Eyes Behind the Stars (1978)

Released in 1978, Eyes Behind the Stars would, at first glance, appear to be an Italian rip off of Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  The Italian film, though, is ultimately far more interested in the paranoid conspiracies and alleged government cover ups which surround the whole UFO phenomena, than it is with the alien visitors themselves.  Indeed, there are are times when the aliens seem almost incidental to film's main plot, with the main threat to the protagonists coming from the secret international organisation seeking to suppress knowledge of the aliens from the public.  That the film runs through just about every trope of UFO conspiracies - alien abductions, government cover ups, men in black, secret medical institutions treating victims of abduction, suppression of physical evidence, such as photos, by the authorities - should hardly be surprising, as director Mario Gariazzio, (credited as Roy Garrett), was something of a UFO enthusiast himself.  In fact,the film's opening credits claim that 'Garrett' is some kind of internationally renowned expert in the field, an obvious ploy to try and lend the film an air of credibility.

The film starts intriguingly enough, a photographer and his model on a photoshoot in the countryside notice a mysterious lack of birdsong or animal life in the area they have chosen as a location and get the feeling that they are being watched.  Upon developing the film the photographer finds that, in the background can be seen several alien figures.  Returning alone to the location, after dark, he starts to take more photos but ends up fleeing from the aliens, eventually taking refuge in a remote house.  The aliens, nonetheless abduct him, and leave the householder and his dog for dead.  The model, investigating the photographer's disappearance, returns to the original location, only to vanish herself.  These disappearances bring the photographer's friend, a journalist played by Robert Hoffmann into the investigation.  Along with his assistant (Nathalie Delon) and a UFO expert (Victor Valente), he finds that the occupant of the house that the photographer had tried to shelter in had suffered a massive (and fatal) dose of radiation, as have several soldiers left to guard the landing site of the flying saucer (it left a scorched circle behind it in the grass).  After finding the photographer's negatives (the photos had vanished, taken by the aliens), he finds himself warned off by his police inspector friend (Martin Balsam), who explains that the investigation is now in the hands of 'The Silencers', a secret international organisation whose mission is to cover up evidence of UFOs, by suppressing evidence and, where necessary, eliminating witnesses.

Needless to say, 'The Silencers' are the archetypal 'men in black' - the mission the result of global governments' fears that not only would there be mass panic if the public knew the truth about alien visitations, but also that such knowledge might provoke conflict with the much more advanced aliens.  Consequently, Hoffman, Delon and Valente find themselves under threat from both aliens and 'The Silencers', both of whom want their evidence suppressed.  To complicate matters, someone close to them is clearly collaborating with 'The Silencers' and the abducted model suddenly reappears, only to be whisked off to a secret medical installation guarded by 'The Silencers'.  The film then dissolves into a welter of shoot outs and chases, before shuddering to an abrupt ending which leaves many questions and plot points unanswered.  It isn't, however, surprising, as the film's relentless focus on an increasingly paranoid conspiracy plot, rather than unravelling the enigma of the alien's themselves, to move the story along ultimately leaves it with nowhere to go other than a perfunctory and down beat climax.  (In doing so, it also rather undermines its central conceit that UFO visitations are real and should be investigated, as it has just spent ninety minutes showing us that such investigations are doomed to failure).

While Eyes Behind the Stars is by no means a bad movie, it is beset by multiple problems, most notably its lack of pace and a lack of clarity in its story-telling.  The latter isn't helped by a poorly structured script, which, at the beginning, provides too many false starts (the various disappeared characters, the police investigation, for example, none of which lead us far into the plot, frustrating the viewer and destroying any sense of a story-telling rhythm).  Many scenes seem too brightly lit, robbing them of atmosphere, while the aliens themselves are unimpressively realised - they are just guys in one piece suits, with darkened full-face visors who fly spaceships with plain white interiors and control panels with toggle switches.  That said, it does have its good points - the model work for the saucers is, for its era, pretty well done.  Moreover, while the aliens, when we see them, might look impressive, their intrusions into characters' homes and workplaces are filmed first-person, almost like the killer in a giallo movie when they stalk a victim.  These sequences, with their accompaniment of discordant electronic music, do manage to create tension and a strange, dislocated, atmosphere.  The opening photoshoot and the photographer's return to the site are also well handled, conjuring a feeling of first unease, then outright terror, while the subsequent siege at the house is also well filmed, with something of the feel of similar sequences in Italian zombie films, as an unseen menace lurks outside before trying to force entry.

The weirdest aspect of the film (and the one most dislocating to English-speaking audiences) isn't immediately apparent.  I must have been a good twenty minutes into the film before I realised that it was meant to be set in the UK.  I suppose that I should have been tipped off by the fact that the photographer bears more than a passing resemblance to David Hemmings in Blow Up and by some of the character names, but there is absolutely no attempt to make its settings look British, they are clearly  Italian.  Most of the vehicles seen are left hand drive (even the UK manufactured ones). none have anything that remotely resemble UK registration plates and it seems that, in 1978, lots of people in the UK drove large American cars.  The architecture of the buildings seen is predominantly of an obviously Mediterranean style, while are simply no visual cues (newspapers, road signs or the like which indicate that we are in the UK).  To be fair, they get the RAF uniforms more or less right, but there is no rank of 'General' in the RAF (the equivalent is 'Air Marshal') as indicated on a desktop nameplate and the soldiers wear generic-looking uniforms and carry Beretta sub machine guns, (in reality,a t this time, they would have had L1A1 Self Loading Rifles).  Bizarrely, well known US character actor Martin Balsam finds himself dubbed with a North of England accent - also, if he is a police inspector, then why is the building he has his office in marked 'Security Service' (the official name of MI5, which doesn't advertise its presence on the buildings it occupies)?  If nothing else, the clearly fake setting rather undermines the film's earlier attempts to establish its credibility.

Which begs the question, of course, as to why the makers didn't simply set it in Italy, as it is so obviously filmed there?   The obvious answer it that, as the film wasn't primarily intended for UK audiences, it really didn't matter that the setting had been obviously faked.  Most of those watching it would never have visited the UK and would have no idea what it looked like. The fact that the version I saw had an English dub is irrelevant - such versions were often not intended for UK or US release, they were 'international' versions destined for markets too small to justify a dub in their own language but where English was spoken enough that, with the aid of locally applied sub-titles, audiences would be able to understand them.  (Where non-English language films are bought for UK or US distribution, the distributors will often prepare their own dubbed version).  The use of a UK setting would also allow the film to be marketed in such territories as a British or US production, which might make it more attractive than an Italian production.  Moreover, like many Italian exploitation films of the era, Eyes Behind the Stars would also seek to disguise its local origins for the domestic audience - there was traditionally a prejudice against locally made genre movies, with Italian audiences preferring the US or British product.  Consequently, such films would Anglicise the names of its stars and directors, feature imported British and American actors, or even film outside of Italy (by the eighties, the Philippines had become a popular location, along with Sri Lanka, Indonesia and even Florida), to disguise their true origins.  Of course, by the time audiences sat down to watch them and realised that they were Italian films, it was too late, they had already fallen for these ploys and paid their money at the box-office. 

What I do find curious about Eyes Behind the Stars is that, unlike just about any other seventies continental film with a British setting that I've seen, it doesn't even include any stock establishing shots of things like the Houses of Parliament to indicate its supposed location.  (In Spanish exploitation films, such shots are often, strangely, accompanied by Scottish bagpipes).  Whatever the reason for this omission, it does add to the film's overall sense of dislocation and strangeness - you can't help but feel that you've fallen into some parallel universe which is almost, but not quite, the same as ours.  Or, that you are watching a construct of late seventies earth, created by aliens with only a limited knowledge of actual earth cultures and geography.  This is undoubtedly the film's greatest strength, giving the whole thing a disconcerting feel - as if the 'reality' you are watching is, at any moment, liable to collapse and reveal something terrible and unfathomable.  While for UK audiences, at least, it provides a truly bizarre experience, in more general terms, the film does provide a neat counterpoint to the Spielbergian optimism of its inspiration, Close Encounters, where both the aliens and the government conspiracy to hide them are essentially benign.  Eyes Behind the Stars presents a far darker vision, drawing the audience, quite effectively it has to be said, into the paranoid and off-kilter perspective of UFO conspiracy theorists.