The McPherson Tape



AKA: UFO Abduction

While filming his niece Michelle’s 5th birthday party one night at their rural Connecticut home, Michael Van Heese and his two brothers notice a strange red light flying overhead. Curious, the three brothers follow the object through the dense woods to determine its source. They think they’re going to stumble upon something benign like a helicopter landing in the neighbor’s lawn. Ya know, really just anything to liven up the dull excitement of a little girl’s birthday party. But instead, they discover that the source of the light is a UFO carrying three extraterrestrial beings. Terrified at being spotted, the three run back home and hope the aliens don’t follow them. But unfortunately for them and the rest of the Van Heese family, they’re not nearly that lucky.



As it’s February once again, that means it’s Shorts Month here at Random Movie Musings. Meaning I get to focus on spending a whole month watching non-feature length films that tend to often get overlooked. For the sake of my own sanity I have defined “short” as a movie that’s around an hour or less. But if it goes over that by a minute or so I let a couple of those sneak in too, because ending credits exist and most people don’t bother watching them anyway.

First up this month is something that’s been on my watch-list for quite a while now, The McPherson Tape, an independently made, 64 minute-long (though I see it’s occasionally listed at 66 minutes, perhaps there is an extended cut?), Sci-fi/horror film from 1989. The McPherson Tape holds the distinction of being one of the first (though certainly not THE first, I think Cannibal Holocaust still holds that distinction in horror) found-footage horror films ever made, beating out the more famous and ubiquitous Blair Witch Project by a solid decade. So it’s kind of historically relevant. But when compared to Cannibal Holocaust or the Blair Witch Project it often gets overlooked even amongst horror fans, because… Well, it’s got its issues.


And they’re about “this” big.

Chief issue among them is that even with only around an hour-long runtime, the movie is surprisingly slow. The film’s whole aesthetic is meant to emulate an early 80s home movie, and you know what, by jove, I will give the film credit for hitting that mark perfectly. There are long scenes involving people sitting around the dinner table, eating, playing cards, or long exchanges in the night of the three brothers ribbing one another, as only three siblings can. These moments feel exactly like you’re watching someone’s awkward home movies, or if you were just some stranger who was randomly asked to join them for the night. So they nailed the vibe. But unfortunately for the film (and the viewer), while feeling authentic, these long moments don’t really do the film any favors, because they bog down the pacing and whatever tension the film was building before they hit. So at no point could you consider this movie as being “action packed”, because any time something exciting does happen, another one of these dull, boring scenes rolls around, bringing whatever forward momentum the film was building up to to a screeching halt.


I mean sure, a couple aliens just abducted two of us, but instead of panicking let’s just sit around and play cards for a while? Sound good?

And the other main issue, which kinda-sorta ties into the pacing issue, is that…boy howdy, do some of these people come across as dumb. It of course starts off with the brothers following the mysterious light in the first place. That was their first blunder, but an understandable one, since humanity is a curious bunch when it comes to sparkly objects. But it just gets progressively worse from there. Cause the second their terrified asses get back home their first reaction is to grab some guns with the intention to go back and shoot the aliens. Because intergalactic travelers would surely not have the technology to fend off a rifle blast.



But cooler heads prevail, and their mother gets them to stop swinging loaded guns around the house like a bunch of drunken rednecks. And so then they grab everything they can and usher everyone to their cars so they can flee this potential threat, right? *buzzer sound* WRONG. Instead they decide that it’s time to open birthday presents. Because surely those aliens they saw in the woods, who stared at them for several seconds and clearly saw them after they kept waving around their damn flashlights, wouldn’t come after them after they started yelling and freaking out, and making as much noise as humanly possible as they fled, right? Right, of course not. What a silly thought. So let’s just pretend like nothing happened and spend several minutes watching a small child open birthday presents, and then a few more to say a long goodbye, because gee-wiz are we tired after all that stuff that didn’t happen tonight. And then, just as they’re leaving, they look at the kids’ drawing and realize *shock!* that’s a picture of one of the aliens from earlier, oh no! (And just when the hell did she have time to draw that, I wonder?). And then everyone proceeds to freak out all over again.



Oh, and at one point they shoot one of the aliens (using one of the worst shooting sound effects ever) and Eric, the eldest and the one who has unilaterally deemed himself “in charge”, has the absolutely brilliant idea of bringing its corpse into the house. The same house that his wife, mother, and small child are trapped in. Why does he do this? Hell if I know, cause his reasons of “because they have to come through the house to find it” didn’t make any flippin’ sense. No one else wanted it there. The room they put it in didn’t have a lock, and they didn’t even make sure it was even dead first before bringing it inside (and how would they even know what to look for if they had?). It was just a profoundly stupid move no matter how you look at it, and the rest of the family really isn’t all that much better. It’s really a sad state of affairs when the 5-year-old comes across as the least annoying and sanest member of an entire family.



Meanwhile on the technical side, though this may be an early version of the genre, the movie is still filled with all the familiar cliches of every shaky-cam film you’ve likely ever seen. The picture quality is grainy as hell. The framing’s not great. Things are often way too dark, so you can’t see anything outside 90% of the time, and because of the way it’s filmed, you can’t see what’s going on inside the house half the time either. So there will be a lot of times when people “see” something and start screaming. But you won’t be able to see anything, either because it’s too dark, or because Michael is pointing the camera in the wrong direction and you just miss it. Or in some cases it can be a combination of both. So unless the filmmakers really want you to see something like the aliens (which does happen on occasion), then you shouldn’t actually expect to see things too clearly in this film, beyond some questionable sweater choices and even more questionable 80’s hair styles.


Behold the wonders of 80s fashion and hair. Bask in its glory!

Overall though, I think The McPherson Tape is decidedly “okay”. The effects they used (what little there were) are effective for a low-budget film. The actors do a great job with their roles. Plus it’s a fun idea and very interesting to see what the filmmakers did with the early concept of “found footage”, before said concept would be taken up by the horror genre and overused to hell and back. That said though, the movie still often feels really, really slow, which I know is going to put a lot of people off on it. But, the film is still only about an hour long, so it’s still over and done with pretty quickly. If you’re a fan of horror history, then you’ll probably find the film at least mildly interesting for a variety of reasons. But if you want something more fast-paced, that has a lot more tension and horror, then I doubt you’ll be too impressed with this.

The McPherson Tape (or UFO Abduction) is available on a variety of streaming services.

The McPherson Tape is also available on DVD and Bluray.

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