Top 10 Alien Movies That Were Based on True Events
#10: “Hangar 18” (1980)
The most well-known UFO encounter in history, ever since a mysterious object crashed to Earth near Roswell, New Mexico, it’s captured the public’s attention. This movie was inspired by the government cover-up rumors that have surrounded Roswell for decades, featuring a crew of astronauts whose shuttle crashes into a UFO. The astronauts are scapegoated for an unfortunate incident and it’s down to them, the only ones truly suspicious of the Air Force’s story, to solve the mystery of the titular Hangar 18. Hangar 18 itself is a nickname for a USAF building in an Ohio base – the east coast’s answer to the southwest’s Area 51.
#9: “Hangar 10” (2014)
Dubbed the “British Roswell,” the Rendlesham Forest UFO Incident is possibly the most famous alien encounter in the United Kingdom. Over a few nights at the end of December 1980, personnel at an American airbase in England encountered a bizarre UFO in Rendlesham Forest – something now commemorated in the forest by a sculpture of a spaceship. The movie is found footage and follows a group of friends who uncover evidence of aliens in the woods, set years after the original UFO incident. Unfortunately, it was very poorly received and compared unfavorably to “The Blair Witch Project” – but it’s still based on an interesting story.
#8: “Alien Autopsy” (2006)
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In 1995, after decades of speculation about Roswell, a strange film surfaced that claimed to be a genuine recording of an alien autopsy conducted on a specimen from the crash. Ultimately, the creator revealed it was a hoax, but it also inspired a movie of its own all about how and why the convincing fake was actually made. This is a little-known British comedy starring one of the UK’s most popular entertainment duos, Ant & Dec - as well as America’s Bill Pullman - and it definitely brings the laughs. After all, it must have been a pretty bizarre experience to conduct an autopsy on a fake alien and makes fertile ground for comedy.
#7: “The Mothman Prophecies” (2002)
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Richard Gere stars in this movie dramatizing the 1967 collapse of the Silver Bridge in Pleasant Point, West Virginia. Fans of the supernatural will know that the mysterious bridge collapse, which led to the deaths of over forty people, has been widely attributed to an entity called “the Mothman” in American legend. So the story goes, the Mothman was sighted in and around Point Pleasant in the lead up to the bridge collapse and was supposedly spotted on the bridge itself. Mothman is now a major part of modern UFO mythology, with many believing that the strange creature was extraterrestrial in origin. If you’re interested in the legend, this is one of the best movies to watch.
#6: “The Blob” (1958)
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Yes, it’s true, 1958’s “The Blob” may actually have a kernel of truth inside its amorphous antagonist. The movie follows the growth of an alien entity that absorbs and destroys various towns in rural Pennsylvania, becoming a threat to America. But it’s been claimed that the film is based on a real event when two cops came across an extraterrestrial ooze that had fallen from the sky just outside Philadelphia in 1950. The “ooze” disappeared overnight according to the witnesses and it’s never been explained. Though, if it had grown to the size of a building and wiped out entire towns, it would certainly be a more well-known story.
#5: “District 9” (2009)
Unlike other alien movies based on true events, “District 9” isn’t based on any UFO myth; it’s actually a very clear and very well-done allegory for apartheid in South Africa. An enormous, alien ship lands above Johannesburg, and eventually the insectoid aliens within – referred to diminutively as “prawns” – end up living in ghettos as second-class citizens. Apartheid in South Africa is still a fresh memory for a great many people since it didn’t end until the 1990s despite ongoing action from the United Nations; this was less than twenty years before “District 9” was released. Specifically, it’s about the forcible relocation of Black South Africans to a slum in the 60s.
#4: “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” (2008)
Though this movie is often mocked for its over-the-top ridiculousness, just like the other “Indiana Jones” movies, it does some things from real life. It opens with the Soviets searching Area 51 for an alien corpse from the Roswell Incident, with Indy explaining that he was actually drafted in to investigate Roswell back in 1947. The crystal skulls are also the core MacGuffin, and though all the crystal skulls have been debunked as hoaxes, they are still real objects that are striking to look at – and fake or not, they’re now a legitimate part of modern history. And of course, the Maya did build stunning cities – though they almost certainly didn’t commune with aliens.
#3: “Battle: Los Angeles” (2011)
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In 1942, the USA had just entered the Second World War following Imperial Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the previous December. The Battle of Los Angeles was a strange UFO incident where anti-aircraft guns and defenses were activated to fight against an incoming threat, believed to be the Japanese air force once again. The problem was that it wasn’t an attack from Japan at all – in fact, the USAF claimed that it was a misidentified weather balloon, a story nobody believes. This has led to speculation that the incident was, in fact, an attack from alien spacecraft, and that there was a subsequent cover-up by the American authorities. That’s the line this Aaron Eckhart vehicle takes.
#2: “Communion” (1989)
The strange events “Communion” was based on only became widely known because of the movie; the supposedly true events portrayed actually happened to the movie’s writer, Whitley Strieber, who also wrote a novel about them. Christopher Walken’s character even shares Strieber’s name; he decided not to come up with a different one. Strieber claimed to have been plagued by unusual dreams until eventually being visited by a UFO, events which haunt him in his sleeping life. He finally undergoes hypnosis and regains his lost “memories” of the abduction, echoing many similar UFO abduction tales from the twentieth century, though it seems the aliens don’t want to hurt him.
#1: “Fire in the Sky” (1993)
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Travis Walton is another alien abductee, who disappeared for five days in Arizona in 1975 while working as a logger. A large manhunt was unable to find him until he mysteriously reappeared at a roadside, after being returned to Earth by his captors. He wrote a book about the experience which was made into a movie fifteen years on, “Fire in the Sky,” which shows Walton’s experience aboard an alien spacecraft. However, the real-life case is plagued by controversy, largely because Walton and the additional loggers he was with – though they only claimed to have seen the ship rather than been abducted by it – claimed a cash reward for the year’s best UFO sighting.
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