Firelight (1964 film)

Firelight is a 1964 American science fiction film written, photographed and directed by Steven Spielberg when he was seventeen, and it counts as his first feature-length film. Made for about 500 dollars with a cast drawn from the drama productions of Arcadia High School in Phoenix, Arizona, it runs 135 minutes and follows scientists who investigate coloured lights in the sky above the fictional town of Freeport, Arizona, and the disappearance of people, animals and objects, until the aliens reveal that they mean to carry the town to their home planet as a human zoo. Spielberg composed the score himself on clarinet and the school band performed it. The film premiered on 24 March 1964 at the Phoenix Little Theatre, where about 500 tickets were sold at a dollar each. Only a few minutes of footage have been made public, and Spielberg has since called it one of the five worst films ever made. Its alien encounter theme returned in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.