Despite people attributing the found footage subgenre’s creation to The Blair Witch Project, its roots go back a lot longer, but arguably Dean Alioto’s The McPherson Tape in 1989 came to personify the style, ten years before its mainstream boom.
Not to be confused with Alioto and Paul Chitlik’s bigger-budgeted 1998 remake, which caused a stir on its TV release, The McPherson Tape is Alioto’s $6000 original which, after garnering a reputation (thanks to incomplete bootleg copies making the rounds in the States) as a real video of alien abduction, finally gets its first-ever home video release from the American Genre Film Archive.
This Blu-ray release boasts an upscaled transfer of the original 3/4 tape (thought lost after a warehouse fire), and it is a rather historically important release. Detailing an alien attack on a Connecticut family in 1983 during a birthday celebration, The McPherson Tape still retains its power.
At just under an hour long, this film has an unshakable authenticity and even if some aspects have aged, it is not hard to see why this story shook and convinced people back then. Even now, there is a real tension and dread in its scenes and you find yourself scouring the dark edges of the home video imagery for any signs of potential invaders who certainly have not come in peace. Even if it is an imperfect first step, it is a chilling one to remember.
The extras are pretty good too, with a 2017 director’s cut included, a Fantastic Fest Q & A, a director’s commentary and some other little tidbits. This rounds off a release that is pretty miraculous and most certainly welcome to fans of both found footage and alien horror.
The McPherson Tape is available now on Blu-Ray
