I assume that this is Attack from Outer Space, but when it comes to the paranormal docs of Wheeler Dixon, it’s hard to tell if you’re watching UFO Top Secret or UFO Exclusive and Wheeler is all about recycling footage from his other movies, which include Amazing World of Ghosts, World of Mystery and Mysteries of the Bible.

This is…something.

The man clearly believed that if you’ve already got a blurry light in the sky once, why not show it again? And again. And then maybe tint it purple and pretend it’s new footage. And it all makes sense, believe it or not, because Winston Wheeler Dixon didn’t just make UFO movies. 

According to Wikipedia, his scholarship has particular emphasis on François Truffaut, Jean‑Luc Godard, American experimental cinema and horror films. The Museum of Modern Art has exhibited his work. He’s taught at Rutgers University, The New School in New York, the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and was the James E. Ryan professor emeritus of film studies at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

So yes: the same guy who gave lectures on French New Wave cinema also directed movies in which a glowing dot over a mountain is supposed to convince you that alien warships are about to level Cleveland.

What makes my brain hurt even more is that he was a member of the New York City underground experimental film scene, wrote for Interview and co-founded the band Figures of Light. That’s right. The man who made bargain-bin— I say that term fondly—UFO documentaries was also helping lay the groundwork for noisy New York punk before most people even knew where or what CBGB was.

This explains a lot about these movies. They feel less like documentaries and more like someone in the early 70s decided to make a collage of every weird thing they could find in a public domain archive.

With a voiceover by Sidney Paul (who was also the narrator of Guerrilla Girl), this explores the wonder and magic of “what if aliens attacked us?” all while we watch tinted photos, NASA-looking stock footage and blurred-out images that could be UFOs…or could be dust on the lens…or could be literally anything.  

Meanwhile, the soundtrack just chills in the background with that unmistakable 70s library-music energy: wah-wah guitars, cheap synth stabs, and the occasional sci-fi sound effect that feels like it escaped from a middle school planetarium show. It’s less about proving aliens exist and more about setting a vibe where you sit back and think, “Yeah, maybe that glowing thing is from another galaxy.”

Star Force comes from that strange era where documentaries were allowed to be a little loose with the facts, a little dreamy and a lot weird. Nobody expected hard evidence. They just wanted spooky narration, grainy footage and the feeling that something mysterious might be happening just beyond the edge of the frame. And yes, maybe the title sounds like another film, so perhaps that gets you in the theater or pulling into the drive-in.

Put it on, dim the lights, light one up and let it wash over you. Just don’t expect answers. That was never really the point.

You can watch this on YouTube.

May I never run out of Bigfoot documentaries.

It took three directors — Lawrence Crowley (who also directed 1976’s In Search of Bigfoot), William F. Miller (the man who made Mysteries from Beyond the Triangle) and J.H. Moss — to make this, a film that follows Robert W. Morgan as he tries to find Bigfoot. In the mid-1950s, Morgan encountered Bigfoot while hunting in the mountains of Mason County, Washington. The creature stood and stared at him, yet Morgan never felt fear. In 1974, he founded the American Anthropological Research Foundation (AARF), of which he is the executive director and which is committed to Bigfoot research. Beyond that, he also appears in The Mysterious Monsters and directed, wrote and starred in Blood Stalkers. That’d be enough for most men, but he also wrote Mako: The Jaws of Death.

Beyond the interviews of people who’d seen Sasquatch — keep in mind, this was made the same year as The Legend of Boggy Creek — we get Roger Patterson showing up to discuss his famous Bigfoot footage, Sam Melville from The Rookies showing up to hunt Bigfoot just in time for a forest fire and Janos Prohaska, who played a bear on Dusty’s Trail, a black bear on Here’s Lucy, a Horta on Star Trek, a gorilla on Gilligan’s Island and Giant Debbie the Bloop on Lost In Space, appears to tell us that as someone who plays animals so often in movies, he can tell that the Patterson-Gimlin footage is real, just in time for the narration to tell us that Bigfoot is a woman because it has big, pendeulous beasts.

Plus, you get to meet Don Blake, who navigates the rugged Washington terrain on crutches, providing some of the film’s most earnest (and physically impressive) moments; sociologist Ann Swain, who provides the first sighting of the expedition, a huge black form that vanished as soon as she looked through her binoculars and John Green and René Dahinden, who coldly lets the the idealistic Morgan know that the only way to prove Bigfoot exists is to bring one in dead.

Oh man, I almost forgot. Patty Carter recounts being befriended by a young Sasquatch as a child, claiming they used to play catch by gently throwing sticks and rocks at each other. She then tells us about watching a female creature pop out a baby!

The ending! Oh man, the sight of rookie officer Officer Mike Danko looking somberly at the smoke while Morgan laments that the shy creature will never return, with hundreds of people running up and down, is the perfect, inconclusive ending for this kind of regional cinema.

This movie is bullshit, but it’s the best bullshit.

You can watch this on YouTube.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel, The Good, the Bad and the Verdict and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

Official synopsis: A metafictional comedy about the intersection of the climate crisis and generative AI.

Director Sarah Lasley collaborated with 30 of her film students at Cal Poly Humboldt to create the short film Climate Control. The result is an absurdist take on both the climate crisis and the pitfalls of generative AI. It should be noted that no generative AI is used in the short, and generative AI is satirized quite humorously. 

Youth activism, filmmaking challenges, karaoke, and AI trying to turn a documentary into a saccharine-sweet rom com are part of the proceedings. There are messages behind the mayhem, and heart behind the humor. Climate Control is a labor of love, a genre film that uses absurdity to point out absurdities, and it entertains as it makes its points.   

Lasley and her students have also made the website www.promptresponsibly.com , which tackles AI literacy through a sustainability lens.

Climate Control screened at Slamdance, which ran February 24–March 6, 2026 in Los Angeles. 

Directed by Ed Ragozzino  and written by Ed Hawkins and Ronald D. Olson, this is a pseudo-documentary, which, according to Wikipedia, is a movie that uses “documentary camera techniques but with fabricated sets, actors, or situations, and it may use digital effects to alter the filmed scene or even create a wholly synthetic scene.”

The North American Wildlife Research may not exist, but Chuck (George Lauris) from there is the narrator. He tells us all about the actual historical evidence of Bigfoot, including the Patterson–Gimlin film. His group is using computers to find the most likely place — in northern British Columbia — to see an undisturbed Bigfoot. If they can find it, they’ll get the money they need to do more research. 

The group that goes to find the Sasquatch has Chuck, along with Native American guide Techka Blackhawk (Joel Morello), explorer Josh Bigsby (Ken Kienzle), reporter Bob Vernon (Lou Salerni), anthropologist Dr. Paul Markham (William Emmons), animal handler Hank Parshall (Steve Boergadine) and even a cook, Barney Snipe (Jim Bradford). 

Following the feel of so many Bigfoot movies that came before and would come after, the group’s adventures are interspersed with other Bigfoot stories and tales are told around a campfire. Of course, we never see Bigfoot — well, stay tuned — but we do see rocks thrown and shadowy invasions into the camp, which, Aliens-style, are outfitted with motion trackers that, by the end, everyone thinks have been smashed by multiple Sasquatches. Once the crew leaves, there he or she is. There’s Bigfoot, in the shadows, all fuzzy. Congratulations, the movie is over.

The film was produced by Ronald Olson, a genuine Bigfoot researcher who founded the Eugene, Oregon-based North American Wildlife Research Company. Olson’s background gave the film a layer of authenticity that resonated with fans of the unexplained. I laughed as I wrote that, by the way. His father also owned American National Enterprises, a company well-versed in producing nature documentaries.

When this film played in theaters, there was merch! You could order a postcard featuring a picture of Bigfoot from the famous Patterson-Gimlin film, as well as a 7-inch record of the film’s soundtrack. It had the songs “High In The Mountains,” “Bigfoot Theme,” “Cougar Attack,” “The Pack Train,” and “Barney’s Theme.”

You can watch this on YouTube.

If there was a Mount Rushmore for the 1970s In Search Of aesthetic, Richard Martin would be carved right into the granite alongside Leonard Nimoy and Sunn Classic Pictures. Following his deep dives into the Bermuda Triangle and Bigfoot, Martin took his cameras beneath the waves for The Lost City of Atlantis, a paranormal documentary that, today, would air on basic cable but, back in the day, you’d have to go to a theater or drive-in to see. Or you could wait and see it on a rainy Saturday afternoon on a UHF station. Today, just turn on YouTube.

Before the internet ruined everything with things like facts and sourced data, we had the glorious era of the theatrical documentary. These were movies that promised to solve the mysteries of the universe for the price of a matinee ticket and in return, you got a deep, authoritative voice telling you that everything you know is a lie and that Greek philosophers were actually talking about a high-tech continent that sank because they played God with crystal energy.

Come with us to Bimini Road in the Bahamas. We’re going to spend a lot of time underwater looking at limestone blocks and we’ll be told that they aren’t natural formations but rather the paved highways of a sunken empire. It’s the kind of photography that looks incredible on a big screen, but, when viewed today on a grainy YouTube upload, looks mostly like some very confused divers poked at some rocks while a synthesizer soundtrack tried to convince you that the fabled land of Mu was behind one of these reefs.

You can’t talk about Atlantis without bringing in the Sleeping Prophet Edgar Cayce. The film leans heavily into Cayce’s predictions that Atlantis would rise again in the late 60s. Sure, it didn’t happen. Or, did it? The movie tells us that we just aren’t looking hard enough. It’s a wonderful bit of narrative gymnastics that connects the pyramids of Egypt, the Mayan ruins, nd the deep ocean floor into one giant, cosmic conspiracy.

What makes this film so watchable today isn’t the science; it’s the vibe. It’s the grainy 16mm footage of experts with massive sideburns and turtlenecks sitting in wood-paneled offices, talking about things to come that never did.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Ann (Andrea Gall) thought she had it all figured out. She’d go to college with her high school sweetheart; they’d stay together all four years, then get married and have some kids. But now she’s stuck living with a bunch of sorority sisters she can’t stand, while her man spends more time swimming with rich future CEOs than with her. Lucky for Ann — maybe — her high school best friend from the wrong side of the tracks, Dawn (Dana Wise), comes to school not to learn, but to balance the scales for our heroine.

Teh director and writer of this film, Leslie Delano, wrote the description on IMDB: “What happens when you go off to college and you find yourself out with the “in” crowd?… You call on your childhood friend to come “make nice” with the people who are being mean to you…and with a friend like Dawn, you won’t have any enemies. Welcome to the Dollhouse meets I Spit on Your Grave.”

Delano also made a short, The Wretched, about a woman trying to deal with an eating disorder while simultaneously trying to manage a bad marriage. Joe Bob is in it!

The film thrives on the friction between Dawn’s unpolished, blue-collar aggression and the calculated, elitist cruelty of the Swim Elite. And it doesn’t hold back on showing the casual bigotry of the fraternity/sorority crowd. They view Ann as poor white trash simply because she’s on scholarship and doesn’t fit their aesthetic.

I really dug this. Everyone feels real, someone sniffs crushed glass thinking it’s blow, there’s a made-for-TV BDSM club, and as I am a rich racist, I will forever delight in the destruction of the one percent. As you would imagine, I am totally on Dawn’s side and wish she would smoke a cigarette and stand in front of a burning school at the close of this.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Sean Foster (Asher Angel) is all about academic success and dreams of attending MIT. His journey to the Ivy League is complicated when he crosses paths with Flora Morgan (Paris Berelc), a rebellious, wealthy girl who has no interest in college or traditional academic achievement. The twist comes when Flora’s parents, desperate to see their daughter succeed, offer Sean the ultimate bribe: if he can woo Flora and influence her to start caring about her studies, they will write him the prestigious recommendation letter he needs to secure him a dorm room next to Tim the Beaver.

Directed by Fawzia Mirza, who wrote and starred in Signature Move, and written by Christine Duann (who wrote the novel it’s based on) and Rebecca Webb, this is a basic romcom, but I have found that I really enjoy them the older I get. Berelc is way better than this movie deserves, even if she’s 28 playing 18, but when has that ever stopped teen comedies?

As they spend time together, Sean realizes Flora is hiding a deeper side to her personality, noting that she knows a lot more than she lets on. Flora discovers that Sean isn’t just a math nerd but is actually quite sentimental. The problem is that Sean realizes his feelings have become real. His friends warn him that it’s getting out of hand and that he needs to tell her the truth, but he worries that revealing the deal with her parents will destroy the genuine trust they’ve built.

I did like that Flora forms a friendship with Sean’s sister, and that the right thing happens for every character. Yes, predictable is the word used for this movie, but then again, sometimes that’s nice to have, even if I hate the third-act moment when the lovers have to break up. It gets me every time. Instead of dating in high school, I watched movies like this.

You can watch this on Tubi.

If you’ve watched as much true crime as the B&S About Movies house, you know that this is about Bryan Kohberger, who murdered four University of Idaho students by the names of Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin and Xana Kernodle.  Lots of shows, from Dateline and 20/20 to 48 Hours, have told this story. How will this Tubi Original hold up?

It’s hard to say. Instead of leaning into one narrative approach — Is this a dramatic retelling? Is it interviews? Is it visiting with the media who told the original story? — it does all of them and therefore, none of them well. Or am I the problem, having heard this so many times that I wonder if I know the tale better than the people telling it? If I feel like that, is it because  I’ve followed the exact same extensive media coverage that this documentary critiques?

The big difference is that for the first time ever, viewers are shown images from inside the house at 1122 King Road. This includes bodycam footage from the first responding officers, who described the scene as a nightmare scenario. You also hear from a survivor, Dylan, and the actual 911 call from another roommate who made it out, Bethany, where she frantically reports that something just happened. 

You can watch this on Tubi.