Last month I watched The Phenomenon, a recent documentary that premiered Oct 6th, 2020. It's been a long while since I've seen a good UFO documentary. This is what UFO and alien believers needed. I highly recommend The Phenomenon. The film is directed by James Fox, who is also known for his UFO documentaries of the past like, I Know What I Saw and Out Of The Blue, and narrated by Peter Coyote, the actor that played Keys in E.T. (and also narrates my favorite Ken Burns’ documentaries!) The documentary outlines most of my favorite UFO encounters throughout modern history, with the exception of Travis Walton's Fire In The Sky. I don't remember it going over that story, but all my other favorites were there. Stories that I have covered here on Saucer Time such as the Malmstrom Air Force base nuclear missile launch shut down, the Rendlesham Air force base encounter, the classic Roswell crash, and probably one of my all-time favorites, the alien close encounter eyewitnesses of the Ariel elementary school in Zimbabwe. (I do apologize if you follow some of the links attached and the Youtube videos are no longer available. That happens so often with the UFO subject matter, but I leave the links there as a reminder of how often they get taken down. I wonder if it is to continue to hide the best evidence out there, or if it's just copyrights and coincidence.)
The Phenomenon also has snippets of interviews with retired government officials, astronauts, policemen, and pilots, sharing their encounters with unexplained aircraft. There's nothing fictional about this documentary. Just the straight facts from people who would know best. I was most impressed with the Major Jesse Marcel interview. Marcel was a Major in the army in 1947. He was called to the scene when the UFO crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. A few days later, Marcel was directed by the government to pose for the media with a damaged weather balloon to cover up what had really happened. I had never seen him speak about it all in front of a camera before, I only read interviews, but in this rare, more current, footage, Marcel casually explains that there wasn't much to it. Just a crashed UFO with unexplained material and then later a cover-up for the media. Another fascinating part of this film was when scientist Jacques Vallee had a test conducted on some tiny pieces of debris retrieved from UFO wreckage. It wasn't clear which wreckage, however, the debris turned out to be made of, what I would personally describe as, "home-made" elements. Meaning, the extraterrestrial engineers took known natural elementals, deconstructed them, and then put them together to make up new ones. The alchemy that our scientists are still trying to figure out how to do today. I also give props to The Phenomenon for catching up with the students of Ariel elementary. They are all about my age now, in their 30's and seeing them speak about their encounter was as if they had witnessed it just yesterday. They still all seemed so astonished, shocked, and confused by what they saw. They still described the UFOs or spaceships in the same way they did 30 years ago and also the description of the aliens they saw had not changed either. Big, black, eyes, and big heads are forever engraved in their minds. Although this documentary doesn't go into great detail on each incident it covers, that would be simply impossible due to the fact that there are so many details and information within each story, it still covers them all in a timely matter that keeps the viewer glued to the screen and excited to learn more. The Phenomenon is enjoyable for everyone, from the UFO subject matter newcomers to the old research pros... like myself :^)