Wavelength (1983)

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

An unemployed musician and his psychic girlfriend stumble on a government conspiracy involving experiments on child-like aliens in this sci-fi themed paranoia thriller from 'China Syndrome' screenwriter Mike Gray. The film is powered through by a perfectly brooding Tangerine Dream music score and haunting sound effects and Robert Carradine makes for a sympathetic lead. The choice to have young boys play the decades-old aliens works very well too; there are some great sequences in which they travel through the city with childhood wonderment in their eyes and yet adult restraint, content to just observe. The midsection of the film is nevertheless rather weak as focus turns away from Carradine and the aliens to focus on government figures debating what to do. This departure serves a purpose as it highlights how there are no real antagonists in the tale: all the government want to do is learn about these creatures and prevent panic in the general public, however, the government figures never make for interesting characters. The film also has some irksome narration to begin with but thankfully this soon disappears. 'Wavelength' might not be a perfect motion picture, but it is very well crafted as far as low to medium budget science fiction films go, and its descent into obscurity over the years is sad but understandable. Critics of the film are all too eager to jump on its similarities to 'E.T.' and 'Starman', but this is a film that deserves to be judged on its own terms - especially since it was written before 'E.T.' and released before 'Starman' came out!

Tangerine Dream soundtrack, as always, leaves the movie feeling dreamy and surreal.One of the few films about secret alien bases and experiments that is watchable. The acting and dialogue is top notch. Keenan Wynn makes an appearance and is excellent as usual.The film all feels like it takes place in a single night and into the following day. It blends together many different science fiction motifs fairly well and tries hard on a small budget to be convincing. It's nice to watch a movie that isn't dumbed down.Seems to be a kind of holdout from the seventies psychedelic head flicks in some ways. It has that reformed hippie quality about it.

***Spoilers*** Low budget "E-T" like movie even though it was written years before the film "E-T" was even in production the movie "Wavelength" has to do with a trio of captured aliens who's space craft was blown out of the sky over the Mojave Desert by a super secret US military laser device. The three alien spacemen, named by the scientists and military who are examining of them, Gamma Beta & Delta, Dov Young Josh Oreck & Christian Morris, are put on ice in a secret military installation, that been out of operation since the end of WWII,in the Hollywood Hills.It's when the ultra sensitive to both whale dolphin and alien brainwaves Iris Longacer, Cherie Corrie, picks up the alien spacemen, who look like pre-teenage boys, cries for help that she gets her boyfriend down in the dumps rock guitarist Bobby Sinclair, Robert Carradine, to help her find them. It takes a while but with the help of desert prospector and former military construction contractor Dan, Keean Wynn, the aliens are tracked down to the long abandoned military installation that the US military is keeping them locked up, in cold storage, in.With both Iris & Bobby captured by the Army M.P's as their caught snooping around the secret military installation those in charge of the place get panic stricken in that the the truth about he aliens and their future plans for the human race will become public.***SPOILERS*** Not knowing what to do with Iris & Bobby their put in the same room where the aliens, Gamma Beta & Delta, are being kept in what looks like a combination of iron lungs and food storage freezers. This idiotic decision, by the military brass, to put both Iris & Bobby in the same secret room with the frozen alien turns into a disaster with Bobby freeing the aliens who then take off with him and Iris, with the help of local Navajo Indians, first for L.A and then to the Mojave Desert. It's there that in the wide open desert the aliens are soon to be contacted by their mother ship who's to take them back home from they came from in the far flung milky way Galaxy.In the final few minutes of the movie the aliens mother ship, that looks like a giant beach-ball, pops up out of nowhere in the middle of the Mojave Desert and after holding of a squadron of USAF fighter planes, by scaring he US Air Force pilots half to death, takes the now freed aliens from their captors, the US Military, safe on board. As for both Iris & Bobby as well as Dan the old prospector their allowed to go free in the US Government and its military leaders knowing full well that if they try to make their incredible experience public no one, not even their friends and family members, would ever believe them!

If you get a chance to see this movie at all, then understand that WAVELENGTH is reversely similar to E.T. Remember, I said REVERSELY! The first half bores and does not hold my interest. Stick around much longer and maybe you'll enjoy the rest of it. Here's where E.T. is the other way around, as two young people flee the underground research facility with real live aliens, but this looks utterly corny for an 80s sci-fi picture at a time when acting was becoming more improved than the drive-in heydays. The film's climax and conclusion is where your interest wanes once again, meaning you've wasted too much valuable time enjoying a mediocre movie. It has a nice, well thought out idea, but that's not enough when you had an upcoming release that tried to prove superiority over an already big blockbuster movie like E.T.