Close Encounter of the First Kind – Sighting of a UFO. Close Encounter of the Second Kind – Physical Evidence. Close Encounter of the Third Kind – Contact. WE ARE NOT ALONE! That was the tagline that greeted movie goers on the poster to this 1977 spectacular. Sure the effects are dated, but most of them still look great and Richard Dreyfus is perfectly cast and really draws you in on this one. I think you all have probably seen this one, and if not you should se it as it is a major piece of American Cinema History. Really a seminal film in our film history. The name is based on the UFO contact system proposed by J. Allen Hynek in his 1972 book The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry, which makes a Close Encounter of the Third Kind an encounter with an actual extra terrestrial. The Blu-Ray disc shows some major grain in this film with some shots being exceptionally bad, though the blacks are great (really my favorite thing about blu-ray). This disc also includes all 3 versions of the film, the 1977 theatrical, the 1980 special edition, which was cut down, but had the ending added where Neary enters the Alien spaceship (which is the one I remember from childhood) and the version most consider the best (including me) the 1997 director’s cut, which excises the entering of the spaceship, and retightens the film. You can even watch wichever version with visual notices that tell you if the scene is original, or about where it was in other versions, which is pretty cool, though a bit distracting overall.

Government officials along with Claude Lacombe (Francois Truffaut) and the cartologist, hired to translate french David Laughlin (Bob Balaban)are discovering Physical evidence all over the world, missing World War 2 planes and old boats in perfect condition in places that they should not be. And in America a bunch of UFO sittings are occurring. A power line worker named Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) sees the lights in the sky, getting a heavy sunburn, having an experience much like Gillian Guiler (Melinda Dillon) and her son Barry (Cary Guffey). Neary’s life changes and he becomes obsessed with sculpting some shape, much to the chagrin of his wife Ronnie (Teri Garr).

REVIEW CONTAIN SPOILERS…

Roy really starts losing it, and starts ripping his lawn apart, and throwing it into his house, to make a huge sculpture, driving Ronnie an the kids away. He ends up building a huge sculpture of a mountain, then he sees on TV, that where there has been a huge supposed chemical spill, they have closed off Devil’s Tower, which is exactly what he has been sculpting and he heads there, drawn for some reason.

Of course people are trying to get out, and he finds Gillian, whose son Barry was taken by the Aliens, and they get gas masks and head towards Devil’s Tower cross country, but are eventually taken by the military, and interviewed by Lacombe and Laughlin. They and other artists have showed up with visions of Devil’s Tower. Lacombe wants them to stay, but the military refuses. Roy takes off his gas mask and gets Gillian to, and with another guy escapes. The military follows, but only gets the guy, and Gillian and Roy find the base on the other side, which the government has set up to great the aliens.

The Aliens arrive, and let off people they have picked up, and Roy goes down. Gillian getting back her son Barry. Lacombe argues for Roy, who they get in uniform and send him off with the Aliens, and the small Aliens come out and take him into the ship as they leave, making contact of the third kind, which Roy being in the lead, as the Aliens lead him into the spaceship

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Really an amazing film, and it shows how good of a filmmaker that Spielberg really is. With a perfect score, and perfect tension building. Sure many of the effects are dated, and something looks to be wrong with the grain structure (I wonder if something was wrong with the negative and they used an inter positive or something), still the best home version I have seen.