Movie identification:scientists study a flying saucer and try to make it fly (70s or early 80s)

Question

I am looking for a movie I saw in the late 70s, at most early 80s (1980 or 1981 at the latest) and that could have been an older movie back then. I saw it at school, and in the same period they also gave us "The Black Hole", which is a 1980-ish movie. It was not necessarily a movie out in theathers at the time, so I believe it could also have been a 70s movie or at most a late 60s movie. It was a color movie, most likely an American production.

Unfortunately, since I only saw this movie once when I was a kid, I retained only sketchy fragments. Basically what I seem to remember is that a flying saucer was found after it had crashed or landed in some desert area (Roswell? I can't tell). In this movie the aliens are all dead, possibly because of the crash.

A small group of scientists is sent there to study the spaceship, trying to get inside it and possibly understand how to make it fly. There are only a handful of scientists, most of them are men but there is at least one woman (the mandatory chick, a brunette IIRC); I also remember whitish or gray or light blue suits.

The action takes place in a secluded location in some desert or barren area (area 51? I don't know - but it looked like it was someplace in an American desert - non necessarily US). The saucer was kept in some hangar in the middle of the desert. The dominant colors of the movie were the light brown of the sand/rock, the blue of the sky and the whitish-silverish of the saucer.

What I remember clearly is that at one point one of the scientists manages to get inside the saucer and does something that gets him killed, possibly because of the pressure or some other "alienification" of the 'cockpit'. I remember clearly when the other scientists manage to open the hatch (at the bottom of the saucer) and the body of the poor fella springs out with a sticking tongue as if he had choked to death.

Two other things I remember: 1. There was some sort of pressure in making the saucer fly. I don't remember why. Perhaps some government or foreign agencies were trying to seize the saucer? Maybe the saucer was in some foreign country and the scientist were trying to take it back to the US? 2. They finally succeeded in making the darn thing fly and IIRC the movie ends with them flying back home.

No kids were involved. No aliens were seen. No threat comes from the saucer. Possibly the theme of the movie was trying to avoid that the saucer could get in 'bad' hands.

This movie has been haunting me for ages, because its plot is so common (find a ship, study it...) that I cannot refine my search. I have to ask the movie buffs in this forum.

Can you help me?

Answer 1

I found an extensive list of UFO movies here and googled a few for plot descriptions, I think I found the one you remembered--it's The Bamboo Saucer from 1968, available on DVD here and blu-ray here. The blu ray review here explains the basic plot, a UFO that's shot down over Chinese territory, and a group of Americans sent to investigate and possibly recover it runs into a group of Russians trying to do the same (both want to make sure it doesn't fall into the hands of the 'Red Chinese', who were at odds with Russia in that period), they team up for a bit but it's only a matter of time before the sudden but inevitable betrayal. Someone put a low-resolution version online here, I skipped around a bit in the UFO investigation scenes and found the scene where a Russian tries to steal it but something goes wrong and he falls out the hatch at the bottom dead, it's between 1:07 and 1:08. And the scene at the end where they manage to fly it away starts at around 1:32.

Answer 2

This also sounds a lot like Hangar 18. Made in 1980 and staring Robert Vaughn. There is a single woman in the cast as I recall. The UFO crashes in an desert in the US after colliding with a space shuttle. One astronaut on the shuttle is killed but two survive and try to discover what happened to the UFO but are faced with a government cover up. There are no aliens in the film. It is supposed they were all killed in the crash.