great fun to watch. At one point you get to see the State Police pursue some of the smaller craft, which cruise the expressway at night, speeding, just a few feet above the road. Impishly, they stay just ahead of the police officers, who pursue the craft through a tollbooth station marked Ohio Toll Road (interesting point; there are no toll roads in Ohio! Oops!!).
The aliens are portrayed, by implication, as menacing at only one point in the movie. Late one hot summer night, a little boy and his mother, who live in an isolated farmhouse in Indiana, receive a ghostly visit from something which floods the house with light, rattles the windows in their frames, and even unscrews the screws in the ventilation covers in the house. The little boy watches all this with raptly; his face reflects only awe, fascination, and wonder. It soon becomes apparent that the little boy sees something in the house his mother cannot; and shortly after he disappears, with his mother screaming for him in the night.
The landing of the spaceships on Devil's Peak is the grand finale of the movie. A fleet of smaller spaceships arrives, and hovers just above the field, almost close enough to touch, and allowing the nervous scientists to take hundreds of pictures and measurements with their assembled instruments. The gigantic mother ship follows, dwarfing the entire field, and majestically landing on Devil's Peak. The next, and last, 20 minutes of the movie are the most fascinating. The scientists struggle to communicate with the creatures inside the mother ship, as they make the first move by blinking a series of multi-colored lights, and sounding musical notes, from the rim around their ship. The scientists try to respond, while figuring out the language, with a technician playing a multi-tiered keyboard attached to a football-stadium type electric light board, which plays notes and flashes color back. Suffice it to say the humans and the aliens communicate, which pave the way for their final meeting.
I don't want to tell you the end of the movie; just that it's a good ending, despite some of the "hippie type" feel-good nuances so typical of the 70s. By the way, the ending of the version released in 1977 is very different from the "special edition" released in 1980, which has additional footage. The earlier version is far superior.
Close Encounters Of The Third Kind: The Collector s Edition is visionary director Steven Spielberg s definitive director s cut of this exhilarating fi...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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