When Close Encounters of the Third Kind became a smash in 1977, it spawned a generation of subpar rip-offs. Few were quite as wild as The Arrival. Rather than being churned out by a cheapo studio trying to turn a quick buck off the extraterrestrial trend, this came from the Unarius Academy of Science, a full-blown UFO cult that genuinely believes interdimensional aliens were coming to save us all. In between claiming she was the reincarnation of Mona Lisa and fending off schismatics, founder Ruth Norman somehow directed this disco-crazed psychedelic brain melter, now restored by the American Genre Film Archive and screening with an extra 30 minutes of footage from the Unarian archives. – Richard Whittaker
