The debate over the existence of UFOs and life on other planets is one that will likely never die, or at least not until a spaceship literally lands on the roof of the White House for all to see and an alien step out to utter that infamous catchphrase, “Take me to your leader.” (One hopes that the aliens at least wait until we have a different leader before they bother showing up, but that’s a debate for another day.)
For every bit of concrete evidence that exists to explain away UFO sightings – secret government flyovers, weird reflections of the light – there is so much more that cannot be explained. And putting their faith in the unexplainable are those people who believe that not only does life on other planets exist, but that it has already been in contact with us.
In Calling All Earthlings, filmmaker Jonathan Berman visits a community full of these people deep in the heart of the Mojave Desert. Here, in 1953, a scientist and engineer named George Van Tassel claimed to have had an encounter with an alien who advised him on how to build an electromagnetic machine that could reverse the human aging process and grant us longer lives.
Van Tassel mysteriously died before the machine, dubbed the Integratron, could ever be put to use, but his legacy lives on inside the Integratron domed structure and with the people who, for one reason or another, saw their life’s calling in the desert sands.
Space Oddity
Van Tassel was an aircraft mechanic and flight inspector who at one point served as Top Flight Inspector at Hughes Aircraft, the company owned by notorious eccentric Howard Hughes. In 1947, he left the aircraft business to live out a simple existence in the desert near Joshua Tree, creating a home for his family beneath the seven-story boulder known as Giant Rock. After his alleged alien encounter, Van Tassel began work on the Integratron, a dome-shaped building that, when completed, would spin and create an electromagnetic field that would aid cellular rejuvenation.
In order to build the Integratron, Van Tassel needed more money than the small cafe his family was running in the desert could provide. Rumor has it that Howard Hughes himself helped pay for Van Tassel’s work, but the more obvious origin of Van Tassel’s funds was the series of UFO conventions he founded in the desert. At the Interplanetary Spacecraft Conventions, anyone who claimed to have been contacted by aliens could meet up with like-minded folks. However, the U.S. government was not too pleased to see every alternative thinker in the country congregating in one place to share conspiracy theories – especially since said place happened to be right on the edge of a huge military base.
In 1978, right before Van Tassel was planning to turn on the Integratron and test it out, he abruptly died of a heart attack. Many suspected foul play of some kind, either at the hands of the government or Van Tassel’s second wife. Whatever the case may be, most of Van Tassel’s research disappeared, and the Integratron was never completed. But that hasn’t stopped people from making pilgrimages out to the desert to visit it and partake in its supposedly healing “sound baths.”
Sensory Overload
In Calling All Earthlings, Berman and his crew visit the Integratron and speak with the two sisters who are its current owners and keepers. They also interview Van Tassel’s son-in-law and grandson and numerous other characters who, for whatever reason, have moved out to the Mojave and generally believe that Van Tassel was the genuine article. These include Charlyn, a healer and channeler who claims to have contacted Van Tassel in the afterlife and reports that his death was indeed premature, and members of Cal-Earth, a nonprofit devoted to building sustainable structures that share the same domed shape as the Integratron. The film also features interviews with expert talking heads like prominent California historian Kevin Starr and married futurists J.J. and Desiree Hurtak.
Yet the problem with Calling All Earthlings is that Berman appears to have been enamored with so many different stories centered on the counterculture community in the Mojave that he tries to fit them all into the film, with suboptimal results. There’s not much of a throughline to follow in the film as it bounces back and forth in time and space. At one moment it’s focusing on the history of the California counterculture and whether or not it is dying out in our modern age, before quickly zipping back to Van Tassel’s life and work, to briefly dwelling on the government investigations and military activity taking place nearby.
All of these stories are fascinating on their own, but Calling All Earthlings doesn’t dive deep enough into any of them to make one feel truly enlightened. With a running time of a mere 77 minutes, the film leaves you wanting too much more. True, much of Van Tassel’s life and especially his death remains an unsolved mystery, but that’s why it would have made such a great subject for a true deep-dive of a documentary.
Instead, Van Tassel has to cede too much screen time to those who have followed in his footsteps, and while their stories are important in the context of Van Tassel’s, they don’t have the same magnetic pull that the mysterious scientist does.
Conclusion: Calling All Earthlings
Calling All Earthlings has so many intriguing stories to tell – and that’s the problem. I would have preferred a film that focused solely on Van Tassel’s mysterious life and work, or on the counterculture community that continues to reside in the desert near Joshua Tree, or on the government’s shady COINTELPRO activities.
But by bouncing back and forth between all of these stories, you don’t get the complete picture of any of them.
What do you think? Was George Van Tassel utterly crazy or is there some truth to his work? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Calling All Earthlings was released in New York on August 1, 2018 and will be released on Video On Demand on August 28, 2018.
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