***SPOILERS**** Laughable film about UFO's that starts off like a documentary on the subject with realistic TV interviews of people who saw UFO's and ends with a cheap l"2001" like light show of mostly figure eights as it descends into total chaos. That in trying to figure out, by its filmmakers, a way to finally ends it before the outraged audience storms the projection room- As well as demand their money back-and lynches the projectionist as well as burns the theater down. It's electronic student Alan Grimes who picks up a series of messages from outer space that seem to be from a UFO that's also sucking the power out of the local power station in the area outside of Atlanta Georgia.Checking with the local military Alan is told by Gen Gallgher-who's played by the late Montgomery Cliff's big brother Brooks- to just forget about it and let the US Army take care of the situation. Refusing to take no for an answer Alan checks out collage astronomy professor-Wearing a very obvious as well as embarrassing looking cheap sliver wig-Ed Lynch who tells Alan that the sightings of UFO's have to do with the appearance of "Haley's Comet" that will bring in a new age of enlightenment for the human race! It's much later when by now a totally confused Alan gets in touch with local psychic to the stars Vivian that she taps into, by going into a trance, with the UFO entities brain waves that have been trapped at the bottom of a local lake since before the year 1,000 A.D.****SPOILERS*** It's then that a spaced out and out of touch with the real world Vivian tells Alan-Through her alien contacts-that it's him that been chosen! Chosen to save the human race like the previous trio of historical figures Enoch Elijah & Jesus by having or getting himself offed or killed for the good of all humanity! As well as have the stuck in the mud or at the bottom of the lake aliens be able to finally go airborne and back to the far off home planet from where they originally came from! Alan who by now want's to end this whole insanity walks into the lake as he slowly ages some 50 years in the blink of an eye! And despite Allan's friend Alan II, they both share the same first name, trying to save him he dissolves into a skeleton to be used at the local medical collage for the students to study anatomy.

There was once a show on a small local network called the all night show which featured four half hour shows. One was called UFO update which featured people discussing their actual encounters with UFOs.This show also featured a segment called the master plan which featured voices reciting dialogue over pictures and computer images featuring rotoscoping and shadow images. This movie is on the same level with its low budget production featuring similar dialogue and photography. I remember reading in TV guide years ago in a review for this movie,which did once play on the Cbs late movie before being forever relegated to the local channels fright night slot, that this film cost a microscopic $40000 to make and played in the local drive ins {probably at the bottom of a triple feature}and made $1000000 in return.Nowadays movies like this come in 50 movies on 13 DVD box sets.This could help people have retro drive in movie nights

I don't really think I've ever seen anything like this before. It was like a surreal mix of Ed Wood, Stanley Kubrick, and Ken Russell. The micro-budget keeps things murky and confusing, heightening the surrealism. The directing is a bit poor, with sluggish pacing, pointless scenes of people philosophically discussing the nature of electricity and life on other planets, and special effects that come across like a fan-film homage to 2001.It's not a good movie. In fact, I'd say it's technically inept. However, despite that, I still found myself enjoying it, to some degree, because it was just so damn weird. In fact, I'd say that the incompetence only makes it more enthralling. As each scene was set up, I found myself wondering, "WTF?" There was some puzzling, obvious problem with the scene (like the boom mic being in the shot), the scene made no sense, or bad music was blaring, making the dialogue too difficult to hear. It's like they were in the woods one day, happened to have some filmmaking equipment, and decided to shoot a movie, doing everything in one take.Do I recommend this movie? Well, not on its merits. In order to enjoy it, I think you need to be the kind of person who watches a movie because he wants to see just how incomprehensible and incompetent it can get. You have to be the kind of person who, when he finds something that tastes awful, keeps eating it, eagerly, because he's so enthralled by the awfulness of it.Either that or you'd have to have a serious love for UFOs.I rate this a 5/10, because it's so amazingly incompetent that it becomes enjoyable on whole different level than was intended. If you're into Kubrick and Russell, you'll probably have fun finding homages and rip-offs, as well.

WARNING! THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS!!! I can remember watching this film for the first time. It was on a rainy Saturday afternoon, and my mother and I were visiting one of our neighbors(who was bed-ridden with pneumonia). While my mother and I were speaking with the neighbor's wife, the husband was watching this unusual science fiction film on the local independent station. When I caught the film, I was pretty surprised and haunted at the same time.Years later, after having viewed the film twice on the same station, I told the local pharmacist about it. When she saw it, she said the film blew her mind away.To sum up UFO: Target Earth the best, it was a cerebral '70's science fiction film.Like George Romero, Dan O'Bannon, and John Carpenter did for independent films concerning the science fiction/horror genre(i.e. the original Night Of The Living Dead, Dark Star, and Halloween), Michael DeGaetano does the same thing with the subject about UFOs.The plot follows a university communications researcher/electronics expert, Alan Grimes on his quest to find a UFO that apparently crashed into a remote, back country lake near a power plant many years past. Residents of a small community remember strange and bright lights that appeared in the night sky. The population of the small town also begins to suffer from what appears to be communal flashbacks. Soon there are citizens who believe that the cause for this disturbing phenomenon might be from the same UFO that crash landed in the lake. When the electronics specialist accidentally intercepts a military call about UFO sightings and accidentally overhears two military types authorizing a scramble of jets to investigate, he decides to investigate the phenomenon near the lake. The young man stares out of the window for a long time then phones someone else to make an appointment.Meeting with the local college's resident astronomer, Alan inquires about the logical possibility of flying saucers, an idea the professor quickly shoots down as anything but scientific. The professor lectures him at great length about the possibility of Life in the Universe. He goes to see 'Dr Mansfield and they have a conversation. A chance encounter with a mysterious psychic woman, Vivian fuels Alan's questioning, as she feels a strong electrical pull to a nearby reservoir. It turns out she has a mental connection to alien presences. After being denied access to the military's communication equipment, an undaunted Alan finds help from his fellow colleagues, who along with Vivian, set out for the body of water that some believe hides the long forgotten crashed Alien craft. While searching for evidence of aliens, he picks up signals that he believes are being emitted from the alien spacecraft--and they are coming from under the depths of the lake near the small town. Unknown to the town's residents, themselves. Could it be that the aliens within are still alive? If so, is this also a possible government cover-up? Hoping to discover the source of the mysterious signals and the secrets contained within the alien ship(SPOILER ALERT), Alan wanders about with the small group of scientists into a forest before they encounter some aliens that are able to get their ship airborne again, thanks to the power of Alan's imagination. As a result, Alan grows old as he is exposed to the alien presence as the UFO takes off into a brilliant starfield.A real oddity this one - made for peanuts (reputedly $70,000), it's an ambitious attempt to translate the mid-70s passion for ufology to the big screen that writer/director Michael DeGaetano had the resources, imagination, or ability to carry off his lofty ambitions. Three years later, Steven Spielberg would come along and show him how it should be done with Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Still, for an independent movie released in 1974(and re-released in 1978), that's made this cheaply, it certainly doesn't lack ambition. It's one that tries to tap in to the mystical qualities of certain aspects of UFOlogy. I can't really say the movie is successful; there's something about the eccentric use of music, the oddball pacing and characters, and the confused plotting that is more likely to get you scratching your head than anything else.Still, there's a quality to this movie that I find quite unique, and as a result, I can't quite bring myself to just dismiss the movie. Maybe it's just because the movie took me somewhere that I've never been before, and given how many movies I've seen that seem like rehashes of other movies, I've learned to value that. And even though I found the computer-generated abstract special effects to be somewhat laser light show and psychedelic in origin, they were rather hypnotic all the same. Action and thriller fans will definitely be disappointed, but those looking for something a little different with a mystical edge, there's something to be appreciated here.