Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County | |
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Directed by | Dean Alioto |
Written by | Dean Alioto (story) Paul Chitlik (teleplay) |
Starring | Benz Antoine Kristian Ayre Gillian Barber Michael Buie Emmanuelle Chriqui Marya Delver Katlyn Ducharme Ingrid Kavelaars Aaron Pearl Bart Anderson |
Release date(s) | January 20, 1998 |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County (Alien Abduction: The McPherson Tape in Australia) is a re-enactment of a supposedly genuine home video of an alien abduction of a family in Montana that was shown on the UPN network in January,1998.[1]
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Created by Dick Clark Productions,[2] and directed by Dean Alioto, the film portrays a family named the McPhersons being abducted by extra-terrestrials in Lake County, Montana. It is a recreation of The McPherson Tape, a home video that was claimed to depict an alien abduction. The fact that it is a recreation of another tape has led to confusion over which was the original tape. The entire incident was filmed on a home video camera by the actor who played the McPhearson's youngest 15-year old son. This was to appear as though it was a film of actual events.
The program caused a level of confusion and controversy upon its initial telecast that echoed earlier reality-muddying incidents such as Orson Welles' War of the Worlds radio broadcast.[2] Very much like the Orson Welles' broadcast, the Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County aired on UPN[3] immediately following Real Vampires: Exposed!, which offered a tabloid-like investigation of vampires", leading some viewers to believe that Alien Abduction was also portraying real events.[4] Another way in which this film misled its viewers was the way in which the movie was filmed. This film style would soon emerge again in The Blair Witch Project. Genuine UFO researchers, including Stanton Friedman, were not informed of the nature of the show by the program's producers,[2] and controversy and confusion also centered on the lack of disclaimers making this fact clear to the audience.[2]
Debate over the hoax nature of the program occurred on Internet chat rooms and bulletin boards,[2] where the program's status as fiction was exposed thanks to the character of Tommy McPherson being linked to actor Kristian Ayre.[5] The program was also determined to be a hoax when an interview with the Lake County Sheriff's department stated that no one named McPherson had lived in Lake County for almost two years. [6] Some viewers continued to insist that portions of the program were fabricated but that the McPhersons' experience itself was real, and others that the program itself was evidence of a conspiracy. The program was subsequently broadcast in New Zealand on TVNZ, with a disclaimer that the question over the program's authenticity was still a topic of dispute in the United States.[3] TVNZ nevertheless cut the show's final credits, "prevent[ing] New Zealand audiences from noting that the McPhersons were played by actors."[7]