The Filmography of James Fox: A Retrospective - Part 2: Out of the Blue
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Instead, the film spends a lot (a bit too much) of time exploring the extraterrestrial hypothesis and theoretical methods of interstellar travel. To me the inclusion of things like the Drake Equation and the discussion of the theory of relativity in regards to space travel seems like an innocent and misguided attempt to add to the film's credibility. Certainly I find the information to be fascinating and (to my knowledge) accurate, but it's definitely jumping the gun: we need to find out if these things are even real before we speculate what they are and where they came from. Given the time the film was released, though, I think this is relatively forgivable. For a very long time the ET hypothesis was nearly inseparable from the subject; I think only recently have people opened up to other theories—or, more simply, realized that it's useless trying to speculate over the origin of the phenomenon. In other words: I can see why, at the time, Mr. Fox and crew thought it was important to cover that information.
Unfortunately, I do think it takes up valuable time from the meat of the film, both eyewitness accounts and history lessons. What's there is top notch, however. The history feels a lot more relevant here than it did in 50 Years of Denial, covering things like Foo Fighters, the "great wave" of 1947 culminating in the Roswell Incident, and finishing off with the Twining Memo. This leads nicely into the film's exploration into claims of a cover-up by the US government, for which the argument is significantly stronger than it was in Denial.
Prior to my most recent viewing for this article, it had been a while since I had seen the film; I was shocked that a lot of the cases in Out of the Blue are also covered in The Phenomenon. This is not a critique of that film at all. On the contrary, I was aware of a few of the stories in The Phenomenon and impressed with how much new information there was; I also didn't realize that my knowledge of them originated from Out of the Blue. It is very much a beta version of The Phenomenon and a solid companion piece for serious researchers.
That said, The Phenomenon is probably the superior source when it comes to events like Gordon Cooper's UFO landing story at Edwards Air Force Base, Lt. Robert Jacobs' story about a UFO firing a laser at a nuclear missile, and one of my personal favorite tales: the Malmstrom nuclear missile incident. The two standout cases covered in Out of the Blue and (from what I recall) absent from The Phenomenon are the ever persistent and incredibly convincing Bentwaters/Rendalsham case and the most famous mass UFO sighting, the Phoenix Lights.
As I discussed in the preface of this series, Out of the Blue was once the holy grail of UFO documentaries to my father and I, who were desperately searching for a way to watch it prior to its availability on streaming platforms. This was due in part to our dissatisfaction with other UFO films, in particular the 2005 documentary "The Phoenix Lights", directed by Lynne Kitei. We felt it did not do justice in portraying the significance of the 1997 event and wasted time on irrelevant stories that were completely unrelated to the Phoenix incident.
In contrast, Out of the Blue does a great job covering The Phoenix Lights. It's one of my personal favorite UFO cases, but also one whose truth has been further obfuscated by the swaths of misinformation and speculation. Out of the Blue simply presents the witness reports without trying to force them into a timeline. It paints a clear picture of relatively credible observers who witnessed a massive, black, wedge-shaped craft flying low and slow over the region. Fox avoids any discussion of the later, more widely-publicized "second event" that most definitely were flares, which I believe were dropped in response to the first in an attempt to discredit the witnesses. The later explanations of airplanes in formation simply do not hold up against the consistency of the witness descriptions that described an absolutely massive object. Especially with the inclusion of Governor Fife Symington's testimony, Out of the Blue makes a very simple, but very strong case for the reality of the 1997 Phoenix incident without delving too much into the muddy details.
The film's best quality is also it's biggest weakness. It contains general overviews of so many subjects, it begins to feel cluttered and scattershot. Unlike The Phenomenon, I don't think Out of the Blue is particularly accessible to the general public or skeptics, especially now that the presentation is a bit dated. Newcomers and those with a general interest will find the film valuable, but I can see many getting bored or uninterested as the film lacks a cohesive narrative.
What will probably be more interesting to them is the photographic and video evidence presented in the film. Some of it has been debunked (I think I saw a Billy Meier beamship in there) but it also contains some of my favorite videos: the wobbling silver disk flying behind buildings in Mexico City and an early digital film shot in the UK by Rod Dickinson in 1998. I've always found those videos particularly compelling and definitely saw them for the first time in Out of the Blue.
So, while it is a mixed bag for the general public, I think the film is an invaluable resource and, in my opinion, a piece of history that every UFO researcher should sit down and watch at least once. On top of that, it represents the solid base that James Fox would continue to improve upon in I Know What I Saw and The Phenomenon.
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