Very Cool!!!

Too much about the plot just didn't add up, the writing was bad, some of the scenes were cringey and awkward,

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Astronauts Steve Bancroft (a solid performance by Gary Collins) and Lew Price (the always affable James Hampton) witness a spaceship collide with a satellite while doing a routine mission in space. The ship crash lands on Earth and gets stashed at an Air Force base in Texas to be checked out. Moreover, several government officials led by slimy politico Gordon Cain (Robert Vaughn in peak reptilian form) decide to hush everything up and blame the whole incident on Steve and Lew.Director James L. Conway, working from a silly script by Steve Thornley, treats the entertainingly inane premise with endearing seriousness and keeps the enjoyably asinine story moving along at a snappy pace. The priceless tin-eared dialogue ("There are airplane crashes every day. Even at military bases"), hokey (not so) special effects (the aliens turn out to be a couple of fat bald guys!), crazy speculations about human evolution, the ridiculous conspiracy plot (the rationale for the cover-up is because it's an election year and any news about alien life could somehow jeopardize the president's chances of being reelected!), and questionable science all add to this movie's considerable kitschy appeal.The bang-up cast do an ace job of keeping straight faces: Darren McGavin as hearty NASA head honcho Harry Forbes, Joseph Campenella as Cain's sinister partner Frank Lafferty, Tom Hallick as the stalwart Phil Cameron, Pamela Bellwood as sensitive physician Sarah Michaels, Steven Keats as scruffy doctor Paul Bannister, Cliff Osmond as the skeptical Sheriff Barlow, and William Schallert as the helpful Professor Mills. Stuart Pankin supplies hilarious unintentional comic relief as excitable local yokel Sam Tate. Paul Hipp's slick cinematography provides a pleasing polished look. The spirited score by John Cacavas hits the stirring spot. A real campy hoot.

In 1980 three astronauts in a space station attempt to launch a satellite from space itself. Wouldn't you know it crashes into a UFO and one of the astronauts is killed. And the UFO crashes into New Mexico famous of course as the home of crashed UFOs if you believe some folks. It's two weeks until the president of the USA is running for re-election and his chief of staff Robert Vaughn decides to stonewall the inquiries as to what is going on. And for reasons I'm still not figuring out he decides that the two surviving astronauts Gary Collins and James Hampton are to be left in the dark. Some speculative news reports convince Collins and Hampton that they're being set up as the fall guys for their colleague's death and whatever else comes out of this mess. They find out that the UFO is being kept on an abandoned Air Force base in Texas in Hangar 18.This film was put together with some NASA newsreel footage and some other military films and it looks and is cheap. The players do their best, but the incredulous story line just defeats them. I will say I liked the ending because it will leave you with all kinds speculative possibilities. My favorite is what would have happened had the UFO crashed in the then Soviet Union.

Low-grade, but slightly riveting slow-going conspiracy-laced government cover-up thriller that sees an UFO colliding with an American satellite being launched in space and then crash-landing in the Arizona desert. To hide the truth because of an election campaign, the astronauts are blamed for the incident which saw one of their colleagues killed. So the two men go about trying to find out the truth which the government officials would do anything to keep it a secret, while studying what they have just found.The clunky story goes about three separate parts; that of the astronauts trying to clear their names (this is when the action kicks into gear --- "Come on we got to get that rock."), the political big-heads villainously scheming (doing things behind closed doors) and then you got the NASA scientists trying to learn from their alien discovery. While ambitious in context, it just seems too simple and cautious in its presentation (a telemovie of the week feel) but it does stick to its strengths. The whole novelty of the discovery of the flying saucer and its occupants is interesting (theories are chucked around), if at times a little disappointing. A good cast is assembled. Gary Collins and James Hampton are sturdy as the two astronauts. Darrin McGavin chips in with a bright performance as the NASA official in charge of the project in investigating their new spacecraft toy and Robert Vaughn in a weasel performance heads the dirty tactics.

Hilarious early 80s cheese fest, worthy of the MST3K treatment that this masterpiece garnered. I watched this in the early days of cable so it has a certain nostalgia; it truly is amazing how these brilliant and tiny number of scientists can swiftly interpret the data at hand to come up with staggering conclusions to reshape mankind as we know it. Truly stupendous. A must for conspiracy theorists and fans of ultra cheesy sci fi. As movie critic Leonard Maltin stated: "Clickly made, but about as credible as the three stooges in outer space." I loved that line. As for the movie, it has a spot on my list of guilty pleasures.