Before Disclosure Day, there was the 1980 conspiracy thriller Hangar 18

Its direction isn’t Spielberg-level, but there’s lots of fun to be had with Hangar 18 – a UFO conspiracy thriller in the vein of Disclosure Day. NB: The following contains a few spoilers for 1980’s Hangar 18 if you care about such things. No spoilers for Disclosure Day, though. Disclosure Day may have the starry ... Before Disclosure Day, there was the 1980 conspiracy thriller Hangar 18

Its direction isn’t Spielberg-level, but there’s lots of fun to be had with Hangar 18 – a UFO conspiracy thriller in the vein of Disclosure Day.

NB: The following contains a few spoilers for 1980’s Hangar 18 if you care about such things. No spoilers for Disclosure Day, though.

Disclosure Day may have the starry cast and the most famous living director at the helm, but one thing it doesn’t have is a decapitated astronaut. 

Armed with the knowledge that you need to grab your audience’s attention early, the 1980 sci-fi thriller Hangar 18 begins with a space mission that goes horribly awry – leading to one member of the team literally losing their head when an unidentified flying object flies uncomfortably close to a NASA space shuttle.

That opening death is all the more startling given that it comes mere minutes after a rather sombre introduction. A lengthy slab of text implies that everything we’re about to see is genuine – or at least based on real testimonials from people who want to blow the whistle on secret government projects:

In spite of official denials, rumours have continued to surface about what the government has been concealing from the public at a secret Air Force hangar. 

But now, with the help of a few brave eyewitnesses who have stepped forward to share their knowledge of these events, the story can finally be told.

That preamble is about as trustworthy as the one that kicked off Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in 1972 (“The film which you are about to see is an account of the tragedy which befel a group of five youths…”). Then again, Hangar 18 is essentially a compendium of other hits from the same decade: it has the astronauts-on-the-run conspiracy thriller feel of Capricorn One, plus the alien contact sci-fi theme of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. 

Directed by James L Conway (a prolific maker of TV shows including MacGyver and multiple flavours of Star Trek), the film was produced by Sunn Classic Pictures. It was seemingly designed to expand on a string of ‘documentaries’ it was making at the time, such as The Outer Space Connection and In Search Of Noah’s Ark, which had been highly profitable for the company in the 1970s. (As was its hit TV series, The Life And Times Of Grizzly Adams.)

Although released in cinemas, Hangar 18 looks to modern eyes uncannily like a TV show of the vintage. But beneath the cheap sets and variable acting, there’s a hugely entertaining story here – one that serves as a charming companion piece to Spielberg’s new flying saucer movie.

The rather superannuated-looking crew of a NASA space shuttle are in the middle of a satellite launch when a mysterious object shows up on mission control’s radar. The satellite and object accidentally collide, destroying the former and sending the latter hurtling off on a deadly tangent. Veteran astronaut Judd Gates (JR Clark) ends up with his detached head spinning comically through space, while the alien object veers towards Earth and crashes in Arizona.

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In the aftermath, the US government tries to cover up the whole incident. The crashed craft is recovered and spirited back to the titular hangar for further investigation. Sitting in a wood-panelled office, a cold-hearted bureaucrat played by Robert Vaughn explains that there’s an election coming up, and the last thing the President needs is a UFO flap to stir up the populace. The two remaining astronauts from the NASA mission – Lew Price (James Hampton) and Steven Bancroft (Gary Collins) are therefore kept under lock and key in order to prevent them blabbing.

Afterwards, Hangar 18’s plot breaks into three strands. There’s the scientific effort to poke and probe at the recovered alien craft, led by NASA director Harry Forbes (Darren McGavin). There’s Robert Vaughn’s attempts to keep the incident covered up. Then there’s Steven and Lou, a likeable buddy pairing if ever there was one, who bust out of containment and try to find out what happened to the ship that turned their mission on its head.

The alien research parts are thoroughly charming. Production designer Paul Staheli clearly didn’t have much of a budget to realise the ship itself – the exterior looks like a combination of a jelly mould and a vintage hi-fi. The interior, on the other hand, is a captivating piece of retro-futurism – like Knightrider’s KITT, it’s all grids of light-up buttons and acres of matt black vinyl. It even comes with what looks uncannily like a widescreen TV. Posh.

As a team of scientists continue their somewhat clumsy investigative work, they discover that the aliens have been doing their own field study – samples aboard their ship include a dead armadillo and a screaming blonde woman. And if the aliens themselves – now deceased following a chemical leak – look uncannily human, that’s because they’re genetically related to us. 

It’s the kind of plot point that stretches back to Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass And The Pit, was likely pilfered wholesale by Erich Von Daniken for his hugely influential ‘ancient aliens’ tome Chariots Of The Gods?, and later cribbed by Ridley Scott for 2012’s Prometheus. Weirdly, the aliens in Hangar 18 are essentially pale bald guys, just like Scott’s Engineers. 

The whole story draws on the same Ufology lore that Spielberg would recognise; there have been rumours that the US military has flying saucers and aliens hidden away somewhere for almost 80 years. The Hangar 18 title appears to be drawn from the now-debunked claims of one Robert Spencer Carr, a pulp fiction writer who claimed in 1974 that the US Air Force had recovered 12 alien specimens and their craft. All of it hidden in – you guessed it – Hangar 18 on an air base in Ohio.

Hangar 18 (the film) is terrific fun, obviously, especially with Kolchak veteran Darren McGavin’s acting – which achieves almost Shatner levels of cheese and ham – to accompany it all. The parts involving Lew and Steven are even better. In another echo of the above-mentioned Disclosure Day, they head on a high-speed hunt for the truth, closely pursued by murderous government stooges in black cars. 

The ensuing fights aren’t exactly Hollywood blockbuster material, admittedly, but Lew and Steven have a nice line in banter, and their adventure peaks with a surprisingly gripping set-piece involving a moving petrol tanker and several sticks of dynamite. 

Like Disclosure Day, Hangar 18 is a conspiracy thriller in the typical 70s mode – though the film’s makers can’t seem to decide whether to go for an upbeat conclusion or a downbeat one. With what feels suspiciously like an editorial decision made at the last minute, a closing voiceover suggests that the truth about crashed flying saucers and government cover-ups had finally been revealed.

Back in 1974, Robert Carr had insisted that the US government was about to end the cover-up of recovered aliens and ships. Instead, those flying saucers remained stubbornly lodged in a hangar somewhere, and Carr’s claims was dismissed as a hoaxer who’d read too many sci-fi novels. Over 50 years on, we appear to be no closer to a real disclosure day – and that’s assuming there really is anything alien-shaped to disclose. 

Still, at least we have movies as enjoyably daft as Hangar 18 to keep us company while we wait.

Hangar 18 is on Prime Video in the UK, but it’s also on YouTube if you do a bit of hunting. The truth* is out there.

* Lots of fun nonsense.