I had just turned eight when Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released in the fall of 1977, and I remember being completely freaked out by the commercials for the film. Oddly enough, the image that mashed down so hard on my “primal dread” button wasn’t even in the movie: a POV shot in which we’re flying down a highway at night toward a hill, on the other side of which is a brilliant, mysterious light. I’m sure my Loyal Readers would recognize that image. It was used on the movie’s one-sheet and various tie-in products, and it’s been copied and/or parodied so many times since that I’m willing to bet most people don’t even realize where it comes from. Whenever I run across it today, I experience a warm spark of nostalgia; back in ’77, it scared the ever-loving crap out of me.

The movie, of course, turned out to be entirely non-frightening (well, except for the scene where little Barry gets abducted from his house; that’s pretty scary), but think of how terrifying it would’ve been had the aliens come from, shall we say, a more southernly part of the galaxy….

Close Encounters of the Redneck Kind from Marc Bullard on Vimeo.

Via Sullivan, who somehow manages to find a lot of cool stuff in spite of making upwards of 50 or so political posts every single day. I envy him his blogging time…