UFOria

John Binder's UForia is a fun little movie. It's another one from the film cycle of the late 70s and early 80s, questioning, musing, and amusing, before addlepated Ronald Reagan declared it was "Morning in America" again, and people believed him. Anything, I guess, was better than Jimmy Carter-diagnosed "malaise." Which may be one reason why UFOria wasn't released in 1981 when it was supposed to be. It took another four years to see its way to American movie screens, and even then on a small scale. As far as I can tell, it was just released in Germany for the first time in 2006, and has yet to be released on DVD. Yet it really is worth seeing.

What UFOria gives its audience is an ensemble of well-rendered character performances by Cindy Williams, Harry Dean Stanton, Fred Ward, and supporting cast. The setting is the milieu of the late 70s American West, a mix of desperation, hope, UFO sitings, New Age wackiness, free enterprise, and petty swindling. As Ward's Sheldon character says once, "gang's all here." And they are.

Arlene (Williams) has visions and dreams of a pending alien rendezvous, and feels her calling to be a latter day Noah. Sheldon falls in love with her, against his usual love-and-flee nature. Brother Bud (Stanton) is a small-time version of Ted Haggard, with an eye on making cash from revival shows and other enterprises. He's more old school than Haggard -- he likes the ladies and booze, not crystal meth and gay massages -- but they use the same swindling techniques. Bud is helped by Brother Roy (Alan Beckwith) and occasionally, by Sheldon. Brother Bud contemplates how he can exploit Arlene's growing popularity among fellow believers, and Sheldon has to deal with the conseqences of the resulting conflict of interests. Meanwhile, there's been a reported alien abduction -- are the UFOs really aliens about to land?

Uforia includes a fine secondary cast and a well-matched soundtrack that includes Waylon Jennings (Sheldon fancies himself a Waylon cowboy rambler type), Roger Miller ("When Worlds Collide" and "Euphoria," from which the title is derived), Brenda Lee and John Prine.

Today's Rune: Movement.

Eyes on the Skies (III).