Dad Letter 072822
25 July, 2022
Dear Dad--
I haven't written in a few weeks, so it is past time! Today is my day off, I have the place to myself, and about a dozen chores that need doing. It's been hot here, but today it's clouds and rain.Ā
I'm revisiting a movie from my childhood, a made for TV affair from 1978 that tried to answer the eternal question: Could Ernest Borgnine be terrifying? (The answer: Yes. Yes he could.) This movie aired when I was 9 years old, and it scared the SHIT out of me for YEARS because it was a true story. You can't film something about ghosts and call it a true story on television if it's not true. That's just illegal!
The movie is The Ghost of Flight 401. And while it may only be a "true" story if you put quotes around the "true" part, it was, at least, based on a very real plane crash. Plane crashes are sad, obviously, because of the trauma and loss of life, but this one is even more sad for the fact that the airplane itself was doing just fine. The flight crew did a CFIT, controlled flight into terrain. In other words, the plane was working okay, but they flew it into the ground by mistake. Usually this involves a mountain, but they were in Florida, so they had to use the Everglades. While attempting to land, they were trying to figure out if the nose wheel was down, because the light bulb that would have told them so wasnāt illuminating. (They didnāt know it, but the bulb was burned out. Yes, all this shit happened because a bulb burned out.) They got so busy working the problem that they didn't notice they were dropping, then oops, your nice airplane becomes one with Flerida.
Some people on board survived. None of the flight crew did. Ernest Borgnine played the copilot. According to tales of legend, the airline used some spare parts recovered from the crash in other airplanes that were in use. And in the airplanes that used spare parts from crashed Flight 401, they started having dead Ernest Borgnine infestations. Heād appear in a planeās galley, and be witnessed by flight attendants, or in a passenger seat, scaring other passengers. And, again, it was true, even if that was for only a given value of ātrue,ā and I was 9.Ā
And to the movieās credit, the way they film the ghostās appearances was SPOOKY AS FUCK. As an example, theyād show someone sitting in an airplane seat, traveling at night. Then the camera would pan over to the blackened window. While doing that, Ernest Borgnine (the chonky actor) would chonk his way into an adjacent seat and sit down, which would be invisible to the camera, since itās panning away at that time. Then, in the reflection of the window, they bring the lights up on Ernest Borgnine, sitting there like Hamletās father. So the effect is utterly creepy and completely convincing, because it doesnāt involve any effects. Itās all in-camera, and he just fades into view. It was brilliant. I assume it was done because it was āfree;ā it didnāt involve having to create an expensive FX shot. But by not using 1978 special effects, they ended up with a better effect that (and this is important) did not date the film. They managed to make a special effect shot in 1978 that didnāt look like a shitty 1978 special effect shot; it was clean and flawless.Ā
In the movie, he keeps showing up and scaring people. He doesnāt do anything scary, just sits there being dead, but he does speak a few times, and again, itās ALL TRUUUUUUUE! Iām sure youāre wondering how it ends, so allow me to spoil the ending: dead Ernest Borgnine shows up so many times, in front of so many flight crews, that eventually they catch some of the ghost speaking on the cockpit voice recorder. Then a few of the people involved, who work for the airlines in one capacity or another, find a psychic dude, so they can all come together and have a seance, where they speak with dead Ernest Borgnine, and encourage him to move on, and stop haunting airplanes. After that, there werenāt any more ghost sightings.Ā
A few things of note about the movie: One of the stars is Gary Lockwood, also known as Frank Poole, the astronaut that HAL runs over and kills with the pod in 2001: A Space Odyssey. His acting is not great, but it does get loud once or twice. Kim Bassinger is also in it, and her acting is especially not great. But Ernest Borgnine is great, and lots of the other cast members are perfectly cromulent, and itās just all so damn scary if youāre a kid, you know? Especially the seance, and all the ghostly appearances. As with most shitty made for TV movies from the 1970s that anyone ever watched a second time, the whole thing is available on YouTube. Iām watching it more and more lately, just like The U.F.O. Incident, another made for TV spooky movie from the 1970s. Itās entering my September/October rotation of old scary movies.Ā
What else is going on? Iāve been depressed as fuck recently. (Surprise!) We had to take our sticky notes down, and it broke my heart. Allow me to explain. The last vacation we went on was to Seattle, which was about six years ago. It was a short trip, the weather was terrible, and the flight home was a nightmare. But it was awesome! We did several amazing things, like visiting Mt. Rainier and the Space Needle. Ever since then we havenāt gone anywhere or done anything, because of first poverty, then moving from Texas to Maine, then plague, then more poverty. So we keep planning on vacations; we keep trying to think what we want to do, and where we want to go. We want to take a long train trip through someplace beautiful. We want to visit D.C.
And we keep scrapping our plans, because we can't afford them. Our vacation plans keep getting smaller and shittier, as we try (and consistently fail) to budget for them. Finally, we came up with a super cheap vacation we thought we could afford, a weekend at a B&B in Quoddy Head. Don't ask me how to say that. It's on the ocean, there's a lighthouse, and there's a stone marking the easternmost point in the United States. It's 2.5 hours away by car. We won't have to buy plane tickets, just some gas. We began to put sticky notes on our coat closet, with lists of things we wanted to bring on the trip, like stuff for mixed drinks.Ā
(Time passes; the earth cools)
So yeah, had to scrap those plans too, because we are poor, and it sucks. Sucks that Stacy's friends have to leave Texas because of hate. Sucks that Cheeto hitler hasn't been imprisoned yet.Ā
A wonderful thing has happened. As September nears, my desire to visit the location where Betty and Barney Hill were interfered with by a UFO grows hotter and brighter. My passion for this story was all begun by the made for TV movie The UFO Incident, with James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons. I love this movie SO HARD. Itās got some of the best acting Iāve ever seen. Iāve probably said all this before. The new part: I read an article I found on the internet yesterday about the movie. Someone who isnāt as old as I (No one is as old as I. Truly, you are younger than I, and youāre NEVER going to die, and youāre my literal birth father. Itās weird.) has watched the movie since he/she was 8 years old, which, because theyāre not as old as I, was some time in the 1980s. Fair enough. It scared the bejebus out of the articleās author, just as it did me, when I was younger, and it showed up on TV because some network needed to fill a couple of hours.Ā
Anyway, the person who wrote the story about The UFO Incident that I found on the internet concluded by pointing out that there was no version of the movie currently available for sale. BUT!!! (dramatic music) someone had said they were going to release it on BluRay soonish. Great, I thought. Thatās worth diddly poo. But my inner optimist, whom I starve regularly, but refuse to kill outright, encouraged me to check the date of the article. It was about a year old. I checked Amazon, and sure as shit, thereās a brand spankinā new BluRay version of The UFO Incident for sale right the hell now. Itās been remastered. The version Iāve been watching is GARBAGE; itās a saved YouTube copy of a very old VHS copy of a movie aired a hundred times on TV. This shit is restored! In 2K! Thatās half of 4K, but itās twelve times as many as 166.66666666K. Itās got subtitles. Itās got commentary. Itās got other shit. It arrives in two days. I am beyond pumped.Ā
More next week. Or not, maybe, if it takes two weeks to get one letter worth of news.Ā


















