Alright y’all—I don’t have a ton of history with Fire in the Sky...but hopefully enough to fill out an entire paragraph. We’ll see how I do! This film was released in March of 1993 and I never even considered going to see it in theaters. As much as I loved the Cutting Edge, I wasn’t about to leave my home just to watch a D.B. Sweeney movie, you dig? I see here on the internet that it was released on the same day as Chris Rock’s N.W.A. parody CB4 and I’m thinking that I definitely maybe went to see that one instead. “Sweat from My Balls!?” That’s some funny shit...if you’re a 14 year-old boy...which I totally was the year CB4 came out. Flash forward to the fall of ‘93: I’m at the video store with my dad and Fire in the Sky is the hot new flick in the New Release section so I thought “that’ll be just fine.” My dad had a date on the books that night and asked if I’d be cool kicking it solo until just around bedtime. I told him “no sweat! Have fun at the Golden Temple but go easy on the Mai Tai’s. Old Rudy at the bar pours a stiff one! What happened next was--my dad left me home alone and I watched Fire in the Sky and it scared the living shit out of me. Like...turning on every single light in the house and stabbing in closets and under beds with a steak knife-type scared. Fire in the Sky is based on a book called The Travis Walton Experience, which is kind of like the Jimi Hendrix Experience but with 100% less guitar solos. It’s about a guy named, you know, Travis Walton, who claims to have been abducted by aliens in 1975. It’s basically 105 minutes of surprisingly suspenseless small town kidnapping drama with a five minute alien abduction sequence that is pants shittingly scary. What I didn’t know...COULD NOT have known back then...is that this story is complete and utter bullshit. The reason I didn’t know this is that the front of the VHS box says that the film is “Based on a True Story.” And what reason would I have to doubt the good people at Paramount Pictures?? Do I even believe in aliens? Well..the guy from Blink-182 says they exist soooo. Since I was currently residing in the information-less void that was the early 90’s I had no way to follow up on this purported true story! It was 9 PM on a Tuesday night! I couldn’t exactly ride my Huffy to the Library and ask them to pull the microfiche on the Travis Walton incident. What was I gonna do? Call the movie studio? Yeah hi--this is Danny Tebo over in Worcester MA. I see here it says Fire in the Sky is based on a true story. I mean...IS IT????” I made a phone call alright...but it was to the Golden Temple, where I had them interrupt my dad mid crab rangoon with news of an emergency at home. Imagine his delight upon returning home and learning that the emergency involved his high school-aged son’s suddenly crippling fear of alien abduction!
Anyway, what happens in the movie is this: we open deep in the forest in a part of Arizona that is totally Oregon (I guess it was cheaper to film there or whatever) The “real” events happened in an Arizona town called Snowflake, which is also what my extended family members started calling me in 2018. . But yeah...we see that there’s some sort of creepy glowing something up on the mountain. After the opening credits roll, a pickup truck suddenly rockets down the mountain in clear distress. We know this because it keeps crashing into trees that a pickup truck that wasn’t isn’t in distress would simply not crash into. I’m thinking this driver is either shitfaced or trying to outrun a spaceship. Either way! The truck eventually reaches surface roads and pulls into Snowflake’s diner/roadhouse/gas station. Six Stephen Dorff cosplayers emerge from the truck, none of which, and this came as a complete shock to me, are Stephen Dorff! I really thought he was in this movie! You know who IS in this movie, though—the liquid Terminator! That’s right—the T-1000, born one Robert Hammond Patrick Jr. Patrick is Mike Rogers, head logger. He leads his logging crew into the bar, where they get a frosty reception. I DID notice that they sat themselves, which is a dick move. Maybe they should’ve checked with the hostess? A waitress approaches and informs this 6-top of harried beardos that the kitchen has closed for the night. Mike says “ahh...don’t have a late night menu with some sliders on it? Or perhaps some deviled eggs?” Just kidding...this place has a kitchen?? We get a good look at his crew and see that it includes middling actor-turned middling director of middling Mark Wahlberg movies Peter Berg. Oh, and also Henry Thomas. That’s right—friggin’ Elliott from ET!! He’s in this! Rounding out the gang is Tough Guy Drifter and Guy Who Looks Like Stephen Dorff but is somehow Not Stephen Dorff. Mike asks the fellas if they’re prepared to stick to their (not true) story and they say they’re all in. The law is summoned and quickly arrives in the form of the legendary James Garner! Bret Maverick himself, y’all! He’s some sort of super cop...the head cop of all cops...and he has zero unsolved mysteries on his CV, which cannot be possible. Dude is like 70! He meets up with Sheriff Blake, who is played by the guy who played the bad guy in The Last Boy Scout. I’m looking at these good old boys in their cowboy hats and bolo ties and thinking this town is probably a terrible place to be if you are not a white person. Then I think that maybe that’s just the 2021 in me OPE!!!—the deputy just used the term “wetback.” I hate it when I’m right. Garner approaches the lumberjack dudes and is like “what the do?” Mike says he’ll explain everything in flashback form and that it will take up roughly one third of the movie. Garner says he’s cool with that ...and away we go!
We turn the calendar way back to 5 days earlier, when Travis Walton (Da Bomb Sweeney) was still an unabducted, starry-eyed 18 year-old...tooling around Snowflake on his motorcycle, doffing his cap at his fellow townsfolk. (Note: Sweeney was 32 when they made this movie, which is a much bigger number than 18). Travis heads over to see Mike, who looks like he has aged about 30 years in the two years since Terminator 2. Mike has both wife and cash flow troubles but Travis is all “I got the answer right here, buddy boy!” He pulls a crumpled sheet of paper out of his jacket pocket with a doodle of an auto body shop on it. “Look Mikey! It’s our future: M&T Auto Body! You’re Mike and I’m Travis…...M&T...GET IT!?” I don’t know if this dude was abducted by aliens or not but he’s a friggin’ branding genius! Mike is unimpressed. He’s like “you and your cockamamie ideas...” Before he can finish that thought, Travis is already shimmying up Mike’s trellis like the damn Night Stalker. He climbs into the window that has the young lady sleeping just inside of it and wakes her up and makes kissy faces at her and is this MIKE’S DAUGHTER!?? Oh wait...it’s just his sister! I guess that’s a little less gross?? Mike and Travis hop in Mike's pickup and roll out to pick up the dudes from the earlier part of the movie. Turns out the fellas are part of a crew tasked with clearing out some forest or whatever...and they don’t much care for each other! Tough Guy Drifter plays his boombox too loud, annoying the piss out of Peter Berg. Henry Thomas buries his nose in a copy of the National Enquirer, prolly trying to see what his old pal the extra terrestrial is up to. Not Stephen Dorff doesn’t have many lines but he DOES sport some bomb ass vintage rock tees (Aerosmith, Fleetwood Mac, etc). Later, at the work site, Travis and Tough Guy Drifter exchange words and almost fight...with their CHAINSAWS! Mostly, though, they just putz around and listen to Black Water by the Doobie Brothers. You know what song I do not like? Black Water by The Doobie Brothers. Travis keeps needling Mike about starting a business and starting a camping trip and starting a marriage with Mike’s little sister. We get it...this Travis kid is just overflowing with earnest incredibleness. Mike doesn’t seem to think so. Tells Travis that he’s a spazz and that he isn’t ready for marriage. Travis says that he GET TO THE FUCKIN’ ALIENS ALREADY!! Jesus.
The fellas finally knock off around sundown and are making their way down the mountain when they spot what appears to be a fire (in the SKY!!). They’re all “it’s a fire...no! It’s the sunset! No...it’s a plane crash!” Henry Thomas is like “ummm...this looks eerily familiar to me.” He doesn’t actually say that but he should have! Help these dudes understand, Elliott! Someone suggests finding an alternate route but Mike says there’s only one way down the mountain and it goes straight through the what have you! They pull around a bend and, sure enough, it's a friggin’ spaceship. A flying saucer! Or, a hovering saucer, anyway. Mike is about to put the pedal through the floorboard but Travis leaps right out of the truck to say what’s up. He really is a box of Frosted Flakes, this kid. Tough Guy Drifter says “let’s leave this son of a bitch here if he wants to be an asshole!” And you know? I don’t disagree with him! All a’ sudden a brilliant white beam emanates from the ship and enshrouds Travis. The beam lifts him about five feet in the air and tosses him gently to the ground. Back in the truck, the guys start to scream “oh no! He’s DEAD!!” Umm...based on WHAT!? I’ve seen people take steeper falls from swing sets and walk away unscathed. If you’re through giving me your amateur medical opinions, why don’t one of you ding dongs go take a dude’s pulse?? Nope—they hit the gas and leave their mildly concussed buddy for alien feed. They stop about halfway down the mountain and have a five minute argument about whether or not they should go back and get Travis. They ultimately decide the best course of action is to try to make it to that roadhouse before the kitchen closes. And I already done told you how that worked out!!
So now we jump forward to the present day in 1975, where Mike has just finished telling James Garner the story that I just finished telling you, but with less curse words. He’s thoroughly unimpressed. He’s like “right so y’all killed your buddy and are blaming it on aliens? Maybe you aren’t familiar with my work on the Rockford Files but I know a shit burger when I hear one.” Garner sends the fellas home for the night and tells Sheriff Roscoe that he’s confident they’ll find Travis’s murdered corpse in a ditch by daybreak. Mike has to go home and face both his wife AND his little sister, who is suddenly shit out of boyfriends. They’re all “so, where is he, Mike?” and Mike is all “aliens took him” and they’re all “really tho—WHERE IS HE, MIKE??” And mike is all “fucked if I know!” By the time the sun rises the next day, the entire GD town is out combing the hills for Travis (and they ain’t found shit!). Travis’s brother Dan shows up HOT and tries to murder Mike and his entire crew. Not Stephen Dorff and Peter Berg search the deepest reaches of the woods, where they run into the Indian from the Doors movie. “Must be from the Indian reservation nearby!” says Not Stephen Dorff. Maybe the native folk know something about the UFO’s. Nope, he’s never seen or spoken of again! Eventually, everyone is drawn to a commotion in the clearing where Travis was knocked on his ass. A cadaver-sniffing dog has picked up on something and soon the local lawmen are yanking bones out of a shallow grave while people wail “it’s him...it’s Travis!!” Ummm...he has been gone, what, 12 hours?? That would be some record decomposition. But yeah...no...it’s a dead dog or some shit.
Travis stays gone for five whole days and things go from ridiculous to quite ridiculous. A team of UFO experts show up and insist that “some of us out there know the truth,” which sounds suspiciously close to the tagline of an extraordinarily popular sci-fi show that premiered six months after this movie (and also occasionally featured Robert Patrick!). The town is suddenly overrun with camera wielding Asians...because Asians love photographing aliens? This movie: kinda racist! Mike’s wife continues to disbelieve him and sends him off to live at the local fleabag. Tough Guy Drifter splits the scene to live in a shanty town and drink cerveza with the local Mexicans. The remaining crew members are no longer an official crew as they’ve been justifiably fired for going viral with their alien abduction story. No easy task in 1975! They’re instant pariahs on the streets of Snowflake. Can’t even get a cup of joe down at the greasy. People continue to ask them what happened to Travis and they continue to insist that they don’t know. You know what they DO NOT talk about? The fuckin’ spaceship!! Aliens! Brilliant beams of light! The incident is only alluded to in the vaguest of terms. It’s always “We all saw what happened....there was a thing...it happened.” Not exactly a geyser of exculpatory evidence there, fellas. Eventually the town calls the sort of town meeting that only happens in the movies. You know—where people are in the middle of a heated discussion and then the main character shows up and interrupts the proceedings by dragging his nails across a chalkboard and saying “y’all know me?” That’s more or less what happens here. Everyone is all “Mike killed Travis!” but then Mike shows up and all “y’all know me! I couldn’t have killed Travis! He’s right over there!” Seriously though—the actual Travis Walton is an extra in this scene. Mike says that he and his buds will take a polygraph the following morning...so that’s what they do. The lie detector man tells the fellas that their results were inconclusive...only to turn around and tell Jimmy Garner the fellas were telling the truth because “my lie detector don’t lie.” Garner looks like he wants to fold the lie detector guy in half like a book.
Later that night, Mike is hanging at his freshly estranged wife’s crib when he receives a collect call....from TRAVIS WALTON!!! Of course he’ll accept the charges!! Mike loads his family into the truck and they roll out to search for Travis. They finally find him six towns over...hiding next to an ice machine outside of a General Store. Naked. And dude is SPUN! Doesn’t even know his own name. Maybe someone kidnapped him and forced him to snort crystal meth for 5 days straight...just like that London twin who wasn’t in Dazed and Confused! Mike is all “hey Travis—it’s me! Mikey! From M&T motors!” Travis stumbles into the loo and drinks his weight in rusty faucet water. Instead of calling the police, Mike calls the UFO guys, who are just a bunch of tactless motherfuckers, man. They bust into the John and turn on the bright lights and shove a microphone in Travis’s face and bombard him with questions like “what did the aliens smell like? Did they touch ya butt??” Travis passes out. He wakes up in the hospital a short time later and finds Mike is at his bedside. “We sure did miss ya, buddy” Mike says. Travis is still pretty sore about the fact that Mike left him for dead when he was very clearly NOT DEAD! He tells Mike as much. Mike calls him a son of a bitch and storms out of the hospital. The other guys from the forest crew show up the next day with meatball subs and cans of pop and Foghat 45’s and they reminisce...OH WAIT...I mean the other guys from the crew are NEVER SEEN AGAIN!! Peter Berg...Elliott...Not Stephen Dorff? Their time in this movie has concluded. Weak.
Travis is discharged from the hospital after a day or so but his brian is still scrambled eggs. All that pizazz he had earlier in the movie? Gone! The sparkle in his eye? Completely snuffed out. He isn’t out of the sickhouse but five minutes before folks start hounding him for autographs. He can’t walk the streets of Snowflake without turning heads. He’s like John Travolta in Phenomenon ‘cept he can’t move shit with his mind. Not to my knowledge, anyway. James Garner observes Travis’s overnight transition into local celebrity with thinly veiled disgust. He approaches Travis to ask him where he spent the last 5 days. Travis says he doesn’t know. Garner tells him he hopes “it” was worth it. I mean...this dude was just on Joe Rogan’s podcast this year...in 2021...so it was clearly worth SOMETHING! Despite the fact that Travis can’t do anything but zombie around the house mumbling to himself, his family decides to throw him a “welcome back to planet earth” rager. A crowd of well wishers gather at the Walton residence and fill their glasses with punch and snack on crudite..but our man Travis? He slinks off and hides under the kitchen table, which is a total party foul (unless you’re on a shit ton of drugs, anyway). Someone knocks over a bottle of syrup, which runs off the edge of the table and lands in Travis’s eye. Could happen! This errant dab of Hungry Jack sends Travis into some sort of fugue state and it’s TIME FOR THE SCARY SPACESHIP SEQUENCE!!!!
Travis wakes up in a cocoon filled with hundreds of gallons of off-green slime. He’s either back in the womb or locked in a disassembled set from the recently defunct Nickelodeon show You Can’t Do That on Television. Travis peels his way out of his pod, only to find that he’s aboard a spacecraft! We know this because there is no gravity (note: but there IS oxygen? I have questions). Travis tries his damndest to get his weightless bearings but accidentally crashes into another pod, where he finds a half-eaten human person!! Gah!! And they only ate the bottom half!! DOUBLE GAH! Now, Travis starts furiously searching for an escape hatch or emergency exit or one of those giant yellow Ripley Power Loaders. Travis floats down into some sort of control room where, sure enough, he discovers a couple of aliens. And you know---they look just like everyone thinks that aliens look like. Not 80’s movie buddy aliens. The slenderman-looking dudes with the football-shaped heads and the huge eyes. They appear to be, I don’t know, napping or something. Maybe charging their batteries for the night? Travis inexplicably kicks one of the aliens in the face, awakening the ACTUAL alien inside. I guess these stereotypical alien shells were just sleeping bag decoys! The REAL aliens look like Geroge Hamilton’s nutsack...and they look PISSED! They grab this Travis motherfucker and throw him on a gurney...and they are NOT gentle about it! They rush him into the surgery theater, strip him down to his bare ass, and cover him in a heavy duty latex sheet that binds his body to the operating table. They cut him a mouth hole so he can breathe but then they start shoving fistfulls of green jello down his throat. Did they think to ask him if he’s vegan!? There’s shaved horse hooves in jello, man! Oh, it gets worse! Once he’s full of gelatin, they grab a metal sink snake and run it so far down his throat it comes out his asshole! (Note: I may be exaggerating that last part. It’s a real possibility, though). And then...AND THEN they put one of those Clockwork Orange contraptions on his face. You know, the ones that force your eyelids open?? They don’t show him any alien pornography, though. They fill his poor defenseless eye socket with a warm white liquid. If my man Trav isn’t already praying for sudden death, he’ll sure as shit start once he sees the aliens pull out a needle that’s about ten feet long! The needle starts to descend toward Travis’s open eye...slowly...slowly...slowly...and then….AND THEN NOTHING!!! That’s it!! Travis just wakes up back in Snowflake all “yeah, I still don’t really know what happened!” While all of this is going on, Sheriff Beauregard is razzing James Garner for failing to definitely solve the case. “I guess your undefeated streak finally came to an end, eh Mav?” James Garner says that Travis Walton is a goddamn fucking liar and that his streak is well intact, thank you very much. He also says that he’s had about enough of acting in this stupid ass movie and promptly jumps in his car and drives away. Goodbye, James Garner.
We jump ahead to 1977, where Travis has grown a mohawk and pierced his nose and started listening to the Sex Pistols. Seriously though, he’s still living in Snowflake. He’s married to Mike’s sister and they already have two kids. Mike, however, was so traumatized by the whole alien incident that he grew a beard, moved to a cabin in the mountains, and became a recluse. Hasn’t spoken to his now ex-wife or children or anyone else in almost three years. But the guy who claims to have been gagged half to death by space creatures for five days can still ride around town with his head held high?? Doesn’t seem fair! The other guys from the crew are all….still absent from the movie. No further info on them. Sorry. Travis drives up to visit Mike, who seems less than enthused to see him. Mike is all “what you been up to? Anything?” And Travis is all “well, I have kids...with ya sister.” Mike grunts. He eventually apologizes for leaving Travis to be diddled by aliens. Travis says that it’s his fault as he should not have exited the truck. They hug it out. Beef: squashed. They decide to drive up to the site of the abduction just ‘cuz. Mike wonders aloud if the aliens might return. Travis laughs and says “I don’t think they’ll be back...I don’t think they like me!’ Well HA HA HA then,eh? Nice to see it isn’t too soon to sit back and goof on this whole alien abduction thing. The movie ends...but the credits inform us that ALL of the men from the crew passed lie detector tests (caps theirs). Which is crazy when you consider that they were all fuckin’ LYING!!
I’ll conclude by telling you that I randomly watched an entire Netflix documentary about Travis Walton two months ago that was so memorable that I already can’t remember any of it. I guess I’ll say that, if you actually believe in aliens, you’ll probably still find this dude’s story bullshitty. There’s a theory that they faked the alien abduction to get out of their foresting contract (why not just cut off a fingert? I guess that sort of thing wouldn’t necessarily keep you in the news for 50 years though, would it?). He also received $5000 from the National Enquirer for “Best Alien Abduction Story of the Year.” You could buy a lot of 8-tracks with 5k back in ‘75, kids. I personally believe that polygraph tests are about as accurate as Magic 8 Balls but it’s worth noting that Travis Walton took another lie detector test on live television in 2005 and his results made OJ Simpson look like Geroge Washington. I think what galls me most about this movie and it's paralyzing effect on me back in 1993 is that, while Walton does indeed tell a story about being abducted by aliens, nothing in his story bears ANY resemblance to the events depicted in Fire in the Sky! He remembers being on a ship...kind of! And lying on a table...of some sort! But dude--he never claimed that aliens lubed up his esophagus with lime jello and ran a metal pipe through his large intestine. That was all purely fabricated to terrify gullible 14 year-old kids with underdeveloped bullshit detectors. Thanks a lot, jerks. The end.