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| Images courtesy of Extrasensory Pictures |
With No One Will Save You fresh
on streamers’ minds, the alien abduction thriller or science fiction tale isn’t
about to go away anytime soon as people from around the world still claim to be
abductees of extraterrestrial beings.
But few if any abductees let alone science-fiction/fantasy/horror
writers or conceptualists have a story quite like the ones told by 72-year-old
Hoboken man David Huggins, as detailed in Brad Abrahams’ eccentric, eye-opening
documentary film that serves as something of a confessional for its main
character. Basically, the man claims to
have lost his virginity to an extraterrestrial woman, that he sired an entire
race of alien children with her, and he’s chronicled his bizarre UFO odyssey in
a series of impressionist paintings which are only being revealed to the public
for the very first time.
Shot with the same kind of
nonjudgmental fly-on-the-wall approach as other like-minded documentary films
about eccentric characters such as I Think We’re Alone Now, Jefftowne
and to a more outlandish degree The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia,
Love & Saucers lets David Huggins speak his piece and leaves ample
room for us to make our own judgments.
More of a peer into artistic genius (or madness depending on your point
of view), the short documentary running just over an hour is a strange and
beautiful meditation on art and consciousness while also giving ufologists something
they never even considered. Between the
professional paintings handsomely illustrated by Huggins who has a detailed
story behind each and every one and some of the other characters who come into
contact with him and even help mount a public exhibition of his works, you find
yourself oddly charmed by the presence of this strange elder man.
Shot digitally by Munn Powell and aided
by a subtly weird electronic score by Derk Renemen, the film looks and sounds
adequate. Mostly though, the star of
this bizarro freak show is David Huggins who comes across as peculiar but
honest and direct, not necessarily someone laughing their way to the bank. Probably the most charming moment of the
piece involves David showing off his VHS collection of sci-fi/horror movies,
proudly holding up his copy of Frankenstein. The film touches somewhat on his failed marriage
but mostly is about the man’s fixation on the unattainable wonderment of his
repeated encounters with the alien woman (albeit rather sexually explicitly
depicted in some of his paintings).
Not here to convince naysayers or
believers one way or the other, not judging its subject or those within his
life, Love & Saucers simply lets these characters be and from what
we can gather David Huggins is an ordinary peace-loving citizen with a regular
day job who just so happens to have a very big secret he’s only now sharing
with the world. Whether you believe him
or not is beside the point of this documentary whose real aim seems to be
unearthing and displaying his unusual artistic successes to the world
entire. Not everyone will take to this interplanetary
rumination on alien intelligences influencing creative output but by the end of
this weird journey, you kind of come away feeling like David is a friend and
not just a subject.
--Andrew Kotwicki
