In Search of Noah's Ark

Ignoring the rest execrable "science" on display in this witless film, this movie was a part of a hoax. The individual who brought down pieces of the alleged Ark actually cooked them in his oven at home to "age" them. Naturally the credulous producers took him at his word.

I suppose this film is worthy for the undiscriminating, desperate Christian viewer, but all others should avoid unless a good laugh (a la "Plan 9 from Outer Space") is what you are looking for.

Of course, if you are the sort who still believes the Shroud of Turin is real, then you won't care.

This film needs to be categorized as "fiction."

Thank you.

Cheers.

My dad took me to see this film in 1976. I was 5, and bored to tears. You know a movie is bad when at 5 one can differentiate a toy boat in a disturbed bathtub from an ark on an angry ocean.

My dad was responsible for a lot of awful movies as a young child. It is amazing I grew up to love films after some of the things he dragged me to. Runners up include Pete's Dragon, and Popeye.

Curiously, I have kept an eye out for In Search of Noah's Ark, hoping to catch it out of the blue on television over the years. But, alas, no luck. I'm surprised there are so many people who remember this movie. Wow. Now I don't feel so alone.

I vaguely remember seeing this movie on TV as a kid. And while I only remember a few actual scenes - I distinctly remember buying into everything the movie said at the time, only to realize years later that pretty much all of it was bull-plop.

A lot of what the movie said was simply false. There have never been any confirmed expeditions that actually found anything remotely resembling Noah's Ark in Turkey or anywhere else.

Other things the movie presented were not exactly false - but nonetheless extremely deceiving. I remember a number of scenes in which a toy boat of the same supposed dimensions of the Ark bobbed in a bathtub while crew members shook the bathtub to simulate waves which would amount to 40-foot tidal waves if the toy Ark were actual size. Lo and behold - the toy Ark didn't sink, thus confirming (at least in the narrator's view) that such a design of real size could survive actual 40-foot tidal waves. Nice analogy - but total rubbish nonetheless since a basic principle of increasing size and mass is that while the strength of an object increases proportionately with its surface area, its weight increases proportionately with its entire volume. It's why you can drop an ant from a height that would amount to a 1000-foot drop for a person, and it will scamper away without so much as a sore ankle. And of course the dedicated scientists who made this movie placed toy boats of different designs into the same bathtub as a control group to demonstrate that only the toy boat that looked like the Ark wasn't crushed by the proportionate 40-foot tidal waves produced by jiggling the tub. And after that world peace broke out, Hillary volunteered to go to jail for violating federal security laws, and Trump released all of his tax records.

While the movie itself is quite bad, it is nonetheless an interesting example of how and why false information spreads so rapidly, and that it is a twofold phenomenon - those who disseminate false information, and those who believe it.

Back in the 70'Schick-Sunn Classic Films was based out of Salt Lake City, Utah where they did many documentaries and a TV series (Grizzly Adams) I had the opportunity to work on many of their films. Sometimes as an animal trainer/actor/stuntman and other crew member. We had a lot of fun in the making of "Noah's Ark" where I played one of Noah's sons as will as handling some of the bigger animals (Lions/Bears etc.)I always liked this film as it was done with a lot of research and people who went to Mount Arat to find the Ark.All the actors we're local actors from SLC Utah. The film did not get much exposure and I have not seen it since it was released in the 70's.

Seriously, this is one of the first movies I have a conscious recollection of seeing, 1976 sounds about right (I would have been nine). Mom probably saw the G rating and decided this would be a diverting way to keep us out of her face for a couple hours one Saturday afternoon.

I have no memory of the film's story (though presented as a documentary the bulk of it is about as factually based as your standard Godzilla movie) though certain visual images like the pathetic Ark model used bobbing around in a tank look familiar. No, the moment etched into my brain like battery acid was when some idiot playing an ancient explorer climbing Mount Ararat in search of the Ark takes a dive off a cliff.

The event both horrified me as a budding young outdoorsman, but was so patently obviously FAKE that my two brothers and I couldn't shut up talking about it and laughing about how stupid yet cool it was at the same time for the rest of the weekend -- A glorious bit of cognitive dissonance for a 9 year old mind to entertain. Then again Star Trek, the Six Million Dollar Man, cartoons, everything that was cool sort of had a dumb, fake side to it. The moment stuck with me for 34 years so it must have been impressive at 1:85:1 in a theater.

I never encountered the movie again until a buddy with a shared taste for the bizarre loaned me his long out of print tape. The movie itself is competently made but has all the overkill of a propaganda film, which is an apt way to describe the content. The film doesn't posit the theory that the Ark might be on Mount Ararat, the film regards it as a foregone conclusion with the actual location of the remains of the Ark simply being a formality yet to be dealt with. Eventually somebody will find it, you see, and then everyone will know. Uh huh.

There's also some shameless Bible-thumping going on, with what we would now regard as religious overtones to nearly every aspect of how this unlikely story is told, all of it narrated with grave authority by Brad Crandall, the voice of a number of these low budget pseudo-documentaries. As far as science or a study of history it's pretty absurd, but in terms of tapping in to a basic need within humans to be entertained by ridiculous garbage this movie has some legs. Put it on a double bill with CHARIOTS OF THE GODS in a little art house venue next to the medical marijuana store and it would sell out every night, likely to the same crowd every night. Pot heads eat this stuff up like Doritos.

It's all so sincere, so cloyingly convinced, so eager for its viewers to be swept up in rapt awe at what is essentially a hoax (another reader here comments on that aspect). But it's still entertaining with a sort of bizarre poker faced hamminess about it that only somebody really challenged by the mysteries of life would be tempted to take any of it seriously. Even as nine year olds, me and my brothers knew this was just too fake. Nice to find out we were right on the money.

4/10