User reviews

Ok, no, this isn't one of the greatest movies of all time by any means, but it does have some very interesting theories and suggestions, ala the "X-Files". If you were between 10-14 during the late 70's and early 80's, you'll remember the movies that dealt with such mysteries as Bigfoot, Noah's Ark, and (didn't this one just scare the be-jesus out of you!) Nostradomas, narrated by Orsen Welles. I think the movie is entertaining, even though it is "dated" by today's standards. I also don't think it's a strech to say this could have been the very birth of the X-Files as we now know it.

This film was made in my hometown of Big Spring, Texas....my father is in the movie as an extra..he is one of the guys in the hanger around the ship ..look for the white dude with an afro...lol..I was going to get to be in the movie but they decided to scrap that scene for a night crash instead. If you visit the hanger on the old air base it still has the 18 on it. I love the movie. Its pretty good for being such a low budget film but its cool. The ship was sold to one of the rich people in town back then for his kid to have to have fun in. I always remember my parents telling me about Robert Vaughn, they told me that he thought he was this big time actor from Hollywood and he thought he was the coolest thing walking the earth. The other actors and a lot of the higher up towns people would have parties all get together...it was interesting.

Some parts of the film were done in Midland, Texas and Odessa, Texas...so when watching the film its like looking in my back yard.

One of the most tedious films ever made. Your slowest and worst 6 Million Dollar Man episode moves faster, has better effects, better acting, and better writing.

On top of that the film never explains how they got thousands of NASA employees to stay quiet. That's always the fatal flaw in conspiracy theory silliness. You can't even get a gang of three criminals to stay quiet, much less 10,000 people.

This is for the same idiots who actually take Ancient Aliens seriously, and not anyone with a functioning brain.

It is common to bash this 1980 sci-fi/conspiracy movie for its admittedly not-top-notch special effects and pretty much everything else; the limited budget has a lot to do with it. But with the exception of the 1978 film CAPRICORN ONE, nobody else was trying to mix the two elements (sci-fi and conspiracy) together for the big screen. In essence, HANGAR 18 can indeed be said to presage "The X Files" by a decade and a half.

The film begins with two astronauts (Collins, Hampton) encountering a UFO in orbit while launching a military satellite. The satellite collides with the UFO, causing an explosion and killing a third astronaut in the cargo bay who had been watching the satellite's progress. But the UFO makes a surprisingly controlled landing in the Arizona desert, thus necessitating its quick removal and forcing the president's chief of staff (Vaughn, an absolutely steely performance) to concoct a cover story to avoid serious damage to his boss's chances for re-election.

Naturally, both Collins and Hampton are fingered by Vaughn and his staff for blame in the incident. This forces them to gather hard evidence to clear themselves, but it also means that they'll be pursued by government agents the entire way. Meanwhile, at Hangar 18, located at an air force base in Texas, a team of scientists, led by McGavin, are learning everything they possibly can about the UFO and its alien occupants. What they find about those aliens is how uncannily similar they are to humans.

Despite the film's technical imperfections, HANGAR 18 is still a pretty good and speculative science fiction film from Sunn Pictures, the same Utah-based film company that was known for making speculative documentaries during the 70s and early 80s. McGavin is at his usual best, as he was in the 1972 TV film THE NIGHT STALKER. In terms of plot, HANGAR 18 seems to use Watergate as a starting point and then mixes in elements of Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and Spielberg's CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. And although it is hardly on a level with those two great movies, it nevertheless works because of the approach it takes to the debate not only over UFOs in our present day but also the possibility that visitors from another world have visited Earth before.

Following a disaster on a routine shuttle mission where a satellite explosion results in a crashed UFO and a dead astronaut, Gordon Cain (Robert Vaughn) an adviser for the White House arranges to keep a lid on the UFO by relocating it and creating a cover story blaming the two surviving astronauts Price and Bancroft (James Hampton and Gary Collins respectively). Both Price and Bancroft are determined to clear their names and unravel the conspiracy of what they encountered on their mission.

Released in 1980, the film was one of many films to be produced and released by now defunct Utah based film company Sunn Classic Pictures. Sunn's slate consisted of family friendly dramas as well as sensationalist "documentaries" such as The Mysterious Monsters, In Search of Noah's Ark, and Beyond and Back just to name a few. Hangar 18 is clearly inspired by the success of both Close Encounters as well as the various paranoid thrillers of the 70s, but it doesn't tackle them particularly well as much like Sunn's documentaries, it pretends these very silly and unbelievable events are real with complete seriousness.

From the get go the movie makes a terrible impression with an opening Shuttle sequence that has serviceable enough special effects given its low budget, but it's two leads whose credits include serving as a TV host and a supporting role on F Troop make them completely unbelievable for playing astronauts. Their body type in combination with their manner of speaking just feels completely at odds with the characters they're playing and you never find yourself believing who they are. The movie also has a rather flimsy pretext for why this is happening in the first place and the central "cover-up" is built on flimsy logic that doesn't account for preventable outcomes like the two Astronauts wanting to clear their names after being falsely accused. The UFO is also rather disappointing as its size is inconsistent, it's got a flimsy plastic look that looks like stacked storage bins on a disc, and the aliens in side are hairless pale white creatures that are unimaginative and unmemorable.

There's a few decent moments to be had, Robert Vaughn is good as antagonist Gordon Cain, playing a man who's not afraid to get his hands dirty and knows which strings to pull. Darren McGavin is also quite good playing the deputy director of NASA who analyzes the ship as it's stored in the titular Hangar 18, and while the visuals are underwhelming, there is a good sense of mystery and build up that is engaging during the segments inside the hangar. Unfortunately the rest of the movie outside the Hangar is very stock and lacking in engagement as we see Price and Bancroft stumble around Arizona and Texas engaging in a much less interesting investigation than McGavin's in the Hangar.

There's an interesting enough hook to Hangar 18 in showing the workings of how the government would address a UFO crash landing in the United States, and the investigative elements are reasonably okay when focused on Darren McGavin, but the other part of the movie where Price and Bancroft impotently stumble around trying to clear their name and special effects that are both cheap and unimaginative make the movie feel like an ABC movie of the week rather than something to be shown in a theater. It's a solid enough time killer, but you're not missing anything not seeking it out.

I was flipping through, looking for something to watch & I came across this movie.I'm not normally into movies about outer space, UFO's & stuff like that but after seeing all the names that were in it, Gary Collins, Robert Vaughn, Joseph Campanella but most of all, Darren McGavin (Sorry if I forgot anybody else) I knew I had to check it out.Hangar 18 turned out to be pretty good (Kinda makes you wonder, what do they know that they don't want us to know? Know what I'm saying?) It was interesting to see the outside & inside of the ship, everybody trying to figure out how & what made it work, the 2 astronauts who were accused of causing the accident trying to clear their names & the officials doing everything they can to keep the UFO under wraps.The best part of the movie had to be the ending, the twist within a twist.I also read on IMDb that in 1983 Hangar 18 was released under the name Invasion Force which had an alternate ending.I wouldn't mind seeing the alternate ending but if I don't, no bother.Hangar 18 isn't a movie I'd buy but it is worth watching, if you're a fan of extraterrestrial movies or not

This movie is the first "government conspiracy" flicks I ever saw and frankly it spooked me at the time. The story about the accidental encounter with aliens and the consequent cover-up and framing of the astronauts was as eerie as any later X-Files show. Remember this movie came out in 1980, the only other movie with the concept of government cover-ups at the time was Capricorn One. I'm glad it was made in 1980, if it was done today it wouldn't have had the same punch.

Consider some of the flying saucer films we have seen over the years. The occupants speak perfect English, often with American accents to boot.

In this film we never get to see the aliens; they have a kind of Satanic presence. Instead we have a control panel that displays photographs of military and civilian installations, weird hieroglyphics, and a synthesised voice that speaks an unknown language. Now that is much better than a couple of humanoids with detectable Boston accents who carry away chloroformed females to father the next generation when they get them home.

Robert Vaughn sheds his affable Man from UNCLE image and makes a vicious government agent.

This is the only UFO film that I have ever taken seriously.

"Hanger 18" is from Sunn Classic Pictures....a now-defunct studio that brought us some quirky, paranoid films such as "The Outer Space Connection" (a documentary that claimed ancient civilizations were in constant contact with aliens who, apparently, made their cool structures) and "In Search for Noah's Ark". I expected very, very little from a Sunn film...that's for sure. However, the longer I watched the film, the more I realized it wasn't bad at all. Paranoid...yes...bad....no.

The film begins with footage of the space shuttle that looks dated today...but was amazing stuff for 1980. Consider this...years before the creation of Pixar, the film shows a lot of high tech CGI effects of the shuttle. I didn't have any idea how Sunn could afford this. It was only in the end credits where the studio thanked both NASA and Rockwell International....and it's likely they got the footage from them, as studios of the day simply didn't have the money or HUGE computers needed for such graphics. Regardless, it was pretty good footage.

While on a routine mission to deploy a satellite, the satellite accidentally collides with a UFO...and the UFO crashes to the Earth. This portion and the scientific study of the ship...all this was very well done and interesting. But there's another plot...one which seemed too influenced by Watergate...where some presidential aids take control of how to tell...or NOT tell the public. This portion, while interesting in its own way, kept the film from being better...that is until the nice twist ending.

Overall, a solid sci-fi film masquerading as yet another lousy Sunn film. Well worth seeing and highly original.

In 1980 three astronauts in a space station attempt to launch a satellite from space itself. Wouldn't you know it crashes into a UFO and one of the astronauts is killed. And the UFO crashes into New Mexico famous of course as the home of crashed UFOs if you believe some folks.

It's two weeks until the president of the USA is running for re-election and his chief of staff Robert Vaughn decides to stonewall the inquiries as to what is going on. And for reasons I'm still not figuring out he decides that the two surviving astronauts Gary Collins and James Hampton are to be left in the dark.

Some speculative news reports convince Collins and Hampton that they're being set up as the fall guys for their colleague's death and whatever else comes out of this mess. They find out that the UFO is being kept on an abandoned Air Force base in Texas in Hangar 18.

This film was put together with some NASA newsreel footage and some other military films and it looks and is cheap. The players do their best, but the incredulous story line just defeats them.

I will say I liked the ending because it will leave you with all kinds speculative possibilities. My favorite is what would have happened had the UFO crashed in the then Soviet Union.

(Some Spoilers) Not as bad as it looks now some 25 years after it's release. "Hanger 18" is the first major motion picture to bring on the screen the Eric Van Daniken hypothesis from his best selling book "Chariots of the Gods" and the recent, back in 1980, revelations of the mysterious 1947 Roswell crash brought out in the William Moore's UFO classic "The Roswell Incident" and fuses the two subjects together into a movie.

Out in space astronauts Bancroft Price & Gates, Garry Collins James Hampton & J.R Clark, are about to launch a satellite from their space craft when this UFO suddenly appears and hovers over their spaceship. Unable to prevent the launch it goes off and slams into the UFO. The explosion of the satellite cause Gates to be ripped from out of the craft and end up dead. The NASA crew monitoring the launch, back on earth in Huston, catches the entire scene on tape but it's soon deleted, or erased, by orders from higher ups and both Bancroft & Price are implicated in Gates death due to their negligence .

With two weeks before the presidential election President Duncon Tyler's staff headed by Gordon Cain & Frank Lafferty, Robert Vaughn & Joseph Campanella, want the incident to be kept from the public in order not to hurt Tyler's chances for re-election. The UFO that caused all this nervousness in both the White House and the Pentagon wasn't destroyed by the space-crafts satellite it landed safe on earth in Bannon County Arizona with it's two alien pilots, or spacemen, dead of asphyxiation. The news of that amazing fact can well destroy Tyler's chances.

President Tyler made a big issue of his opponent believing in UFO's now just 14 days before the election there's solid evidence that they do exist! With both Bancroft and Price trying to find NASA deputy director and friend Harry Forbes, Darren McGavin, to exonerate them in Gates' death Forbes, and his staff at NASA, are then sent to Wolf AFB in Midland Texas at the facilities Hanger 18 where the UFO is being held.

Not knowing what's happening in the outside world Forbes & Co. were kept in the dark about what was going on with both Bancroft & Price. Forbes and his assistants Paul Bannister, Steven Keats, and Neal Kelso, Andrew Bloch, decipher the alien hieroglyphs and come to the startling conclusion that their not only studying the Human Race but in fact created it tens of thousands of years ago! The aliens may well be the "missing link" between man and ape! Forbes shocked at what he found out astoundingly says of the aliens to his stunned and shocked staff: "Were Their Children!"

Back outside Bancroft & Price who are trying to get to Wolf AFB and Hanger 18 are cased by government agents which results in Price, as well as four agents, getting killed. Finally Bancroft reaching the Wolf military base and getting in touch with Forbes, who found out about what was going on by listening to a radio, and his staff to go pubic with what's been happening at Hanger 18 and how the US government is trying to cover it up.

Feeling that their control of the information about the captured UFO is slipping away from them and that it's only a matter of time before the US, and world, public will know the truth Cain & Co. have a jet, loaded with high explosives, flown into Hanger 18 by remote control in order to destroy the evidence as well as Bancroft Forbes and everyone else in there; planes crash every day a diabolical Cain tells his fellow criminals and future cell-mates.

Cain's scheme is only partly successful because what he didn't count on is that the UFO is not of this earth and thus not subject to the damage that the explosives on the runaway jet plane can do to it. Even more disturbing, to Cain & Co., Forbes Bancroft and Forbes entire NASA staff were in the UFO at the time that the plane crashed into Hanger 18.

Granted that this is an old movie, I still decided to give it a chance because of the story that it is dealing with.

I didn't have any particular high expectations for the movie before I sat down to watch it, and perhaps it was good that I didn't, because this movie wasn't particularly outstanding or entertaining actually. At best it was a less than mediocre movie experience and I doubt that it actually raised much attention even back in the 80s.

The storyline was too generic and predictable to be properly entertaining. And it was frustrating that you could sense whatever was coming a mile away.

The cast were doing an adequate job with their granted roles and characters, but they were fighting an uphill battle.

I managed to sit through "Hangar 18" to the end, and can honestly say that this is not a movie that I will be revisiting.

A Schick Sunn films production, only this takes a different approach; rather than a docudrama style plot, this is more straightforward action thriller, starring Gary Collins and James Hampton as two returning astronauts forced to go on the run after the government decides to cover up a crashed UFO, and the astronauts find that they are expendable...

If the story sounds familiar, it's because it was done already(except that was a hoaxed Mars landing) in "Capricorn One", a far superior film, with better writing and pacing, though director James L. Conway does what he can with the material.

Darren McGavin plays their good friend at NASA who investigates the alien spacecraft, though is not involved in the murder plot, which is idiotic. Some camp value, but still silly.

I saw it when it first premiered on television, Gary Collins was at KPIX in SFO at the time, it was some morning show if I remember right. Several years later I bought the movies on std VHS, it cost 85 dollars then.

The design of the craft itself was just awesome, interestingly that design of the ship is rendered in the architecture of the Yavapai Apache police HQ to an extent. It landed just below the Cliff Castle Casino in Camp Verde Arizona, so to speak.

The website for the casino at one time had a shockwave flash of a shooting star which represents the UFO's lightning speed descent. And it is the Flag-Mother-Ship of all Indian Casino's in the nation.

I am the author of the political strategy that made Indian gaming possible in California. No public declaration to that fact has been made, but I am the author without question.

Well, back to the storyline. I wish there was a sequel to Hanger 18 which begins where it left off, now the remaining surviving scientists aboard the craft had better learn to fly it. The new twist being where to park it, so it can be studied further (If you recall the Designated Landing Areas), The scientists problem has been compounded twofold and must now keep it out of the hands of both the government as well as the aliens who flew it here. If you want to see backyard footage of the real thing flying over Sonora, Calif.

Please go to sonorasightings dot com. Its the multi-lighted one on the start page. What do you think? Doesn't that look like the same pulsating ship and plasma firings similar to the craft in the movie. I did a frame by frame analysis of the video...its all authentic coverage....some frames reveal the modular shape of the pilots tower bridge, other modules, and the square plates around the perimeter of the saucer...very few frames I might add, it was filmed at night and reviewed in presence of witnesses.

Hope its of interest, enough to demand an explanation from our government, how is it "they" can fly at will anywhere including restricted airspace without FAA beacons. And note the plasma or fusion technology modes and behaviors of these various craft.

Also the elections scenario of the movie is akin to the "Four More Years" of the Republican Party Obtained by the first Bush after Reagan's two terms, interestingly enough.

The standard Government cover-up of UFO. If we knew about it too soon it would sway the presidential elections. Part of the containment is to discredit two astronauts Steve Bancroft, Lew Price (Gary Collins, James Hampton) who witnessed the object. If they cannot be discredited, they need to be contained. If not contained, then? What is worse is that it seems that Lew has a real flair for adventure.

Standard conspiracy and obligatory auto chase. They tried to toss in Great Primed theory after it was figured out that people built it and left debris and work records. It sort of puts a damper on the story. Oh no, what about the missing link and where next?

The fun thing is looking at all the old technology of the eighties (some of it was old then). A side benefit is a rather good picture of Big Spring, Texas, where the movie was made. The movie is a good vehicle for TV actors of the time. Putting this film in a time frame the movie "Capricorn One" was made three years earlier. You need to watch this for cultural literacy, but it has lost the original flair and suspense of the time it was made.

Hangar 18 stars Gary Collins as one of three shuttle astronauts who see a UFO in space while attempting to launch a satellite. The satellite hits the ship, killing one of the astronauts. The UFO then crash lands in the Arizona desert where our government picks it up and takes it to Hangar 18 for analysis.

Robert Vaughn, who hasn't looked this good since "Teenage Caveman", plays the White House aide who thinks the government needs to keep Collins away from the UFO since the president's re-election is on the line. Why this is the basis for the plot escapes me. This isn't a conspiracy insomuch as it is a flimsy reason to have car and plane crashes, aliens, and a wild cross-polinization of species theory all in the same movie.

Any government that could let Gary Collins live through an entire movie just has to be full of idiots. Plus, when you have Darren "Carl Kolchak" McGavin studying the aliens, one can only envision Christopher Lloyd getting his inspiration for "Back to the Future", and that's not a good thing.

The sad thing is that the ending of the movie is set up about halfway through. But, the whole movie is like that. You know who's going to die, and when. The movie has plot holes large enough for the Rockettes to dance through.

Sterno says let James Hetfield of Metallica beat this Hangar 18 with his guitar.

You know how you bite into a chocolate candy and expect a nice caramel or nougat center and instead get a mouthful of dates or macadamia nuts, the ones you hate? "Hangar 18" is like that.

I was a young teen when I saw this but was still on a high from "Star Wars". Watching this film, I was excited by the spaceship and all the neat gadgets and doo-dads in the discovered spaceship in that mythical hangar. I was expecting something really phenomenal behind the controls.

The men searching the craft come to the pilot's section and find....

Two overweight guys in black leather and bald heads with glazed-over cat's eyes sitting in leather swivel chairs.

I cannot tell you how huge a letdown that was. Especially for a teenager.

The rest of the movie was nothing more than the government suppressing the information and hunting down the unfortunate men who found the ship, so they won't tell everyone "something is out there...".

I have held a grudge against Sunn International Pictures ever since. How dare them.

TIDBIT - Campanella and Pankin, who appear in "Hangar 18", also starred in "Earthbound", another movie on the same sci-fi tangent released a year later by Sunn International. They must have owed someone BIG TIME.

One star. Trust no one involved in this movie.