1989 UFO Abduction

UFO Abduction is a 1989 found footage sci-fi horror film written, directed, filmed, and produced by Dean Alioto on a budget of $6,500 through IndieSyndicate Productions. The film is designed to appear to be a genuine 1983 home video recording portraying the last known whereabouts of a Connecticut family named the Van Heeses who are terrorized by extraterrestrials during a birthday celebration.

The master copy of UFO Abduction was destroyed in a warehouse fire at the distribution company, preventing the film's wide-release on VHS video in 1989. But Dean Alioto still had the original tapes and 3/4 inch copy of the film which lead to the first official release to DVD and Digital download in 2018. It was re-released in 2020 by AGFA on Blu-ray with a new upscaled transfer of the original 3/4" tape. The release also includes the 2017 director's cut of the film, as well as a commentary track by the director.

The film does not mention Halloween but the opening crawl says it was supposedly shot on October 8, 1983. Dean Alioto and Paul Chitlik remade UFO Abduction in 1998, with a much larger budget ($1.2 million) and professional actors, into Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County (aka The McPherson Tape), which takes place on Thanksgiving instead of October. The titles of both films has resulted in a great deal of confusion, both the original and remake are referred to as “The McPherson Tape.”

Here is the synopsis: On a typical fall evening in 1983, a young man was videotaping his niece's 5th birthday party. As the night's strange occurrences took place, he kept his video camera running, recording the entire event.