Bob Lazar - Area 51 and Flying Saucers
2018 documentary film by Jeremy Corbell about Bob Lazar
| Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Jeremy Corbell |
| Produced by | George Knapp; Jeremy Corbell |
| Starring | Bob Lazar; Gene Huff; George Knapp; Mickey Rourke (narrator) |
| Narrated by | Mickey Rourke |
| Distributed by | The Orchard; Netflix |
| Release date | December 4, 2018 |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
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Released theatrically on December 4, 2018 and shortly afterward on Netflix, Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers is a feature documentary directed by Jeremy Corbell and produced with investigative reporter George Knapp that gives Bob Lazar's S-4 narrative an extended on-camera restatement, including the Papoose Lake hangar layout, the antimatter-fueled element 115 reactor, the three gravity amplifiers, the so-called "kids" corridor observation, and the gravitational-lensing flight principle. Mickey Rourke provides narration.
Content
The documentary reportedly opens with Lazar and his long-time friend Gene Huff describing their decades-long association, then moves through Lazar's 1989 public disclosure, the KLAS-TV interviews with Knapp, and his account of the alleged S-4 facility. Lazar elaborates on the Papoose Lake hangar layout, the antimatter-powered reactor and its purportedly stable isotope of element 115 fuel, the three rotating gravity amplifiers, and the so-called "kids" corridor sighting in which he reportedly glanced through a door window and saw two men in lab coats speaking to "something small with long arms". The film also covers the 2017 FBI raid on United Nuclear Scientific Equipment and Supplies, the Wednesday-night desert test-flight viewings with Huff and Knapp, and Lazar's alleged post-disclosure harassment.
Release and distribution
The film had a limited theatrical release through The Orchard on December 4, 2018 and was subsequently made available on Netflix. In conjunction with the release, Lazar and Corbell appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast, restating the core S-4 claims to a large mainstream audience.
Public discussion
In Film Inquiry, Tom Bedford wrote that the documentary is "a very one-sided affair" that takes Lazar's claims largely at face value and pairs them with Mickey Rourke's narration and atmospheric cinematography, while declining to engage meaningfully with the long-standing skeptical literature on Lazar's credentials. Troy Reimink of the Detroit Free Press characterized the film as an attempt by Corbell to re-center a contested figure at the heart of the 21st-century Area 51 lore revival, and noted that the film largely relies on Lazar's own extended on-camera restatement rather than new external corroboration. A Kirkus Reviews entry for Timothy Good's Alien Contact — a book that likewise repeats Lazar's claims — observed that skeptical treatments have remained unconvinced by the S-4 narrative even after its expanded presentation in the Corbell documentary. Vice's Tim McMillan, in a November 2019 investigation of the 2017 FBI raid sequence referenced in the film, reported that the on-camera framing of the raid as an attempt to recover element 115 did not align with documents obtained through a freedom of information request, which indicated that the raid was in fact part of a separate Michigan murder investigation.