CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977 Theatrical Trailer HD)

This is the theatrical trailer for the 1977 science fiction feature "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".
Written and directed by Steven Spielberg, fresh off the success of the 1975 blockbuster "Jaws", the movie was released through Columbia Pictures and EMI Distributors on November 16, 1977. A special edition cut with extended scenes was released in August 1980. A full Director's Cut version would be released to home video in 1998.
In the Sonoran Desert, French scientist Claude Lacombe (Francois Truffaut), his American interpreter, cartographer David Laughlin (Bob Balaban), and other researchers discover a flight of Grumman TBM Avengers that went missing shortly after World War II. The planes are in perfect condition, but without any occupants. An elderly witness nearby claims "the sun came out at night, and sang to him." The researchers are similarly baffled to find the SS Cotopaxi in the middle of the Gobi Desert, intact and completely empty. Near Indianapolis, air traffic controllers watch two airline flights narrowly avoid a mid-air collision with an unidentified flying object (UFO).
At a rural home, three-year-old Barry Guiler (Cary Guffey) wakes to find his toys operating on their own. He starts to follow something outside, forcing his mother, Jillian (Melinda Dillon, "A Christmas Story"), to chase after him. Large-scale power outages begin rolling through the area, forcing electrician Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss, "Jaws") to investigate. While he gets his bearings, Roy experiences a close encounter with a UFO, and when it flies over his truck, it lightly burns the side of his face with its lights. The UFO takes off with three others in the sky, as Roy and three police cars give chase. The spacecraft fly off into the night sky but the metaphysical experience leaves Roy mesmerized. He becomes fascinated by UFOs to the dismay of his wife, Ronnie (Teri Garr, "Young Frankenstein"), and begins obsessing over subliminal images of a mountain-like shape, often making models of it. Jillian meanwhile also becomes obsessed, sketching the unique mountain image. Soon after, she is terrorized in her home by a UFO which descends from the clouds. She fights off violent attempts by the UFO and unseen beings to enter the home, but in the chaos, Barry is abducted.
Lacombe and Laughlin-along with a group of United Nations experts-continue to investigate increasing UFO activity and strange, related occurrences. Witnesses in Dharamsala, Northern India report that the UFOs make distinctive sounds: a five-tone musical phrase in a major scale. Scientists broadcast the phrase to outer space, but are mystified by the response: a seemingly meaningless series of numbers (104 44 30 40 36 10) repeated over and over until Laughlin, with his background in cartography, recognizes it as a set of geographical coordinates, which point to Devils Tower near Moorcroft, Wyoming. Lacombe and the U.S. military converge on Wyoming. The United States Army evacuates the area, planting false reports in the media that a train wreck has spilled a toxic nerve gas, all the while preparing a secret landing zone for the UFOs and their occupants.
Meanwhile, Roy becomes increasingly erratic and causes Ronnie to abandon him, taking their three children with her. When a news program about the train wreck near Devils Tower airs on television, Roy and Jillian see the same broadcast, recognizing the same mountain they have been seeing. They, along with other travelers experiencing the same visions, set out for Devils Tower in spite of the public warnings about nerve gas.
While most of the travelers are apprehended by the Army, Roy and Jillian persist and make it to the site just as UFOs appear in the night sky. The government specialists at the site begin to communicate with the UFOs, that gradually appear by the dozens, by use of light and sound on a large electrical billboard. Following this, an enormous mothership lands at the site, releasing the missing World War II pilots and Cotopaxi sailors, as well as over a dozen other abductees from long-missing adults to children (and even a few animals), all from different eras and all of whom have strangely not aged since their abductions. Barry also returns and reunites with a relieved Jillian. The government officials decide to include Roy in a group of people whom they had selected to be potential visitors to the mothership, hastily preparing him.
As the extraterrestrials finally emerge from the mothership, they select Roy to join them on their travels. As Roy enters the mothership, one of the extraterrestrials pauses for a few moments with the humans. Lacombe uses Curwen hand signs that correspond to the five-note extraterrestrial tonal phrase. The extraterrestrial replies with the same gestures, smiles, and returns to its ship, which ascends into space.