This new monthly event will be a FREE showing of lesser known “Flying Saucer Films” with a focus on those that have important points to be made regarding the nature of paranormal, UFO and other anomalous phenomena, as well as society’s cultural reactions to UFO related phenomena.
UFO related phenomena and the Modern Wave of Flying Saucer sightings in the United States have had a lasting effect upon American Popular Culture. For that reason we feel it fitting to host this new event series at the South Austin Popular Culture Center (frmly the South Austin Museum of Popular Culture).
Our next showing is … Invaders From Mars, the 1953 original classic.
“In the 1880’s a budget crunch led the state of Texas to bring convicts in to the area to work the quarry. 8 convicts died while working and were buried in the area known as Convict Hill. These convicts now haunt the road”
Is There Anything Paranormal or Mysterious About Convict Hill Road?
by SMiles Lewis
In early October of 2009 I was contacted by an associate producer for the online webisode series “Streets of Fear” who was wanting to know if I knew anything paranormal or mysterious about Convict Hill Road here in Austin, Texas. The online series is part of the horror lineup of programming offered at Fear Net dot com that focuses on ultra brief media bytes exploring stories of American streets with really spooky names, such as Bloody Pond, White Wolf, Dark Hollow, Widow Susan, Beelzebub, Gore Orphanage, Hell Hollow, Shades of Death, Gallows Hill, Purgatory, Spook Rock, Burnt Church, Witches Rock, Bloods Point, Tombstone Canyon, Mount Misery, Extraterrestrial Highway, and Bloody Spring. They had contacted me after finding my friend James Bankston whose article in the Oak Hill Gazette had gotten their attention.
This new monthly event will be a FREE showing of lesser known “Flying Saucer Films” with a focus on those that have important points to be made regarding the nature of paranormal, UFO and other anomalous phenomena, as well as society’s cultural reactions to UFO related phenomena.
UFO related phenomena and the Modern Wave of Flying Saucer sightings in the United States have had a lasting effect upon American Popular Culture. For that reason we feel it fitting to host this new event series at the South Austin Popular Culture Center (frmly the South Austin Museum of Popular Culture).
Beginning with … Quatermass & the Pit, aka Five Million Years to Earth!
The ufo phenomenon exists in a synergistic cybernetic interface with humanity. Whatever the true nature of UFOs, they interact with us within several different milieus, all of which are influenced by the media and culture. This media and culture in turn feeds back into the phenonomenon in a continuous cycle.If the fantastic fictions of our television and print media can feedback upon and influence our images and ideas of the unknown then we will continue to have a harder and harder time of sorting the wheat from the chaff of non-human intelligences communicating through the ufo encounter.
Therefore it is very important that we look at some of the various ways the subject of UFOs and Aliens have been handled by the film and television industries. Each night’s selection of films delves into these issues areas especially as they relate to that day’s particular event theme.
– SMiles Lewis (circa 2001) 38th annual National UFO Conferencewww.NUFOC.com
Five Million Years To Earth (1967) aka Quatermass & The Pit
By Nigel Kneale
“Was the Devil really a Martian? Could our predatory nature be the result of a eugenics experiment performed on our ancestors by aliens millions of years ago? These are the questions raised after an ancient spaceship is unearthed in the London Underground, and Professor Quatermass must answer them before the world is torn apart in a Martian race war. Based on the popular BBC sci-fi t.v. series.”
For more information on Five Million Years To Earth…
Carpenter’s script assembles elements of his earlier films in a kind of survey; especially Precinct 13’s siege setting and hordes from out of the demimonde, and The Thing’s shapeless, body-claiming alien force. The writing is good, littered with funny lines and highly imaginative contemporary twists on the tale’s origins in the works of Nigel Kneale, to whom Carpenter pays nod-wink homage by billing the screenplay as the work of “Martin Quatermass”.
