Guest blogger: Robert Barrow

The Shortest Distance Between Two Points is a Strange Line:  Reflections Through the Retro Looking Glass 

By Robert Barrow

Science fiction & fantasy films and UFOs. The chicken and the egg. Apples and oranges. Here and there.  This and that. Simplicity and complexity. The known, the unknown. The filmed attraction, the digitalized spectacular. The laws of chance.


Do science fiction and fantasy motion pictures influence one's long-term interest in the UFO phenomenon? I guess so, at least in my case, but that snowball started rolling down the hill of mystery long before my observations of the silver screen. As a very young child in the early fifties, I vaguely remember lounging about in my sister's bedroom, listening to radio serials. A youngster living with a futuristic family on a planet somewhere in the universe was instructed to go outside and bring back "a bucket of air," as apparently oxygen was running out inside the old abode, and the solution merely involved filling a pail from an oxygen well.

Wright King with Johnny Jupiter

By 1954 I was captivated by a TV program and character named Johnny Jupiter. On Sunday afternoons, for a brief run, ABC-TV presented this children’s program featuring, among puppets and human characters, "Reject," a robot that could travel to Earth from Jupiter, rendering itself invisible, and my child's mind remained resolutely spellbound as windows opened and closed by themselves with the entrance or exit of the unseen robot. Johnny Jupiter provided my first encounter with televised science fiction "drama" of sorts. According to a notation at imdb.com, "JJ" even poked a little fun at the concept of 3-D during those early fifties.

An uncle introduced me to astronomy, as well as his telescope and a large library of books about UFOs and the paranormal back in the fifties; the UFO accounts were impressive. I was hooked -- no less so when said uncle took another nephew and I to see The Wizard of Oz at a downtown theater. How I wished I could travel the skies inside the bubble that comfortably encapsulated the "good witch."

As time went on, various sci-fi motion pictures began showing up via the early black-and-white television medium, and even lame drive-in favorites such as The Man From Planet X (1951) and Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957) influenced my interest in possible extraterrestrials as a kid. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) kept me thinking. A Saturday theater matinee (admission tickets cost 35 cents) featuring  This Island Earth (1955) on the big screen was perfect teenage extraterrestrial eye candy, and this and other movies of the era helped foster an appreciation for motion picture soundtrack music.  Forbidden Planet (1957) and integral character Robby the robot (another robot!) fired my imagination.

If UFO intrigue starts in one's youth, as so often appears the case, science fiction novels and movies are aided no less by the existence of NASA and space program adventures. Put all of that together in the sixties and you have the movie, Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964). I recall the warm June day when my final school year hours were counting down, and I rushed to the city in the afternoon to view not only the new motion picture, but also to see starring-role actor Paul Mantee and his co-star, "Mona the Woolly Monkey" live on stage. The studio publicists got it all right -- as I remember, both Mantee and little Mona wore official-looking flight suits, enhancing the otherworldly cinematic atmosphere tremendously as Mantee answered, primarily, teenagers' questions from the audience prior to the film's airing. There they were, actor and monkey, representing Hollywood, NASA, space flight, the mysteries of Mars and the incorporation of Daniel DeFoe's great old novel, transported as it was into the concept of our future in space.  "Crusoe" was touted to have been produced with genuine scientific care and guidance by NASA.

While my interest in real UFO reports stemmed particularly from reading an uncle's literature, there can be little doubt that TV and movie science fiction bolstered my curiosity. However, it might surprise some, even me, to learn that I disliked TV's Star Trek (1966–1969) from the very first episode, and more recently I didn't care much for The X-Files (1993–2002). Nor did I take to Great Britain's UFO TV series (1970–1971), and was stunned almost 30 years after seeing my negative letter about the series printed in TV Guide, when Canadian journalist Mark Phillips tracked me down for an update on my long-forgotten missive, and he actually wrote a few paragraphs about our encounter in a 2006 issue of England's TV Zone.  Nevertheless, I never missed an episode of The Outer Limits, The Invaders or Way Out, shows of similar vintage.

The movie "based on" Keyhoe's book --
Keyhoe was not pleased.

But television networks in the sixties and seventies were offering another kind of programming from time to time -- specials about UFOs. Much of it, intended basically for ratings, wasn't very good. Many American viewers were outraged, for example, when CBS-TV aired UFO:  Friend, Foe or Fantasy (1966), which we now realize had some official backing to insure its extreme and absurd negativity toward the UFO topic. This program instantly acquired the notoriety previously endured by CBS-TV's Armstrong Circle Theater from the fifties, a program I vaguely remember seeing as a child, where UFO investigator Donald E. Keyhoe was cut off when he varied from a carefully rendered "script" regarding UFOs (I met Keyhoe in the sixties, and of special interest to Silver Screen Saucers readers, the 1956 motion picture Earth vs. the Flying Saucers was supposedly based on Keyhoe's book, Flying Saucers From Outer Space, but when Keyhoe realized the film was pure fiction he demanded his name be removed from the credits).

Significantly, the 1960s became sprinkled with excellent and well-witnessed UFO reports. The Socorro, NM (patrolman Lonnie Zamora) case and incidents in Michigan sired newspaper and magazine articles all over the world, and when stories of "alien" abductions began proliferating in the seventies there was no shortage of media coverage (so prevalent were impressive sightings and close encounter incidents that I easily wrote and narrated a UFO-packed news program as a final project for a college class in 1967). By the mid-sixties I was a member of UFO organizations NICAP and APRO, and had developed a rabid fondness for a 1956 under-appreciated documentary motion picture making the rounds on TV stations entitled UFO: The True Story of Flying Saucers. In fact, I would go on to research the movie, following  a four-year enlistment in the U.S. Air Force, believing it to be perhaps the most important motion picture ever produced (my private efforts also helped gain substantial college credit), and eventually wrote several articles about "UFO" and its production background as years went by. I think my interest in the film could be nailed down as a place where I began to consciously or subconsciously blend UFO documentation into that strange, yet revealing world of science fiction movies. In some ways, one became dependent upon the other.

Look, for example, at the movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Fantasy, yes, but based upon actual UFO reports, so much so that even former U.S. Air Force UFO consultant Dr. J. Allen Hynek accepted a walk-on role (he told me, as I recall, that he was paid about 800 dollars for the effort).

Robert Barrow's article (above) appeared
in Spielberg's Close Encounters (1977)

For me, however, the motion picture had another meaning. A friend who saw the spectacle before I alerted me that one of my Argosy UFO magazine (now defunct) articles had been used as a prop in Spielberg's epic. Sure enough, among a brief shot of the main character's collection of UFO news clippings is a black page with a large white circle and the term “UFO” displayed inside.  This was the title page for my 1977 piece, "How to Conduct Yourself Inside a UFO."  The article itself was forgettable, yet its inclusion did impact me.  I've often joked that Spielberg owes me (more likely the Argosy UFO art department) residuals for its use, but at a deeper level I felt peculiarly rattled that my speculative article regarding the real UFO phenomenon had been subjugated into the realm of cinematic fantasy, creating a blurred image of something taken out of place.  My writing, to be honest, isn't "deep" and I'm just a regular guy (um. . .), and that particular article was probably one of my worst, but suddenly I saw my work -- though, yes, pleasantly surprised about its inclusion -- transformed into pop art for the sake of theater popcorn munchers. There's a joke in there somewhere.

Of course, along with Close Encounters and Star Wars, the extraterrestrial theme in movies and television yet flows endlessly from the cinematic spigot.

If you happen to be more "into" science fiction and fantasy movies than the ubiquitous UFO arena, it has probably gone unnoticed that many of the private UFO investigators, researchers and organizations have passed into history, and even the dramatic UFO encounters, hallmarks of the fifties, sixties and seventies, seem to have diminished greatly, at least publicly. Maybe some of this involves the fact that all manner of conventional but weird-looking objects fly overhead now, and fewer people bother looking skyward beyond the personal digital devices which routinely entrap one's attention on par with a scene from the original movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers; except I-pods, not malicious extraterrestrial pods, might be the culprit. Perhaps a plethora of sci-fi movies have helped transform societal views toward UFOs into one giant yawn. Inversely, there are too many "gee whiz" people who unassumingly make flying saucers out of every light in the sky, and they don't help the search for truth in any way. Some science fiction movie fans love the concepts on screen, but wouldn't entertain UFO documentation for a second. 

Forty years ago I regularly received lengthy letters from a man on the West Coast who swore that "satellites" controlled his every move. Sounded crazy then… but today, who knows?

Because, for some odd reason, inquiring minds usually associate UFO researchers with extraterrestrials, we are often asked our opinions about our future in space. What do I know, I'm no astrophysicist. However, as I get older my enthusiasm for the space program drifts back to us as an entity. I believe it's very likely we came from some other place, and I sometimes wonder why we wish to go back "out there." Yes, we humans have the urge to explore, but will the space program, whatever its ultimate face, simply end up taking us around in a circle? Maybe the recent controversy about faster-than-light travel will result in exploratory methods yet undreamt so we can find out the ugly truth before, sadly, we disappear as a species, so some other critter can have a chance to be number one on Darwin's (or Charles Fort's) heaping piles of temporary conquest. 

But no, I'm the wrong person to consult in regard to such questions. Far better to ask the experts, and since there don't seem to be a lot of those around, more is the pity that it's far too late to direct all extraterrestrial inquiries to Johnny Jupiter and his pal, Reject the robot. In the meantime, UFO sightings will continue, movies about UFOs will endure, and -- you know what? I really should close now so I can go outside, watch for falling satellites and, not to forget, grab a bucket of air. I'm fresh out.

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Robert Barrow became actively interested in UFOs as a Central NY teenager in 1963. He went on to become a member of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) in 1964 and a field investigator for the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) in 1965, and joined with organizations such as the Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained (SITU) and the International Fortean Organization (INFO). He is a past member of the International Platform Association. In his early research years, Barrow wrote and received replies about UFOs from political figures such as Gerald Ford when he was House minority leader, Sen. Robert Kennedy and Sen. Everett Dirksen.

Barrow's first local newspaper letter-to-the-editor about UFOs appeared in local newspapers in 1965, with many more to come over the years, along with numerous regional radio and TV interviews.

Barrow enlisted in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam Era, from 1968-72, where he was trained as a medic and then as a physical therapy specialist, a critical field which produced only about 30 graduating airmen a year. Following education at the Air Force Medical Service School, he served at the large Sheppard Air Force Base hospital in Texas, and for the last 1 1/4 years of service Barrow operated his own independent duty physical therapy clinic at Moody AFB, Georgia, a pilot training base.

While stationed in Texas in 1970, Barrow wrote an article, eventually printed in The A.P.R.O. Bulletin (Mar-Apr 1971 issue) following scientific review, regarding the possibility that some UFOs may utilize ultrasonics as part of their function. He developed this theory based upon his observations and use of ultrasound to treat clinic patients. 

In 1976, Barrow entered the world of national magazines when his expanded article on the UFO ultrasound theory appeared in the May issue of Official UFO. For the remainder of the 1970s his articles continued to appear in Official UFO, Argosy Magazine's Argosy UFO and True Magazine's True Flying Saucers & UFOs Quarterly.

Barrow's articles and media reviews since the 1970s have appeared in Pursuit, journal of the Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained, the UFO Research Newsletter, and, more recently, in the International UFO Reporter, journal of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies. 

Also in the late seventies, Barrow created and taught several sessions of one of the USA's first (non-credit) courses about UFOs at Onondaga Community College, Syracuse, NY.  He called it "UFOs:  An Introduction."

In recent years, Barrow has donated numerous reel-to-reel and cassette recordings re UFOs to Wendy Connors' Faded Discs project (New Mexico), her goal being the rescue, digitalization and preservation for posterity important UFO-related broadcasts, government interviews and case reports.

Barrow’s primary wish at this point is to encourage interest in the 1956 United Artists documentary motion picture, "U.F.O." He has written extensively about this rather obscure film and it is his firm conclusion that "U.F.O." may one day come to be seen the most important movie ever made.

A few of Barrow's older articles, recent web posts and items related to him may be found via his blogs: http://robert-barrow.blogspot.com/ and http://ufothemovie.blogspot.com/