Product Details

• Format: Color, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Vanguard Cinema
• VHS Release Date: March 3, 1998
• Run Time: 118 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6304501811
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #442,514 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

No matter how hard they try, Hollywood's best have never really had a chance against reality: nothing they come up with tops what's really going on out there. (Though, to be fair, the real world doesn't always manage to finish the story within two hours, and the protagonists tend not to look as good as Will Smith. Steve Buscemi might be a liitle more accurate.)

Such is the case with Area 51. "Officially," the air base doesn't exist, but it's an open secret that there is a U.S. military installation at Groom Lake, Nevada; it's never been revealed what exactly goes on there, though. It's widely believed that the Groom Lake installation is where experimental U.S. aircraft are developed and tested--but many go beyond that. They posit that the base is the site of an ongoing collaboration between the U.S. government and aliens, that the experimental aircraft being worked on there is in some part extraterrestrial in nature.

That's all well and good; Area 51 has had its part in The X Files and Independence Day. Area 51 the documentary hopes to capitalize on that and provide the full story on what really goes on in the Nevada desert. Unfortunately, the documentary is far less interesting than the subject it hopes to illustrate; potentially interesting tidbits--how one ex-Area 51 researcher supposedly had his background erased by the government, the existence of a second, even more secret, base just south of Groom Lake--are few and far between, and even when unearthed, they're given a cursory explanation and discarded.

It's too bad: as a piece of exploitation journalism, Area 51 could have been a great guilty pleasure, but as a documentary it's too evenhanded and underwhelming to amount for much. --Randy Silver

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Ufos at Area 51?, August 29, 2002

By 

L. Ferraro (Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Area 51: America's Most Secret Base (DVD)

This documentary was made in 1997 about the mystery of Americas most secret base, Area 51 or otherwise known as Dreamland. Area 51 researcher Glen Campbell is interviewed throughout the program and talks about mystery that surrounds this secret base that's not suppose to exist. There is also an interview with the owners of the Little Ale in. There are more up to date programs out there on this topic but still not a bad program. The program runs for 54 minutes.

Transfer is video quality with the occasional line streaming down the image. The audio is Dolby stereo 2.0 and is average. For the extras, there is 58 minutes of ufo footage, the quality is very poor quality, and whoever put this extra on forgot to include audio. This feature runs for 58 minutes.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good video, but the interviews are annoying., October 5, 2003

By 

Dhaval Vyas (Dallastown, PA U.S.A) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Area 51: America's Most Secret Base (DVD)

This is a half decent, but short video about the mystery of Area 51. The interviews are a little annoying. Why does the director feel the need to put a coffee mug or a ketchup bottle right in front of the screen? It distracted me from the people who were talking. Nonetheless, the video films of the UFOs are one of a kind.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A well-made documentary, but the footage is highly suspect, April 17, 2004

By 

Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Area 51: The Alien Interview [VHS] (VHS Tape)

My favorable rating of this particular video reflects my opinion that this is a well-made documentary; it does not mean that I believe the "alien interview" (which amounts to only three minutes of silent footage in this hour-long program) is authentic. Even though I am what you would call a "believer" (for lack of a better term) in the existence of UFOs and alien beings, my own opinion is that this footage is fake. Fake or not, though, the makers of this documentary did some good things in terms of framing the story.

The documentary begins with a quick description of Area 51, the world-famous super-secret military facility in Nevada that, up until a few years ago, the government insisted, quite incredibly, did not exist. I don't think anyone can deny the fact that very sensitive things are going on inside Area 51, especially in terms of the military testing of top-secret aircraft such as the U-2 spy plane and the Stealth Bomber. A number of individuals have come forth in recent years to make incredible claims as to what is really going on inside Area 51, work classified up to 36 levels above top secret. The most famous Area 51 whistleblower is Bob Lazar, who claimed he performed reverse engineering work on an alien ship. This video refers to Lazar's story and then proceeds to mention a number of claims regarding living aliens being interviewed and/or working at Area 51 over the last forty years. This quite naturally leads into the matter of the Majestic-12 documents made public in the 1990s; this video seems to assume that the MJ-12 documents are real, and this is a problem because I and many ufologists do not put any faith in these documents. In a sense, this extended section of the videotape does a disservice to the alien interview tape because all of these claims are highly suspect. No serious ufologists put much stock in these claims of previous alien interviews, and Bob Lazar himself has some very real credibility problems. One's assessment of the actual alien interview's believability should not hinge on such questionable background material.

One must forget the assumptions made by the documentary writers and study the alien interview tape in an intellectual vacuum in order to form an opinion of its authenticity. There is not much to go on here; to many, including myself, the alien appears to be a puppet, and the darkness of the interview setting serves to hide all but the alien's face. Toward the end of the three-minute footage, the alien begins moving its head erratically, and doctors rush in to "treat" the creature - many of the alien's movements are quite jerky and unnatural, I would argue. What do we know of the origins of this tape? Not much. A mysterious man calling himself "Victor" insists he smuggled the tape out of Area 51, but he refuses to reveal his identity and agrees to be interviewed only if his face is hidden and his voice distorted. This in itself does not mean he is lying; if the tape were real, the man who went public with it would definitely find himself in mortal danger. The interview we see with "Victor," however, seems staged and unreal to me. The interviewer's voice does not reflect the seriousness of the subject matter, and "Victor" insists several times that he will end the interview if he is asked more questions than those he approved of before the meeting. The interviewer does ask some smart questions, though, such as why "Victor" sold the video instead of releasing it to the news media, what he really knows about Area 51, why he removed the audio portion of the tape, etc. "Victor" gives some good answers, but I'm just not buying what he is selling here. A series of "experts" voice their opinions on the alien interview footage, and, to the video's credit, there are as many doubters as believers - but that does not mean this is real.

Let me repeat the fact that the video of the alien interview in question lasts only three minutes and has no audio ("Victor" removed the audio in order to protect the identities of the humans appearing in it). I could swear there is a microphone in front of the alien, though, even though he is said to communicate telepathically. Even though I think the video is clearly a hoax, I did enjoy the documentary quite a bit. I would just caution viewers not to believe all of the background information they are presented with here, as much of it is highly questionable. As for the alien interview itself, that is something you should watch and judge for yourself.