Review: Documentary ‘Calling All Earthlings’ provides a light look at 1950s curio the Integratron

For those who have ever wondered about that domed white, flying saucer-shaped structure perched on a particularly sparse patch of Landers, Calif., the provocative, if slight, documentary, “Calling All Earthlings,” heeds the call.

Turns out, it’s called the Integratron, an electromagnetic, life-extending cellular rejuvenation machine constructed in the late 1950s by George Van Tassel, a former Howard Hughes employee, from blueprints that he maintained were handed to him by a visiting humanoid named Solganda.

Cue the theremin.

Although Van Tassel is no longer living (he died suddenly in a Pasadena hotel room in 1978, just prior to his invention’s long-awaited activation), director Jonathan Berman finds no shortage of cooperative family members, historians, conspiracy theorists, healers and artists (singer Eric Burdon among them) in an area long associated with off-the-grid living.

Given all the intriguing stuff he had at his disposal — Van Tassel’s annual Interplanetary Spacecraft Conventions attracted the attention of the FBI, who suspected they were a front for Communist Party activities — it’s a shame Berman isn’t able to bring the enigmatic man of the hour (plus 17 minutes) into greater focus.

Perhaps, like the restored Integratron itself, which has since become a popular tourist attraction that treats visitors to soothing, acoustically balanced “sound baths” for about $40 per person, there was never truly any there, there.

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‘Calling All Earthlings’

Not rated

Running time: 1 hour, 17 minutes

Playing: Starts June 29, Ahrya Fine Arts, Beverly Hills; July 1, 11 a.m., 7:30 p.m., Laemmle Playhouse 7, Pasadena; Mon., 7:30 p.m., Laemmle NoHo 7 North Hollywood; Tue., 7:30 p.m., Laemmle Monica Film Center, Santa Monica

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