I learned about Foes on June 1, 2024. Someone Liz knows on a discord server drew her attention to it, and Liz drew my attention to the top two reviews on Letterboxd. The first one called it the “Messiah of Evil of 70’s Alien Films.” The second praised the atmosphere while also noting that you should watch the 72-minute director’s cut and not the 90-minute version with additional framing scenes demanded by the distributor.
Out of the gate Foes was ticking a lot of boxes for me. It’s a regional horror/science-fiction film shot on a modest budget. It’s little-known but might have interesting vibes. It also has a troubled production and release history. The theatrical cut is 18 minutes longer than the director’s cut and consists entirely of framing scenes with different actors. Sources were unclear, but it probably never had a theatrical release in the United States but may have had one in the United Kingdom. Garagehouse Pictures brought out a Blu-ray in 2019, sourced from 16 and 35 mm elements.[1] 2019 is an eternity in boutique Blu-rays and I wound up dropping about fifty bucks on eBay.
Money well spent!
A little history
Before discussing the film’s plot, a little about the production history. Details on the internet are vague. There’s no Wikipedia article and I’m not sure that I could write one now. After watching Foes I got a little obsessive and started looking for sources.
Although it feels like a Close Encounters of the Third Kind cash-in, production apparently started in 1973. The principal figure is John Coats, primarily an effects man. Most sources give 1977 as the production date, and that’s probably when principal photography took place on Anacapa Island. Anacapa is one of the Channel Islands off the coast of southern California. The budget at that time was “less than $400,000.”[2]
The Brent Walker company came on board as a distributor. It’s still unclear how or why a British company acquired a low-budget film shot entirely in California with non-professional actors. Per Coats on the Blu-ray commentary, the footage shot to that point, primarily on Anacapa, made for a 72-minute movie. The distributors didn’t think that was enough for a feature film, and Coats shot another twenty minutes or so with different actors (including Macdonald Carey and Jerry Hardin), creating a framing device.
There’s no evidence (so far) that Foes had a theatrical release in the United States. It did have a limited one in the United Kingdom. The British Board of Film Censors passed it at the end of 1978.[3] Two British trades reviewed it: the Monthly Film Bulletin and Screen International. John Pym, in the Monthly Film Bulletin, was unimpressed, calling the effects “unprepossessing” and the performances “resolutely monotone.”[4] Marjorie Bilbow in Screen International was more complimentary. While also criticizing the acting, she found the effects “ingenious” and said that there was “more than a hint of promise here.”[5]
In May 1979 Foes had a limited release eastern England, on a double bill with Target: Harry, a Roger Corman film made ten years previously that hadn’t had a release in the UK. The scope of the release isn’t clear, but screenings were advertised in the Lynn Advertiser and Suffolk and Essex Free Press, among others.[6][7] Starburst magazine previewed the film in its May 1980 issue and, confusingly, spoke of a release in the future tense.[8] This provoked a letter from a reader in Norwich that was printed in the July 1980 issue. The reader had seen Foes the previous year and was…unimpressed.[9]
A search on Newspapers.com suggests the occasional airing on US television, but otherwise that’s where the story ends until Garagehouse brought out the Blu-ray in 2019. I’m pursuing a few other avenues of information. I only had trial access to the British Newspaper Archive, and I’ve written to the National Park Service to see if they have any information about the shooting on Anacapa Island. I suspect there are print sources buried in the archives in Santa Barbara somewhere.
The film
This summary and discussion is of the 72-minute version of the film.
We open in the skies above the United States. An F-16 pursues an unidentified flying object (UFO) and is destroyed. We then move to a coastal community, where two friends (Vic and Paul) are getting set for a day of skin diving off “Pershing Island.” On Pershing Island we meet the married couple Larry and Diane. Larry is the lighthouse keeper and they live in the ranger station on the island. For the next day these four are the only humans we see.
The UFO overflies the island and is spotted by Larry and Diane. They are concerned, though perhaps not as concerned as you’d expect. Larry tries to raise the mainland but the radio isn’t working. He tries photographing it but the photographs don’t come out. The UFO moves to the far side of the island. Larry, the indomitable husband, decides to get the bottom of things. Diane, nervous and unwilling, accompanies him, but not before retrieving Larry’s gun from their bedroom. As they approach the UFO Diane feels faint and collapses.
Meanwhile, Vic and Paul return to their boat and discover that the engine isn’t working. They come ashore and discover Larry and Diane–Larry’s been incinerated, and Diane is in shock and has serious burns on her legs. The makeup on Diane is pretty good; Susan A. Cabral, the makeup artist, went on to a long and successful career, including several Emmy nominations. The three return to the ranger station and tend to Diane’s wounds. Darkness falls. In the distance, eerie lights. Vic and Paul go out into the night.
The middle of the movie is given over to our three remaining characters encountering the aliens and then attempting to flee Pershing Island. The aliens manifest as shimmering columns of light, ethereal and unknowable. There is no communication. We see in a flashback Diane and Larry’s ill-fated encounter with the aliens the previous day, as an unseen force hurled them into the air. Paul drowns during the escape attempt. Eventually the UFO departs and a Coast Guard helicopter arrives.
The film ends quietly, without easy explanations. An unnamed investigator–it’s never stated who he works for–debriefs Diane and Vic and later visits the island himself, where he discovers Paul’s body on the beach.
Several of the production aspects stand out. First, the score by Jeff Bruner anticipates Vangelis’ score for Blade Runner a few years later. Ambient, moody, atmospheric, it really works for minimalistic setting. Second, the “light creature” effects are fantastic. My wife and I applauded after the first sequence. They’re different from the usual alien encounter in this type of movie and suggest something otherworldly and unknowable. Third, the remoteness of Anacapa Island works in the film’s favor. It’s not a familiar location and much like Mull in Eye of the Needle the setting does a lot of heavy lifting.
It does bear repeating that this is regional horror, with non-professional actors. The performances aren’t good. I thought the structure was pretty good, and with slightly better performances this would be a real hidden gem. Even without them, it’s an interesting novelty, and worth seeing.
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Foes-Blu-ray/239511/#Review ↩︎
“UFO film gets new lease on life,” Hollywood Reporter 249, no. 40 (January 6, 1978): 16. ↩︎
https://www.bbfc.co.uk/release/foes-q29sbgvjdglvbjpwwc0yotqymzq ↩︎
Pym, John. “Foes,” Monthly Film Bulletin 46, no. 540 (January 1, 1979): 121. ↩︎
Bilbow, Marjorie. “Foes,” Screen International (May 12, 1979): 17. ↩︎
“Cine-guide,” Lynn Advertiser, May 22, 1979. ↩︎
Parry, Graham. “Foes takes a coating,” Starburst 2, no. 11 (July 1980): 4. ↩︎