6/10
An early Fred Ward performance highlights John Binder’s cult movie UFORIA (91 mins., 1981/85, PG; Kino Lorber), with the actor playing one of several colorful personalities who populate the American southwest of the early ‘80s. There’s close-to-broke drifter Ward, his on-again/off-again cashier girlfriend Cindy Williams, and “Brother Bud” (Harry Dean Stanton), the revivalist preacher who’s attracted to them both – especially after Williams’ prognostication that a UFO is about to descend from the skies above and take them all away becomes a media phenomenon.
Binder’s movie is very much of its time, and even at the time, “UFOria” had a hard time finding an audience. Melvin Simon Productions financed the movie but its distributor, 20th Century Fox, passed on releasing it back in 1981. Simon was able to sell it to Universal, but even they balked at releasing “UFOria” due to poor test screenings until a basic grass-roots movement began to get the film off the shelf. With even its advertising campaign handled by a third party, “UFOria” received one of those limited releases advocated by critics like Siskel & Ebert which finally put the film out, and on home video, in 1985. “UFOria” has been scarcely seen since, however, and Kino Lorber’s 4K UHD/Blu-Ray remaster provides the first viewing option audiences will have had to sit through the movie in decades.
What they will see in Binder’s film is a peculiar set of characters anchored to time and place, and whose eccentricities are meant to be both funny and moving. There’s a definite charm associated with Ward and Williams’ performances here, but other roles are thinly drawn, and the picture eventually settles on providing a critique of tent revivalists (in the form of Stanton’s opportunist TV preacher, who’s also out stealing cars when he’s not praising the Lord) in a way that feels like something out of Robert Altman, but isn’t as well-observed or (given its 90-minute run time) developed.
Certainly worth a look for the curious, “UFOria” receives a grain-heavy Dolby Vision HDR 4K master (1.85, 2.0 mono) from the 35mm OCN. Colors are natural looking, while the trailer, a Blu-Ray copy, and a commentary by Binder along with associate producer Jeanne Field and historian Daniel Kremer rounds out the extras.