The McPherson Tape
It was on Saturday 8th October 1983 that the Van Heese family gathered at Ma’s mountainside ranch, back together for the first time since Michael left for college and returning with a girlfriend to introduce to his brothers, Renee, and a videocamera, documenting the reunion and his niece Michelle’s fifth birthday, a timely power cut making the candles seem to burn all the brighter.
Unable to restore the electricity and with the telephone also down, the brothers set out to the neighbouring home but instead found a strange sight which they believed to be a landed spaceship, the three diminutive occupants seen at its base also spotting them and following them back through the forest where the brothers locked the doors and armed themselves, the women understandably anxious at their behaviour.
A found-footage straight to video feature originally released in 1989, a decade before the sub-genre was popularised by The Last Broadcast and The Blair Witch Project, it is easy to see why The McPherson Tape, also known as U.F.O. Abduction, did not set the world alight in a similar fashion, written and directed by Dean Alioto who also remains largely unseen behind the camera as Michael and continues his fascination with alien encounters making credulous documentaries on the subject, the ubiquity of cameras in modern life having yet to document evidence.
With Tommy Giavocchini, Patrick Kelley, Christine Staple and Laura Tomas as the Van Heeses, Eric, Jason, Jamie and Michelle, alongside Stacey Shulman as Renee Reynolds and Kay Parten, Ginny Kleker and Rose Schneider as the three aliens, it is Shirly McCalla’s Ma who is apparently the only one with a lick of sense, her sons concerned about her drinking since the death of their father but smarter than the rest of them put together, though that is not saying much.
Released four years before The X-Files put the uncanny in vogue and prefiguring the format which would be largely adopted by the genre, The McPherson Tape – a strange title as there is no character bearing that name – is consciously amateur, poorly shot, poorly lit, presented as a single take with no editing and with any coherent plot forgotten, the early family dinner dynamic of overlapping voices and friendly barbs entertaining but displaced by directionless panic after an initial observation which barely qualifies as a close encounter.
The family shouting, swearing and shooting blindly at shapes in the dark rather than considering the situation and forming a plan, The McPherson Tape is both found footage and science fiction horror at its worst, a disappointing lowest common denominator scrape of the barrel notwithstanding its position as one of the first films to present such, the slow motion crawl of the end credits possibly in deference to the reading ability of the intended audience.
The McPherson Tape will be streaming on the Arrow platform from Friday 26th September
