It may sound a little cliche, but I have had trouble sleeping recently and have found myself wide awake in the small hours wondering what to do. The TV can usually deliver something to watch via some channel or other, so I have been racking my brain for old films or features that I have not yet seen. At 3.00am on Saturday night, I treated myself to the truly wonderful Omnibus rendition of MR James 'Whistle and I'll Come To You' on Youtube, directed by Johnathan Miller and starring Michael Hordern. It never fails to unsettle me and in the hour before dawn it was the perfect time.
So a couple of nights later and insomnia is nudging me out of bed again (along with the unseasonably warm night) and I'm parked in front of the tv and wondering what to watch. I'd finished The Exorcist the previous evening at a more reasonable hour, so I fancied something a little scary again. Trawling through the sci-fi listings brought up nothing I hadn't already seen, but then I recalled seeing a book in the attic the other week, that I had dipped into. The book was Whitley Streiber's 'Communion' and I had bought it primarily because of the cover art - or in the case of the copy I had - the rear cover.
Ted Seth Jacobs had painted the artwork at Streibers' direction, in order to capture the image of the being which Streiber insists he was abducted by in the apparently 'true story'. It is an image which has spawned a million imitators and is essentially what ufologists refer to as a 'Grey'.
Streiber released Communion in 1987 as his account of his own abduction and 'lost time' experiences, which he had been subjected to and been able to recall during deep hypnosis. Like any good skeptic, I took it all with a pinch of salt when I found the book and didn't manage to get very far into it for some reason and commended it to the loft pile.
I have always been fascinated by UFO's and aliens etc, but find a lot of the abductee mythos a little hard to swallow. The classic 'Interrupted Journey' story of Barney and Betty Hill in 1961 famously recounted aliens with strange 'wraparound' eyes and their story appeared to be quite sinister and authentic.
Reading about it in the Target '
Investigating UFO's' book back in 1970, utterly terrified me, but helped cement my fascination with extra-terrestrial life. Close Encounters brought the vision of the 'grey' firmly into the mainstream consciousness and then fast forward to the nineties and the advent of '
The X-Files' where all manner of supernatural and extrasensory hi-jinks suddenly became cool. It would probably be around this time I that came across the paperback - although I distinctly recall the big media showcase in 87, when it was launched - again, purportedly as a 'true story' So, the image of the otherworldly, strangely calm face of the alien Grey being firmly embedded, I wondered how it actually fitted in to Streiber's story. I had two options, clamber round the loft in my jim-jams looking for a tatty paperback that I had noticed in passing a week ago, or see if I can find the film on tv. Not wanting to leave the sofa, I opted for the latter and soon had a copy of the film running on the box. Christopher Walken headlined as Streiber himself, so I felt it was a fairly safe bet for a decent film. Streiber is a writer and also wrote the screenplay for Bowie's '
The Hunger' and '
Wolfen' although this wasn't indicated in the film, it did depict Walken as an edgy and very eccentric writer, busily hacking out his latest magnum opus. Walken always has a very distinct and strange screen presence and this was no different. His take on Streiber the man was given to flamboyant dress and nervous and unpredictable behaviour, as he bounced around his New York apartment with 8 year old son and beautiful wife. It was interesting to note as the camera panned around the boys room, a section of the Coleco StarCom Space Station - which would be contemporary with the film - lay on a dresser, not unlike the great toy placement shots in Spieleberg's 'Poltergeist' or Abrams 'Super 8'. So despite fast forwarding through Walkens novelist antics and family schmaltz, I persevered until about 30 mins in, when the family move to the holiday home in the woods.
Straight away, you know what's coming, as Streiber (Walken) struggles to disable the complex alarms and security arrangements to get his family and two friends into the house. In an apparent attempt to engage a little mystery and suspense, we see a large orange jack a lantern sitting at the end of a corridor
simmering around a candle in true Stephen King style. Cue more poking about in dark corners and more general Streiber/Walken hi-jinks - which by this time are wearing a bit thin - and the families enjoy a meal and ultimately retire to bed. Within minutes, there are huge beams of actinic CE3K style light blasting in the windows and Streiber jerks up in bed - totally alert. The lights recede and he rubs his eyes, thinking he's awoken from a dream. Then, in the one genuinely unsettling moment of the film, the bedroom door opens a crack and part of the alien greys face peers in.
I say part, as the inverted teardrop shaped head is mostly occupied by the vast obsidian eyes and the little face peeps around the frame with just one eye - before nipping quickly back again. The sequence uses what is clearly a model and is not lit well enough to disguise the fact, so it almost looks like someone has popped a plastic halloween mask around the door. However, given its similarity to the image on the book cover and the fact that we have been set up to 'see' the face and its archetypal presence in the bedroom at night, it looks quite goblin like and unpleasant.
Then everything move into overdrive and the lights come on, the border between dream and reality dissolves and Streiber is snatched from his bed by a band of small troglodytes and marched out of the house. Flash forward to next morning and everything seems ok - apart from Streibers' friend recounting tales of bright lights and unpleasant sensations, which Streiber seems utterly unaware of. As a result, the holiday is cut short and everyone decamps back to New York. Streiber suffers bad dreams and hallucinations and his general health and demeanour deteriorate to the point where he seeks help. A psychiatrists suggests regression therapy with hypnosis and the mystery of the nocturnal invasions begins to come to light.
As Streiber begins to accept what has been happening (as further indignities are visited upon him over successive nights) and embraces the hypnotherapy, we are shown the figures in much more detail - probably too much detail, as the facade slips a little to far and the mechanism of puppetry is revealed. The little dwarf like creatures are small people with large animatronic heads, with dilating nostrils and rolling eyes, which appear as comical, as opposed to inimical - especially when they gently ease Streiber onto a mist shrouded table and administer an eye-wateringly large rectal probe that looks like its made from spare vacuum accessories. Behind all this float the willowy Greys - who by virtue of the psychedelic light show going on, look more like 'Pinks' and seem to be overseeing the activity by waving tentacular arms in the alien equivalent of a Mexican wave.
There follows the usual succession of denial, anger and ultimate acceptance by Streiber, as he undgoes more hypnosis, tests and group therapy with the local Abductee group - but it is never brought any closer to a satisfying conclusion. Streiber eventually confronts the aliens on the ship in the deep woods and discovers that they are intentionally not revealing their true form and its is like a 'chinese box' puzzle - as one mystery is opened, another is revealed beneath.
So as the film wrapped up with the family on top on a skyscraper in New York, apparently expectantly 'watching the skies' - there is no clear answer to what has apparently gone on. At the start, I approached it with the view that it was in fact a true testimony, but it was only afterwards that I discovered that Streiber was in fact an established horror writer, and what I had believed to be an actual account, was purely fictional. A shame and a missed opportunity, maybe one of these late nights I might see if the book can improve upon the film. Till then, I don't think the truth is in here somehow..
