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Close Encounters of the Third Kind - 1977 | Story and Screenshots


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Later that evening, Roy sculpts a clay mountain, again striving to reproduce the elusive, malleable shape which has possessed his mind since the alien encounters. Sweating and troubled, he becomes more and more frustrated because the strange-looking mountain is still not right. He runs outside and screams to the heavens.

Roy: What is it?

Restless, he sleeps by his creation until awakened by daylight and the sound of early-morning cartoons on the television.

Sylvia [fearfully asks]: Are you going to yell at me?


The living room is littered with colorful charts of the heavens and articles and other clippings on UFOs. Determined to be cured of his obsession and restored to normality, he rids himself of all symbols of extra-terrestrials and space by crumpling and tearing up all evidence. He grabs at the clay mountain and rips off the top of the mound. He is stunned by what is left - the flat-topped shape of Devils Tower.

Now completely crazed, Roy begins tearing plants out of the ground in the garden and heaving them through the kitchen window into his suburban home. He steals his neighbour's duck pond metal rail in plain daylight. Roy throws more shovelfuls of dirt through the window and gathering bricks and chicken wire scavenged from his neighbor and the garbage.


Ronnie is in complete disbelief. . .

Roy: Ronnie, if I don't do this, that's when I'm going to need a doctor.

Toby: Dad, after this can we throw dirt in my window?


Ronnie pulls the children with her to the car to get away from him and take them to her sister's place, thinking that he has become dangerous.


Roy: I figured it out, that's all. Will you just listen?...Have you ever looked at something and it's crazy and then you looked at it in another way and it's not crazy at all?...Don't be scared. Just don't be scared. I feel really good. Everything's gonna be all right. I haven't felt this good in years.

She cannot take it anymore and leaves him while neighbours stop doing their everyday chores to look in amazement at the final row of the couple.


Left alone during the day, Roy works feverishly to construct a man-made, ceiling-high replica of Devils Tower - a third manifestation of the shape. The sculpted model of the visions he has seen of a flat-topped mountain fills his entire living room. It is built of mud, shrubbery, chicken wire, rocks and other materials.


The television's soap operas and advertisements provide background during his obsessed work on the artistic creation. After a long day's efforts, an ABC-News bulletin broadcast (with broadcaster Howard K. Smith and a cutaway to an on-site reporter) interrupts programming and fills the TV screen - he is first distracted by an overlapping, pleading phone call to Ronnie and doesn't pay attention.

Smith: At the top of the news tonight, a rail disaster. At Devils Tower, Wyoming, a train loaded with a dangerous chemical gas went off the rails and has forced the widest area evacuations in the history of these controversial Army rail shipments. Fortunately, much of the surrounding area has been closed to the public for three weeks for renovation to the national park there.


Reporter: The Army and National Guard units are supervising the evacuation. It is estimated that from 35 to 50 thousand people are affected. The families that have been dislocated have been assured that the danger will be over within seventy-two hours. We've seen the Army here, the Corps of Engineers, and the Chemical Engineers.

Once the toxic concentration is down to fifty parts per million, then the danger will be past. This means that the park's residents will be back in their own homes by the weekend. Of course, it's small consolation to the livestock in the area, although ranchers have been notified. This means, order your steak well-done, Howard.


Smith: Devils Tower, Wyoming was the first National Monument erected in this country by Theodore Roosevelt in 1915 . . .


Jillian is listening to the same news broadcast several miles away.

Smith: Thousands of civilian refugees are fleeing the area, spurred on by rumors that the seven tanker cars that overturned...were filled to capacity with GM nerve gas . . .


Her living room decorated with illustrations of the mountain, she is awakened by the familiar mound.


She etches its outline with her finger on her TV screen. Roy has the same awakening when he focuses on the broadcast.

Smith: And fortunately during this mishap, there have been no fatalities...In a few minutes, it's going to be known as the hot zone depending on the prevailing winds. But as it is, this is as close to the disaster as we've been allowed to get...the Army's Chemical Engineers and the Wyoming National Guard are making every effort to contain the leaking toxins and evacuate an area of almost 200 square miles. Everyone is being warned - stay out of the area. Everyone please, stay out of the area.


Ignoring the restrictions and news reports about toxic nerve gas - an attempt by special agents to prevent the public from discovering the alien visitation, Roy frantically drives in a rented station wagon through Moorcroft, Wyoming while again fiddling with road maps, as the radio broadcasts warnings of more road closures.

Radio: . . . and thousands of others are homeless. The United States Army Material Command has issued these new area restrictions: All roadways north of ... on Interstate 25, all roads leading into the Grand Tetons..., all multi-lane undivided full traffic interchanges, rail, local and historic stage routes south of Cody . . .

Roy mutters to himself about the map markings, just avoiding a collision with vehicles streaming away from the quarantined area.


At a rural train depot where thousands are departing in a chaotic, crowded scene under Army control, street vendors take advantage of the crisis by hawking live birds in cages to detect the "odorless and colorless" GM nerve gas:

Vendor: These canary birds are guaranteed to fall off of their perch one hour before the gas does anything to you.

Considered suspicious when he invents a missing sister and gives his name as Smith, Roy is threatened by an intimidating Army relocation guard (Carl Weathers).

Guard: We got orders to shoot anybody lootin' around here.

Foolishly, Roy purchases three gas masks and two birds in a cage. Roy hears his name called out by Jillian through the deafening din of the train depot. Instinctively, they have both come for the same reasons - the two locate each other amidst the crowd and rush to each other's comfort.


They get out of the station quietly helped by the chaos.

Roy: Look, the only way we're gonna get back in there is to go cross-country. We gotta break through the fence.


Roy turns off the main highway and drives through fence after fence and open fields because of the multiple road closures. Jillian shares one of the questions she was asked about her son's disappearance:

Jillian: They asked me if I'd seen any strangers in the neighborhood.


And then, they both see the familiar shape at the same instant - Devils Tower. It looms up from behind a hillside as the camera makes a slow pan upward.

Jillian: I don't believe it's real. I don't believe it's real.

Roy: It's real. Let's get down there. Get some gas and get down in there.

As they drive further toward the monument, they encounter bodies of dead animals - three dead horses and then three dead cattle.

Jillian checks to see that the caged birds are still alive. Roy is confident that it's all a hoax - a simulated nerve-gas scare.

Roy: Look, I guarantee you that this whole thing is a put-on.


Wordlessly however, after an exchange of glances, they both don gas masks and roll up the car windows. They pass more bodies of sheep littering the side of the road. After rounding a curve, they are blocked by vehicles peopled by white-uniformed men in gas masks, and Roy is belligerent.

Roy: The only bad air around here is you guys fartin' around.

While placing Roy and Jillian in custody, they also take the cage with the two birds, now completely dead. The two unwelcome humans are separated into two different vehicles and taken to a military-controlled facility.



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Resource Credits: filmsite.org, Wikipedia.org, imdb.com




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