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Fire in the Sky (1993) is Still Haunting, Decades Later

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No, Fire in the Sky (1993) is not a horror movie. Despite this, the abduction sequence towards the end of the film is still one of, if not the most terrifying depictions of an alien abduction ever filmed. Adding to the terror is the fact that the film is supposedly based on true events. Forget the cuddly little guy in E.T. – if this is what meeting an extraterrestrial is like, I’ll pass.

Fire in the Sky takes place in Snowflake, Arizona, in November 1975. It is there that a group of loggers reportedly saw an unidentified flying object while leaving the job site on November 5th. Walton, played in the film by D. B. Sweeney, gets out of the truck to look while the rest of the crew remains inside. After a bright light knocks the man down, the rest of the crew, lead by Walton’s best friend, Mike Rogers (Robert Patrick, who played the T-1000 in Terminator 2), flee the scene. After they call the authorities to report the incident, Mike and his crew come under scrutiny from both police and the town.

Directed by Robert Lieberman, much of the film plays out like a straightforward drama film. But once we get a glimpse aboard the ship that supposedly abducted Walton, things take a turn for the horrific. You can view the scene below, courtesy of Fandango Movieclips.

Walton, who made it back from the journey in one piece, went on to write an account of his abduction. Originally titled The Walton Experience, the book was redistributed as Fire in the Sky to promote the film. It was originally released in 1978. Many UFO enthusiasts consider it to be one of the best first-hand accounts of an alien experience ever written.

On Travis Walton’s website, he provides a snippet of the incident from his book. Upon being abducted, Walton writes about his experience on the strange UFO:

I looked past the upper edge of the device. I could see the blurry figures of the doctors, leaning over me with their white masks and caps. They were wearing unusual, orange-colored surgical gowns. I could not make out their faces clearly.

Abruptly my vision cleared. The sudden horror of what I saw rocked me as I realized that I was definitely not in a hospital.

I was looking squarely into the face of a horrible creature! It looked steadily back at me with huge, luminous brown eyes the size of quarters.

I looked frantically around me. There were three of them! I struck out at the two on my right, hitting one with the back of my arm, knocking it into the other one. My swing was more of a push than a blow, I was so weakened. The one I touched felt soft through the cloth of its garment. The muscles of its puny physique yielded with a sponginess that was more like fat than sinew.

Travis Walton, The Walton Experience, 1978

The truth of the account is up for you to interpret. Many consider it nothing more than a hoax for financial gain. Others believe it to be a reliable account of a real abduction. Me? Well, I’m not one to judge. I don’t know if it actually happened or not – and frankly, it doesn’t make a difference to me. What does matter it that the movie is awesome. It’s a great drama with one seriously terrifying and memorable sequence. The depiction of Walton’s experience in Lieberman’s movie remains haunting; it’s been powerful enough to give anyone with even an inkling of belief in the extraterrestrial nightmares for the past 25 years.

For those interested, the film is currently streaming on Netflix in the United States.

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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