During the turbulent era of Vietnam and Watergate, the happy veneer of America in the 1950s and ‘60s gave way to the conspiracy-minded ‘70s. Dark revelations about the government, justice system, military, and police made the public begin to rethink their perceptions about a great many things. This led to renewed interest in occult matters like ESP, UFOs, and cryptozoology. These subjects, along with other pseudoscientific phenomena like near-death experiences or the Bermuda Triangle, became the bread and butter of a Utah-based production house called Sunn Classic Pictures. The company made a fortune releasing partially-dramatized “documentaries” that tantalized viewers with possibilities of what could be out there beyond the veil.

“I think it was people just questioning what the norm was… what is real, what isn't real,” James L. Conway, who worked as a writer/producer/director at Sunn Classic, tells IGN. “There were very few outlets back then to experience these things, very few TV channels. Through a theatrical window, we were able to make movies about these subjects. They were incredibly popular because there was no other place for people to get knowledge about this… no YouTube, no Wikipedia, no social media. If you wanted to see something that was on the unusual side, it was a theatrical motion picture.”

Conway was a college senior at the University of Denver around 1971 when he was in the Mass Communications Department and the phone rang. It was Charles E. Sellier Jr., who ran an industrial film and commercial company in Denver.

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