Reviews

HIGH STRANGE NEW MEXICO REVIEWS

SPIRIT MAGAZINE
“High Strange New Mexico” a two-hour documentary film, is one media project that doesn’t set out to “prove” anything. The brainchild of the Taos Pueblo filmmaker James Lujan and Albuquerque Journal reporter Anthony DellaFlora, “High Strange” takes a sympathetic and non-judgmental look at New Mexico’s colorful subculture. Lujan and DellaFlora, who maintain “a healthy agnosticism,” turn on the camera and let it roll. The result is a delightful and often hilarious potpourri of modern-day perceptions of the UFO phenomenon. The film skillfully balances the views of UFO believers, skeptics, folklorists, politicians, Native Americans, Hispanics, New Agers, abductees, researchers, cops, military people and a host of UFO “experiencers.”

Lujan and DellaFlora came away from the project impressed by the sincerity of the participants, but still won’t venture a guess as to the “reality” of the phenomena. Why does the Land of Enchantment have so much “high strangeness?” Folklorist Peter White, a professor at the University of New Mexico, speculates that it’s because “nowhere else in the United States do you have such a juxtaposition of ancient medieval culture with modern technological science.” White relates the story of a Mora, New Mexico man who as recently as 1939, was tried for witchcraft because his wife said he turned into a frog at night.

Albuquerque, NM housewife Barbara Glasgow, refutes White’s folklore theories with a harrowing account of her 1958 abduction by alien beings. Abducted from her car, Glasgow claims to have been taken aboard a UFO and subjected to medical procedures by an alien “doctor” who was “the most ungodly thing I’d ever seen.” She recalls her embarrassment because “I hadn’t shaved my legs.”

The film’s most chilling footage features geological engineer, Phil Schneider, who predicts his own “murder.” Schneider claims to have been employed in 1979, as an engineer building a secret underground military base near Dulce, New Mexico. The subject of endless speculation and rumor in the UFO community, the base was supposedly a joint venture by the government and space aliens. According to Schneider, a dispute led to a massive shoot-out between the “large grey aliens” and government forces. Supposedly 66 agents died at the hands of the “alien humanoids.” Schneider himself claims to have killed two aliens in self-defense.”

Schneider states: Eleven of my best friends have been murdered, eight of them called suicide. Murder by suicide I call it. I will break every law that it takes to talk my head off.

Schneider was found dead shortly thereafter. His death was ruled a suicide. The coroner’s report read: “Strangled self with surgical tubing.” Copies of the autopsy report were obtained by Gabe Valdez, who served as a state policeman in the Dulce area during the 1970s and 1980s. Valdez termed the incident “highly suspicious” and called the investigation “badly botched.” He also noted that it was odd that the police officers on the scene had not noticed the tubing around Schneider’s neck and that no toxicology report was done.

Despite its tense moments, “High Strange New Mexico” presents an exhilarating kaleidoscope of viewpoints and leaves the audience to draw their own conclusions. The film recently played to an enthusiastic standing-room-only crowd at the 1998 Taos Talking Picture Festival.

TAOS NEWS
New Mexico is not only home to a rich cultural heritage, beautiful scenery and a prominent place in American history, it also has the dubious distinction of being the center of rather strange phenomenon.

Personally, I’m more apt to be skeptical about a lot of these things — UFO sightings, cattle mutilations, abductions by space aliens, dimensional doorways and such — opting for more concrete explanations and aiming my suspicions at human and natural reasons for why they happen. But one thing we all have to admit is that a lot of these things do seem to occur in our state — or at least people say they do.

Why that seems to be the case was one of the reasons James Lujan and Anthony DellaFlora decided to take a close look at the people affected by the phenomenon. The result of their investigation is called “High Strange New Mexico,” a video documentary set to be shown during the Taos Talking Picture Festival.

Lujan is from Taos Pueblo, a 31-year-old man who went to the University of Southern California and who began his video production company with this as his first project. It is a program that wears its rock bottom low-budget, first-time production status well. Yet, despite its flaws, what appears on the screen is compelling evidence, if not for the existence of extraterrestrial contact, it at least offers a good case for some sort of genuinely profound human experience.

DellaFlora, a reporter for the Albuquerque Journal, was the one who drew his friend into the project. It started out as an idea for a book DellaFlora planned, which grew out of his research on the economic impact of the UFO industry in the state. Yes, given the number of people and organizations benefiting financially from maintaining this mystique, a significant amount of money is being made which pretty much qualifies it as an industry.

Lujan suggested a five-minute documentary to help promote the book. But as the two delved deeper into the subject, they found a wealth of strange tales that would make the “X Files” look tame.

“We went down to Roswell, I think it was Labor Day, 1995, not really expecting what to find and we just ran into this whole colorful assortment of characters,” Lujan said in a telephone interview from Phoenix. “We were, quite frankly, amazed at just the sheer number of people who have had UFO experiences in one way or another. We ended up with over 80 hours of footage in the course of a year. We distilled that down to a two-hour version back in late 1996. Then we revised it to the version we were satisfied with, the version we’re going to be showing at the Taos Talking Picture Festival.”

When asked if he started out as a skeptic, Lujan replied, “Yeah, I can say I’m still skeptical. I haven’t really seen anything that convinces me UFOs exist. Although when I started out I was an atheist and now, I guess, I’m more of a cautious agnostic.”

He said what changed his point of view was the candor and sincerity of most interviewees. There was something there that seemed honest and undisguised. “You talk to them, you look in their eyes and you know they’re not lying to you,” he said. “They honestly believe what they’ve experienced; whether it’s abductions or flying saucers or lights in the sky, you look in their eyes and don’t sense any deception. In fact, many of them have no reason to lie. We had one woman who had refused to talk to the media for years and through a friend of a friend, we actually got her to speak to us about her abduction experiences. She seemed like someone who lived next door, basically, yet she has this incredible story.”

Lujan and DellaFlora started out with the premise that there is something special about New Mexico, something that goes beyond UFOs and aliens, and addresses an historical link to a past that has embraced unusual occurrences. What they discovered was that not only has there been just about every kind of extraterrestrial-type occurrence reported here, except for maybe “crop circles,” but there also is a long tradition of concentrated spiritual activity here. “I don’t think there is another state or place on the planet that can make that claim,” Lujan said.

“Roswell, crashed saucers, government meetings with aliens, a secret underground base controlled by aliens and the military at Dulce (a town on the Jicarilla Apache Indian Reservation northwest of Taos), cattle mutilations in Dulce, and Taos, abductions going on, pretty much everything.”

Lujan said he thinks it has something to do with “not only Native American or Spanish lore, but also just the whole aura of spirituality that seems to permeate the state — whether it’s through the Indian religions or the New Ager religions. Essentially, I think it has a lot to do with the rich cultural and spiritual history that the region has…and as a result of that it’s always been a very strong spiritual place. It’s something that has drawn people from big cities to come here and spiritually renew themselves…When we search for answers or search for meaning we look to the skies, whether it’s for God or flying saucers. We want to find something.”

Spiritual concerns aside, one other eerie aspect they encountered was the specter of “government testing.”

From the early Manhattan project atomic bomb tests during World War II to modern-day particle-beam research, stealth technology and advanced weaponry experiments, New Mexico has played a major role in the government’s scientific and military establishment.

Whether a huge conspiracy exists to keep Americans from finding out about government collaboration with space aliens or whether there is a cover-up regarding extraterrestrial contact remains to be seen. Certainly some of the people Lujan and DellaFlora talked to believe both are true. But the filmmakers didn’t set out to prove or disprove any of that. Just as they didn’t set out to debunk the whole UFO subculture in New Mexico.

They only wanted to talk to some of the people to whom this phenomena has become personal and to show how their sincerity has placed them in a tenuous social position. Many have been publicly ridiculed, laughed at, made fun of and professionally discredited. Yet they persist with their stories. Viewers may wonder why the filmmakers didn’t advocate a position on one side of the fence or the other. But that’s beside the point. It’s the people that are important here. Just as it’s probably been all along.

NEXUS MAGAZINE
Don’t be put off by the title! This great movie covers much more than just “high strangeness’ in New Mexico.

Sure, it covers the Roswell incident, and Socorro, the waves of UFOs overflying large towns in broad daylight during the 1950s and many other unexplained phenomena, but utilizing interviews, etc., it also explores what’s going on in people’s heads about it all — which extends the boundaries well beyond New Mexico!

I like the fact that the producers gave time to people who were mildly skeptical, as well as time to people directly involved with each case. The video gives what I consider to be an accurate perspective on what is going on in many people’s minds, and thus captures the current pulse of ufology extremely well.

This is not a video that tried to convince you of anything. It is well edited, well documented and, overall, leaves you thinking. As you can tell, I like it!

TALENT IN MOTION MAGAZINE
Le Bar Bat is fine for parties, but not so fine for screenings…Although the mood of the room was contingent on the reverberating acoustics of the room, the intelligent and well-produced documentary made up for whatever discomforts we had suffered in Le Bar Bat’s physical plant.

“High Strange New Mexico” is a fascinating documentary that interviews people in New Mexico about their many experiences with UFOs.

The filmmakers have created a documentary which presents the audience with a great variety of witnesses, self-proclaimed experts, several spiritualists (including a Native American man who feels that aliens are giving us a loving message about saving the earth) and a woman (a Ph.D) abductee who has gone public about her experiences with alien contact.

James Lujan and Tony DellaFlora, the two credited filmmakers, approach their contentious subject with integrity and without bias or sentimentality, thus allowing their audience to draw its own conclusions. Filmmakers Oliver Stone and Spike Lee could learn from these two guys. Just present the material and let it speak for itself.

LA MIRADA MAGAZINE

Having heard about so many odd things happening in New Mexico, journalist Anthony DellaFlora decided to write a book about it. His friend, movie director James Lujan, agreed to help him make a “five minute” promotional film for the yet-to-be-written book, so they took to the road with their hand-held Hi8 video camera to gather material.

Some 18 months later…they had enough material for several films and we saw a tightly edited, compelling compilation, two hours of it, on the evening of March 28 (1997).

The duo started out in a manner they admitted they hoped would be reminscent of cheezy UFO expose films. After showing a slapstick version of how they got ready, they hit the high spots of UFO New Mexico: Roswell, Dulce and Socorro. There was an air of “we’ve seen this before” about this part of the film, but it was still fun and I learned some new things. They visited the UFO festival in Roswell and the costumes the children wore were charming. The woman from the Chamber of Commerce was frankly honest about why the city was promoting its past: the money. That was one of the rare times the profit motive behind UFOlogy was mentioned in the movie. It was clear, for example, that Becky and Manuel Escamilla hope to make some money selling videos of the UFOs they have seen — but have indeed seen a lot of very strange things, as have many of their neighbors.

The film hopped from one corner of the state to another, keeping a sense of humor but also slowly becoming more serious as they interviewed many local people and some from adjoining states who we have heard from: Walter Haut (Corona and Roswell), Henry Monteith (government secrecy and abductions), Clifford Stone (documenting government secrecy), Gale Staehlin (cattle mutilations), Gabe Valdez (mutilations, Dulce, and more), David Perkins (research and cattle mutilations)…Tom Adams (from Texas, informative about many facets of the field), Rainbow Eagle (Native American reactions to UFOs), Barbara Glasgow (abductions), and many, many more people.

They even presented a skeptic. While Dave Thomas came off sounding a little silly in contrast to those who were explaining their experiences, he couldn’t help the editing and he also clearly had a sense of humor when they could have portrayed him in a harsh light. I found myself thinking that if he were to experience an unexplainable sighting of some kind (and he would try very hard to explain it logically), he would accept it with good grace. He did a very good card trick, too. (I’m glad he’s a New Mexican.)

I hope all those who appeared in and helped make the film are proud of themselves: they did an excellent job. I want a copy of the film when it comes out on video. Anthony said they want to do that eventually, but now they’re hoping to hit the film festival circuit and already have plans, for example, to show it at the July 1997 Roswell festival...This film should be in the video library of anyone who is interested in the amazing things that have happened in New Mexico.


UFO MAGAZINE INTERVIEW