Alien movies can be a dime a dozen. There are the big-budget blockbusters, the serious science fiction films, the straight-up horror movies, and, of course, all those trashy movies from The Asylum designed to cash in on whatever was popular at the time. But sometimes, just sometimes, there’s a really weird one. A movie that becomes memorable for something specific: a standout scene, bizarre special effects, an unusual story, or, in today’s case, one particularly strange performance. That movie is Communion, the 1989 alien abduction film starring Christopher Walken as author Whitley Strieber.
Communion wasn’t a hit with critics or audiences, but it has developed a fascinating place in cult movie history. The movie is based on Strieber’s 1987 book Communion: A True Story, which presents his purported experiences with mysterious non-human entities. It also features one of Christopher Walken’s strangest performances, an opening theme composed by Eric Clapton, and a behind-the-scenes history almost as bizarre as the movie itself.
So what did Strieber think of Walken’s performance? Why was the author furious about aspects of the movie and the treatment of his books? And how did Eric Clapton end up providing music for this strange alien movie? Let’s take a look at Communion, the book that inspired it, and the purported true story behind both.
Before getting to the 1989 movie, we have to go back to 1987 and the author at the center of this entire story, Whitley Strieber. Communion: A True Story was released in February 1987 and presented Strieber’s account of what he believed were encounters with non-human beings. According to Strieber, on December 26, 1985, he was abducted from his cabin in upstate New York by mysterious entities.
That distinction is important. Communion wasn’t presented as science fiction. Strieber presented the events as something that actually happened to him, which is why the book was marketed as nonfiction. It became a major bestseller, spending six months on the nonfiction bestseller list.
The book also produced one of the most recognizable images in UFO culture: Ted Seth Jacobs’ illustration of the strange creature now commonly associated with the “Grey alien” phenomenon.
Interestingly, Strieber didn’t initially describe these beings simply as aliens. He called them “the Visitors,” a deliberately neutral term that allowed him to describe his experiences without committing himself to one particular explanation.
The Communion image became so recognizable that the book itself eventually became part of UFO and pop culture history, with references and appearances ranging from The X-Files to Resident Alien and V/H/S/Beyond. Swedish progressive metal band Evergrey even created a concept album inspired by the book, In Search of Truth.
And despite its alien-abduction subject matter, Communion remains an unusual work because Strieber continued to insist that the experiences described in it were real.
That’s where things get considerably more complicated. Strieber continued exploring his experiences in subsequent books, including Transformation in 1988, Breakthrough: The Next Step in 1995, The Secret School in 1996, and Solving the Communion Enigma: What Is to Come? in 2011. Over time, his theories expanded. Strieber discussed possibilities involving parallel universes, time travel, and other explanations for experiences that people interpret as alien encounters.
He also became frustrated when Transformation was classified as fiction by its publisher. Strieber argued that treating his experiences as fiction was damaging to the larger discussion about what might actually be happening to people who report encounters with non-human entities.
There are, naturally, other explanations. Skeptics have pointed to similarities between Strieber’s descriptions of the Visitors and characters from his earlier novel Cat Magic, something Strieber has attributed to coincidence and subliminal influence. Neurologist Steven Novella has also discussed hypnagogia, a state between wakefulness and sleep that can involve paralysis, vivid hallucinations, and the sensation of another presence in the room.
Strieber himself has remained somewhat elusive about exactly what happened to him. He has explored the possibility that humans are being studied or manipulated by a higher intelligence, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he has always been convinced that his experiences were straightforward extraterrestrial abductions.
That ambiguity is an important part of what makes Communion so unusual.
Strieber wasn’t just an author of UFO books. Before Communion, he had already written two novels that became cult movies. The Wolfen, released in 1978, concerned a series of murders committed by intelligent creatures descended from canids. The book became the 1981 movie Wolfen, starring Albert Finney, Gregory Hines, Edward James Olmos, and Tom Noonan.
Strieber then tackled vampires with The Hunger, a very different take on the mythology. These weren’t simply space vampires or variations on Dracula. They were an entirely different species of creature with a science-fiction explanation for their existence. Tony Scott adapted The Hunger into a 1983 movie starring Susan Sarandon, David Bowie, and Catherine Deneuve. Like Wolfen, it eventually became a cult favorite.
Strieber’s later fiction moved more heavily toward speculative stories involving subjects such as environmental catastrophe and post-nuclear-war societies, but his most famous work remained the Communion books and his ongoing investigation into his own unexplained experiences.
Which brings us to one of the strangest movies of 1989.
Communion was released on November 10, 1989, with Christopher Walken playing Whitley Strieber. And boy was that a choice. Walken had already done just about everything at that point. He had won an Academy Award for The Deer Hunter, appeared in the notorious Heaven’s Gate, starred in horror movies such as The Dead Zone, and played Bond villain Max Zorin in A View to a Kill. Yet Communion still feels like one of the strangest entries on his résumé.
The supporting cast included Frances Sternhagen and Andreas Katsulas, while Lindsay Crouse played Anne Strieber.
Strieber wanted to make the movie independently because he was afraid a major studio would turn the story into a conventional alien-abduction horror movie loaded with special effects. He wanted something much more personal: a character study about what he claimed to have experienced. He reportedly turned down approaches from Universal and Steven Spielberg and instead chose to produce the movie independently.
For director, Strieber selected Australian filmmaker Philippe Mora, a longtime friend. The arrangement allowed Strieber to write the screenplay and Mora to direct without the level of studio interference that might have changed the story. Mora was an unusual choice, but arguably the right one. His filmography included everything from documentaries such as Swastika and Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? to cult movies including A Breed Apart, Mad Dog Morgan, The Beast Within, and The Return of Captain Invincible.
He also directed Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf and Howling III: The Marsupials, two movies that are about as far removed from Communion as you can get.
That eclectic background may have been exactly what the movie needed.
Here’s where things get especially interesting. Strieber wasn’t particularly happy with the way Christopher Walken portrayed him. He felt Walken made him too eccentric and too silly, rather than accurately portraying the seriousness of what he believed had happened to him. At one point, Strieber apparently told Walken that he thought the actor was playing him a little too crazy.
Walken’s response? “Well, if the shoe fits.” Honestly, that’s about as Christopher Walken as a response can get.
Mora gave Walken considerable freedom to improvise his performance, including altering lines and creating his own behaviors. One of the best examples comes when Walken first sees the Visitors. His character laughs when he sees them, and that reaction was reportedly genuine: it was the first time Walken had actually seen the creatures. Mora liked the reaction and kept it in the movie.
Walken was also allowed to experiment with the strange alien masks. One scene in which he holds an alien face over his own reportedly involved Walken trying on several different masks during a much longer sequence than what ultimately appeared on screen.
The freedom made its way throughout the production, although Strieber wasn’t always amused. Some members of the crew apparently made jokes about his experiences because they didn’t believe his story. As Strieber put it, movie sets have jerks and nice folks, and Communion apparently had both.
Independent productions often have unusual behind-the-scenes stories, and Communion was no exception. Mora had only about a week to shoot exterior footage in New York City. The production used a cameraman flying around the city with a time-lapse camera for some of the opening material, while other footage was handled by an assistant director assigned to the production. That assistant director was apparently very old. And deaf.
It created some obvious difficulties under the production’s tight schedule, but they managed to get the footage they needed.
And then there’s the music. Although Communion never received a properly released soundtrack or score, the film’s opening musical piece was composed and performed by Eric Clapton. Christopher Walken and Eric Clapton in the same alien abduction movie. If nothing else, Communion certainly knew how to assemble a strange collection of talent.
The movie was produced on a reported $7 million budget and released on November 10, 1989. Strieber even arranged special screenings for people who claimed to have experienced alien abductions in cities including New York, San Diego, San Antonio, and St. Louis.
Unfortunately, the movie didn’t connect with mainstream audiences. Communion earned only about $1.92 million at the box office and received mixed reviews from critics. Walken’s performance was one of the elements that received praise, which is particularly ironic considering Strieber himself wasn’t happy with it.
The movie currently sits at 46% on Rotten Tomatoes, although the relatively limited theatrical release meant that it wasn’t reviewed by a particularly large number of critics.
Strieber wasn’t satisfied with the finished movie either. His biggest complaint was that the film was too literal in its adaptation of his book. He felt the ambiguity and nuance of his experiences had been lost and that the movie ultimately pushed everything into the familiar “alien abduction” category he had spent years trying to complicate.
The strange story didn’t end when the movie left theaters. The production company Pheasantry Films and distributor Bancannia eventually filed a lawsuit involving Virgin Vision and MCEG, alleging a variety of issues including negligence, fraud, breach of contract, bad faith, wrongful interference, and breach of fiduciary duty.
At the center of the dispute was an alleged failure to pay $1.5 million connected to distribution rights, along with allegations involving the disclosure of Virgin’s acquisition by MCEG and the reporting of theatrical and home-video revenues.
The legal battle became another bizarre chapter in the already unusual history of Communion.
So, after all that, is Communion worth watching? Personally, I didn’t like it nearly as much as I wanted to. I’ve seen the movie appear on plenty of lists over the years, including lists of Christopher Walken’s best performances, hidden gem alien movies, and unusual adaptations. But it never completely clicked with me.
The biggest positive is obvious: Christopher Walken. Whenever Walken is on screen, Communion is at least interesting. Whether he’s being goofy, such as when he dances around his house trying to write, or genuinely frightened while carrying a shotgun through his cabin, Walken is impossible to ignore.
More importantly, he’s a genuinely good actor. When Strieber discusses his experiences with his wife, therapist, or doctor, Walken brings real emotional depth to the character. When he interacts with his son, you can see the love he’s trying to express. When he’s frightened or convinced that he’s losing his mind, you believe him.
That’s where Communion works best.
My favorite scene comes roughly 90 minutes into the movie and is very Christopher Walken heavy. As in, two Christopher Walkens.
After undergoing therapy and meeting with other people who claim to have experienced similar encounters, Strieber decides he’s had enough. He returns to the cabin where the original incident supposedly occurred, bringing a video camera and preparing himself to confront whatever took him and caused the missing time.
Walken’s facial acting does much of the work. He looks like a man who has been psychologically torn apart by something he cannot explain. He enters the Visitors’ ship and encounters the two different types of beings. At first, the scene becomes strangely friendly. There are handshakes and high fives, and eventually it becomes almost a dance party.
Then another version of Strieber appears. This one is dressed like a magician and accompanied by an assistant. His voice is distorted at irregular intervals, and the entire sequence feels like it could be taking place outside normal time. It almost fits Strieber’s theories about alternate universes and time displacement.
Then the aliens get creepy. Part of one Visitor’s face is pulled away, revealing a wetter and more disturbing creature underneath. Suddenly, the cheap effects become strangely effective. The other Strieber explains that the Visitors are shaped by the human mind and that Strieber may never truly know what they are. He also suggests that these entities have been with Strieber his entire life and that his perception of them was passed down from his father and may eventually be passed down to his own son.
Given Strieber’s conversations with his son Sam throughout the movie, that process may have already begun.
It’s one of the few moments when Communion genuinely feels like horror.
There’s another surprisingly effective sequence about 24 minutes into the movie. Strieber takes his son Sam trick-or-treating through an apartment complex. They walk down a long hallway toward a spooky pumpkin while Walken makes generic ghost noises.
When they reach the end, someone in a costume jumps out. Strieber is the one who gets truly frightened. For a moment, the encounter seems connected to the terrifying beings he believes he has encountered. Then we learn it’s simply a teenager in a costume.
It’s a simple jump scare, but it works because the movie has already established Strieber’s fragile psychological state.
Those moments are what make Communion worth watching. Whenever the movie leans into the horror elements, whether it’s the Visitors lurking around the cabin or Walken slowly losing his grip on reality, it becomes much more interesting. And despite the movie’s problems, Mora is a competent director. The film looks good, the locations are used effectively, and the relatively small budget isn’t always obvious.
Unfortunately, the special effects don’t work nearly as well for me. Even low-budget movies like Xtro managed to turn questionable effects into an advantage. Communion doesn’t. I almost wish the movie had simply shown less of the Visitors.
Strieber apparently felt the same way. One of his complaints about the finished film was that the creatures were shown too often and were lit far too clearly. That takes away some of their mystery.
I also went into Communion expecting something considerably scarier, perhaps more along the lines of Fire in the Sky. In retrospect, that was probably the wrong expectation.
Communion isn’t really scary enough to work as straightforward horror. It’s too committed to presenting Strieber’s experiences as something that actually happened to fit comfortably into conventional science fiction, but it’s also too strange and occasionally silly to function as a serious alien abduction drama. And that’s ultimately what makes the movie difficult to categorize. It’s a weird little movie that refuses to fit neatly inside a box.
Communion even made its way onto the comedy podcast How Did This Get Made?, which makes sense, but I don’t really see it as a “so bad it’s good” movie. It’s something more interesting than that. It’s a strange piece of cinematic history based on an equally strange piece of purported nonfiction. Strieber didn’t make one claim about alien abduction and then disappear. He spent decades writing about his experiences, questioning what happened, and developing new theories to explain them. That’s what separates his story from many other famous alien abduction accounts.
Whether you believe Strieber experienced alien abduction, sleep paralysis, hypnagogia, some kind of psychological phenomenon, or something we don’t currently understand is ultimately up to you.
As for the movie, I found it a little boring. But what the heck do I know? Communion could easily be someone’s favorite movie.
Christopher Walken is fascinating. The story behind the movie is fascinating. The production history is fascinating. And the movie itself remains one of the strangest alien films of the 1980s.
So, what do you think of Communion and Whitley Strieber’s experience? Have you given the movie a chance, or are you willing to seek answers in the unknown? Either way, if you see a magician-looking Christopher Walken with a distorted voice, maybe just go the other way this time.