Fire in the Sky

A film based on an event said to have happened in Arizona. 1975. Five logging workers driving home in the evening see a light in the forest. Travis gets out of the truck and approaches. The others see him thrown to the ground, panic and drive off. When they come back he is gone. The town does not believe them. The five are accused of murder: there is no body, but the story they tell is not one anyone will accept. Polygraph tests are run, the questioning continues and the friendships fall apart. Five days later Travis reappears and cannot say what happened. Most of the film is built on not being believed. The narrative does not argue over whether the event was real; it describes what the men went through in the town. The section near the end is what it is most cited for: what Travis remembers is shown, and the sequence is counted among the most disturbing horror passages of its period. The source is Travis Walton's book; the case is still argued about in America. D. B. Sweeney plays Travis and Robert Patrick the crew boss. Craig Sheffer and James Garner are in the cast. Robert Lieberman directed. An interesting production for anyone who likes science fiction and mysteries drawn from real events. For a viewer expecting a classical alien film, it proceeds largely as a small-town drama.