Space alien Gazoo steals show in new Flintstones movie The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas
Were Betty and Barney Rubble named after first abductees Betty and Barney Hill?.

4/21/2000
Flying Saucers over Hollywood! by filmmaker Paul Davids offers a rare glimpse into the great Hollywood UFO films.

On the morning of Saturday, April 15, my hovercraft swooped over to the hill that is home to Universal Studios, so I could attend a fabulous Hollywood premiere for a very high-profile movie with a space alien in a major role. The alien is a little green man named GAZOO. Believe it or not, the character of Gazoo absolutely steals the show from Fred, Wilma, Betty, and Barney, in the new FLINTSTONES movie - THE FLINTSTONES IN VIVA ROCK VEGAS. Fred and Wilma are sensations on their own, as are Betty and Barney, who have been rumored in some UFO circles to have been named after the first American couple to claim they were abducted by aliens - Betty and Barney Hill.

Back in the 60s, when LIFE magazine unveiled the story of Betty and Barney Hill to a flying saucer-weary American public, some of the doubters and debunkers of America used to call their tale of alien abduction "Betty and Barney.s rubbish." The disparaging remarks were sometimes coupled with a slant of racial prejudice in those days. An interracial couple, Betty and Barney lived in an America that had not yet experienced the biggest marches of the Civil Rights movement.

In the book INTERRUPTED JOURNEY, Dr. Simon, the psychiatrist who used regression hypnosis on Betty and Barney Hill to elicit the details of their "missing time" aboard the flying saucer, expressed his doubts that the abduction was real. This re-enforced, for some critics, a debunker.s viewpoint that their abduction (which many proponents will fervently defend forever) was just a bunch of "rubbish."

I heard rumors that Bill Hanna of Hanna Barbera, who is now in his 80s, planned to attend the THE FLINTSTONES IN VIVA ROCK VEGAS premiere. I hoped to have a close encounter with him to ask him personally about the Betty and Barney Hill connection. After all, how far is it to jump from Betty and Barney.s "rubbish" to Betty and Barney Rubble? Was there any hidden UFO implication in the names given to Fred and Wilma.s best friends in Bedrock?

The premiere was held at the Cineplex Odeon Theaters at City Walk in Universal City, Los Angeles. The first thing I discovered when I stepped out of my hovercraft was that City Walk has undergone a huge face-lift. In fact, the week leading up to the unveiling of THE FLINTSTONES IN VIVA ROCK VEGAS included the unveiling of the "new" City Walk, which features 15 new restaurants, 2 old restaurants that have been redesigned, and most important for AlienZoo fans, 12 new "one-of-a-kind" shops featuring the new science-fiction store called "THEM." This is a fabulous store. "THEM," of course, is named after a famous black-and-white "B" science-fiction movie of the 1950s, in which giant ants terrorize Los Angeles. We.ll be back to THEM soon in a future FLYING SAUCERS OVER HOLLYWOOD! column to explore the treasures that are to be found there.

Not wanting to be late, I hurried over to the theater, making my way through the mobs of Flintstone fans who were pressing up against the barriers that kept them from pressing the flesh with the celebrities. With my ticket to the event, I quickly found myself on the red carpet. This was a family affair for Universal, which has become UNIVERSHELL PICTURES in the logo at the beginning of the film, in the spirit of the Flintstones, who hail from the fictional town of Bedrock which is built largely of shells and rocks.

Celebrities and industry honchos had brought their kids to enjoy the film, and to play with all the Flintstones paraphernalia in the theater lobby and at the post-premiere party, which had the decor of Bedrock, complete with carnival games where you could dump Fred Flintstone in a bucket of water. This film was a prequel to the last Flintstones feature, and both films are, of course, based on the popular animated TV series begun in the 1960s. During its most recent years of TV production the show added the character of the popular alien known as GAZOO.

Imagine my surprise as THE FLINTSTONES IN VIVA ROCK VEGAS began with a scene in outer space complete with an entire saucer full of aliens. A prehistoric film starting with advanced ET technology and surveillance of planet Earth? Just as FORBIDDEN PLANET, the classic 1956 science-fiction film starring ROBBY THE ROBOT, began with a saucer-shaped space cruiser roaming the galaxy, the new Flintstones movie begins with a saucer filled with Gazoo-like aliens, all of them LGM (Little Green Men).

Gazoo is assigned the chore of researching the mating habits of a species called humans on the primitive planet, Earth. The humans live in the B.C. era, side by side with the dinosaurs. The scientific Establishment, of course, claims it is total fiction to conjecture that humans ever shared the planet with living dinosaurs. The same Establishment would have us believe that saucers from space are no more real than Dorothy.s Land of Oz. However, read Forbidden Archeology, by Michael Cremo, and you might wonder if there was a REAL Fred Flintstone, with a REAL Dino as his pet brontosaurus millions of years ago. Cremo would move back the date of modern man.s existence by so many millions of years that he would have us romping in the swamps of the Jurassic age. As far-fetched as it sounds, he offers a great deal of evidence for his theory. He claims that modern science is as ossified as a dinosaur bone because it has categorically ignored his theory. The very premise of the Flintstones, like that of the Ray Harryhausen film, ONE MILLION B.C., is built upon a much-ridiculed notion that Cremo promotes as fact.

Apart from the issue of whether men and dinosaurs ever existed on our planet at the same time, THE FLINTSTONES IN VIVA ROCK VEGAS, which has wide appeal for people of all ages, continues the Hollywood trend to acclimate the public to TRUTHS that ufology holds dear. By sending Gazoo on a mission to study primitive humans in prehistoric times, the new Flintstones movie provides acclimation to the notions of Erich von Daniken in CHARIOTS OF THE GODS. In almost a dozen books, von Daniken tries to convince us that ancient astronauts visited ancient Earth cultures. He identifies these alien visitors in the stone carvings of ancient civilizations and even in cave paintings done by ancient man.

Mainstream America for years regarded von Daniken as an author who spewed malarkey, but the counter-culture and students of UFO literature were fascinated with the wealth of evidence he brought out in his books. His popularity made him a major annoyance to various religious groups, who don't like the notion that mankind in ancient days was visited by anything but God's angels. In fact, a book with a heavy Biblical slant, called CRASH GO THE CHARIOTS, ridiculed von Daniken.s ideas and debunked the notion that the real-life equivalent of Gazoo may have intermingled with our predecessors in ancient times. CRASH GO THE CHARIOTS labeled such ideas as demonic.

It.ll be interesting to see if Fundamentalists find THE FLINTSTONES IN VIVA ROCK VEGAS demonic, too. Gazoo crashes his spaceship in prehistoric times (leaving a big gouge reminiscent of the Roswell Incident) and he actually pops right through the walls of a cave-house to show up in Fred and Barney.s bedroom. Yes, you read that correctly - I did mean "Fred and Barney.s bedroom" not "Fred and Wilma.s bedroom." You see, in this Flintstones prequel, we learn how Fred and Barney met Wilma and Betty. It turns out that Fred first dated Betty, and Barney first dated Wilma, until the couples "swapped" partners on their first double-date and got it right. Before Fred and Barney discovered their future wives, they were roommates.

When Fred and Barney see Gazoo, they can.t figure out who or what he is, and Gazoo doesn.t make things easier for them by declaring "Klaatu Barada Niktu," an insider.s joke for fans of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL. Then Gazoo invades their bedroom, expecting to study their "mating rituals." This reminds us, of course, that UFO abduction theorists have "conditioned" us to consider the possibility that sometimes this actually happens - that aliens pop up in people.s bedrooms (in the fashion of Whitley Strieber.s adventures in his book COMMUNION) and invade people.s private lives for genetic and reproductive research. In VIVA ROCK VEGAS, Gazoo quickly discovers that Fred and Barney are not a couple, and that they need women to procreate. He tries to help them along in that objective without directly interfering in Earth affairs.

Despite being a live-action, comedy-musical based on a cartoon, filled with a soundtrack of new rock and roll tunes (let.s make that a capital ROCK in rock and roll), VIVA ROCK VEGAS nevertheless serves up many of the "urban myths" about aliens. These urban myths have become staples of ufology and Hollywood entertainment: 1) that aliens in saucers have been visiting earth since ancient times; 2) that they took an interest in and influenced ancient cultures; 3) that they sometimes crash-landed; 4) that they pop through walls into people.s bedrooms; 5) that they are interested in human reproduction; and 6) that they follow a .prime directive. not to directly interfere with primitive cultures - like the society of ancient human beings.

In the film, Gazoo tries to get around his prime directive it in some rather funny ways, so like Cupid (who also floats around in the air unimpeded by gravity in all the myths), he can help everyone live happily ever after.

In my opinion, THE FLINTSTONES IN VIVA ROCK VEGAS is delightful and well acted, with a fun story that.s coherent and easy to follow. Though a few adults there "didn.t get it," I found it to be "a hoot." What I especially enjoyed was seeing Hollywood.s version of Bedrock and also "Rock Vegas, a Stone Age version of the gambling capital of the world. I actually preferred the new Fred Flintstone, played by Mark Addy, to John Goodman.s version in the last Flintstones film. Mark Addy leaped to fame a few years ago, appearing in THE FULL MONTY.

The party that followed the premiere was held on the grounds of the Universal Amphitheater, and the decor was like Bedrock itself. At the party, I chased after Bill Hanna like Alice trying to catch up with the White Rabbit. You wouldn.t think I would have trouble keeping up with a man in his 80s, but Bill Hanna, like Gazoo, seemed to disappear repeatedly, popping up out of thin air somewhere else. I could never quite reach him. The mobs were intense, there were so many people jammed in line for the feast hosted by Burger King. And there were incredible distractions, such as cotton candy and the Ferris wheel, all of it free! I also had to stop to get my Polaroid picture taken as Fred Flintstone, poking my head through a hole in a huge poster of Fred. By the time it looked like I was finally going to catch up with Bill Hanna and confront him on the Betty and Barney issue, he left! My heart sank. AlienZoo fans were going to be disappointed if I didn.t bring them THE TRUTH! What would I do?

So I caught up with some of the celebrities connected with the movie, hoping that they might have heard the Betty and Barney rumor too. I asked Bruce Cohen, the producer of VIVA ROCK VEGAS, and he scratched his head, trying to remember if Bill Hanna had ever said anything about this ufological subject to him. Suddenly, a reporter who had to ask Bruce something about AMERICAN BEAUTY, interrupted us. You wouldn.t expect a producer to go from making a blood-stained, angst-ridden film such as AMERICAN BEAUTY, which just won the Academy Award for Best Picture, to a whimsical romp with THE FLINTSTONES of Bedrock, but that.s exactly what Bruce Cohen did.

It was obvious the interview was going to be long, so I ducked away and hunted up Stephen Baldwin, who played Barney, but that wasn.t much help, either. He obviously didn.t know anything about the origin of his character, or whether the name might have come from the amiable black postman who had experienced missing time after seeing a UFO in the mid 60.s with Betty Hill. So next I found Mark Addy, who looked strange because he wasn.t wearing his Fred Flintstone caveman clothes.

As we began talking, I was amazed how thick Mark Addy.s British accent was. There was no hint of that whatsoever in the movie. I marveled at how he perfected his American accent for the sake playing the Fred role. I told him that it was uncanny how similar his performance was to the way one could imagine Jackie Gleason would have played Fred Flintstone. He told me that it was no coincidence. He had quite deliberately mastered all of Gleason.s nuances to give us a version of Fred that would be near and dear to the hearts of anyone who ever loved THE HONEYMOONERS. And it worked! His Fred was charming, lovable, simple, and extremely endearing. It also reminds us that the Flintstones were born of the same era that made Jackie Gleason one of America.s number one comedians.

I asked Mark Addy if he had any inside information, which might suggest the Betty-Barney rumor was true. He nodded knowingly and squinted his eyes. Then he chewed it around, glancing left and right, as if he were concerned that there might be Men in Black nearby who might overhear us. He looked back over his shoulder, to be certain that Gazoo wasn.t flying nearby listening. At last he whispered in my ear, "Anything.s possible! But I.d better not say anymore on that one. You understand, chap?" I understood. He is from Great Britain, the land of the Bentwaters UFO incident. He wouldn.t want to be caught in violation of the House of Lords. Official Secrets Act by revealing the actual TRUTH about Betty and Barney Rubble.

No trip to Universal Studios would be complete without a spin through the theme park, and all the guests at the premiere were invited to spend the rest of the day enjoying the rides. I stood in line for the ET ADVENTURE ride, waiting to get onto one of the huge bicycles which seats nine people as it flies them through the sky with ET. You had to sort of shake your head in wonder, thinking how Hollywood has imbedded our culture with alien archetypes that have become permanent fixtures in our society. I sat next to two bright kids named Marvin and Chuck who knew every detail of the ET movie. Looking down while on the ET ride, we saw NASA vehicles and NASA employees in protective clothing, desperately trying to catch ET before he escaped. And, in the ride it was all being done under the guise of top secrecy! Soon the bicycle took us up and away to ET.s home planet, known as THE GREEN PLANET. (We just can.t get away from Little Green Men in the mythos of UFOs, can we? Even author Phil Krapf.s (THE CONTACT HAS BEGUN) report of his alien abduction experience labels the aliens "The Verdants," which means green, and he claims they come from a lush, green world like Steven Spielberg created in this ride for ET.)

I got to thinking about my ufological mission of the day. Like everything else in ufology, a definite answer to the Betty and Barney Hill riddle seemed to have eluded me at that Saturday premiere. But then, to my amazement, Marvin started talking with Chuck about how his Dad was such an old fogey because his dad has watched the FLINTSTONES ever since the cartoon first aired in September of 1960! I asked him, "Are you sure the cartoon started in 1960? I thought it began, like, in the mid-1960s." Marvin replied that he was positive. He was a HUGE Flintstones fan and he knew every bit of trivia there was to know about them. And then Chuck explained that he was as big an expert on UFOs as Marvin was on the Flintstones. That.s why they were on the ET ride, because Chuck had talked Marvin into it. Chuck had even heard of me, because he read UFO Magazine and had seen the movie ROSWELL. He said, "Ask me ANYTHING about UFOs, I.ll bet I can tell you the answer."

So I asked Chuck something I should have known that had slipped my mind. "What was the date that Betty and Barney Hill claimed they were abducted by a UFO flying over New Hampshire?" Chuck replied, "Ask me a harder one. That.s too easy. The Betty and Barney Hill abduction was in September of 1961. I think it was September 19th or 20th."

I suddenly had a sinking feeling in my stomach as our ET bicycle ride soared over ET.s home planet. If these kids were right, one of ufology.s myths had just been popped like a busted weather balloon. If the TV show, THE FLINTSTONES, first aired in September of 1960, and Betty and Barney Hill weren.t abducted until one year later, then how could Bill Hanna have thought up the names of Betty and Barney Rubble because of the fame of Betty and Barney Hill? He wouldn.t have even heard of Betty and Barney Hill when he came up with the show 1960, unless he was tuned into some sort of precognition vibration that had given him a glimpse of the future. That seemed a bit of a stretch. I was suddenly disappointed that I had even begun talking to those two child-geniuses. Sometimes it.s better to let sleeping rumors lie.

When I got home, I looked up the dates and found out that the kids were right. Betty and Barney Hill claimed to see the saucer and were abducted on September 19, 1961, a year after the TV show of THE FLINTSTONES first hit the air. Oh well. You win some, you lose some. One more urban UFO myth bites the dust. Nevertheless, see THE FLINTSTONES IN VIVA ROCK VEGAS to groove on its extraterrestrial messages, none of them very subtle, all of which will hit you over the head like a boulder from the quarry where Fred Flintstone works as a Brontosaurus-crane operator. And until next Friday at AlienZoo, this is Paul Davids of FLYING SAUCERS OVER HOLLYWOOD! saying farewell from Bedrock! Yabba-dabba-doo!