Gordon Lightfoot's UFO song

If you know the movie, you know this scene.

I wouldn't say that Communion (1989) is one of my favorite films, but I just love the fact that it exists: the story of alien abductee Whitley Strieber, played by Christopher Walken, with a soundtrack by the great Eric Clapton. Strieber comes from a Catholic family with deep roots in San Antonio, but Walken, apparently going by his German surname and Manhattan workplace, plays him as a neurotic New York Jew who says things like "Oy vey, what a day, what a schmear!" and describes his alien visitors as "little blue fuckers about that big."

I dreamed that I was watching that movie, but some of the scenes were different. There was a scene where Strieber was having a beer with Budd Hopkins (who does not appear in the real film, having been replaced by a fictional female psychologist) and kvetching about the aliens that had been making themselves at home in his cabin. "I'm telling ya, Budd," he says, "these rats run around like they own the place!"

Upon waking, I realized that that was a line from the Gordon Lightfoot song "Circle of Steel" (1974) -- and then that the opening lines of that song sound an awful lot like a reference to a UFO.

Rows of lights in a circle of steel
Where you place your bets on a great big wheel
High windows flickerin' down through the snow

A circle of steel with rows of lights sounds like a flying saucer, and the windows of a house don't "flicker down through the snow," so they must be the windows of something that is descending, such as an aircraft or spacecraft. (I honestly have no idea what Lightfoot is really talking about here. Roulette wheels aren't steel and don't have rows of lights. Is it a Ferris wheel? If so, how is that relevant to the rest of the song?)

There's also this line, which could as easily be about the wee folk as about Child Protective Services.

The child is strong
A week, a day, they will take it away

Although Lightfoot obviously intended nothing of the sort, this reminds me of "The Fairies" by William Allingham:

They stole little Bridget
For seven years long;
When she came down again
Her friends were all gone.

A further coincidence is that "Circle of Steel" is set at Christmastime, as is Communion.

Update: What is Walken best known for? The “more cowbell” sketch, featuring the song “Don’t Fear the Reaper.” Hours after posting this, I put my music on random shuffle, and the first song it played was this: