The Late Great Planet Earth

They may call this a documentary but what I call it is something Hal Lindsey dreamed up and decided to write down as a book about the future. What makes it funny is how he is using the Bible as prophecy about nowadays. To me it sounds crazy to be using a book that was written 1,900 years ago to describe today's events. It's like someone in the year 2860 using Karl Marx's theories to explain current events that are going on.

Seriously I do not doubt the world is coming to an end but it certainly won't be in the near future. Besides, Jesus implied to his disciples that world would end when some of them were still alive. That didn't happen, did it?

THE LATE GREAT PLANET EARTH was a book that was like nothing before it. Using cold war era interpretation the book and film heralded the second coming of Christ Jesus and the rise of the Antichrist. The film and book were smash hits because they catered to fear. People scared of the imposition of a mark on the right hand or the forehead went to see this film and read the book only got even more afraid because there was nothing it seemed they could do to stop these events. The book and film use use scenarios featuring a clash between the united states and NATO vs. Russia and the Warsaw PACT. China also flex's her military muscle and the Arab nations attack Israel. This series of clashes leads up to Armageddon. This is great but the Warsaw pact is disbanded (as of this writing)and Russia is no longer the threat it once was since 1989-1990 with the reunification of Germany. Still Lindsy clings to his suspicion of Russia invading Israel when he speaks on TV and in print. Some weeks it's demons invading as alien grey like beings. The problem with Lindsey is he can't make up his mind. The film is not a bad film for collectors of Christian cinema but on a intellectual level be wary.

"It's almost as if we had an unconscious desire to see the biblical prophesies fulfilled," frets narrator Orson Welles in this classic piece of Christian fearmongering. Quietly insane evangelical minister Hal Lindsay attempts to marry revelation to then-current affairs in an effort to prepare us for the armageddon that lies just around the corner. Obviously, with 25 years of hindsight, we now know he was wrong, and continues to be wrong, but had really swingin' fashion sense circa 1976.

Many actual scientists and deep thinkers appear on screen in LATE GREAT PLANET EARTH, and you'd be forgiven if you felt that some of them (who are clearly talking along evolutionary lines) were being taken out of context to support Lindsay's crackpot theories. Lindsay's apocalypse is scotch-taped together out of all the Bad News that was available at the time of production. Thus, Lindsay's world was set to end as a result of any number of nasty afflictions. Recombinant DNA! Brazilian killer bees! Viruses from Hell! Atheists and witches run amok! Dogs and cats living together! And finally, as Orson says, "Nucular" Holocaust. It's Hal's nauseating belief that if you don't have hardcore Christian faith, then your ONLY possible options are witchcraft, astrology, transcendental meditation, Hare Krishnas or the Rev. Sun Myung-moon's wacky Reunification Church! In any case, Hal sez you haven't got a prayer.

As always, Hal saves the best for last, enlightening us as to the coming of the antichrist, a figure he believes is alive today (at least as of 1976), and who would achieve omnipotence through seemingly good deeds and the establishment of world peace before enslaving everyone with microchip implants supplied by the then-fledgling computer industry. Or something. Apparently, only those who heed Hal's book and movie can avoid falling under the spell of this evil maniac. He then proceeds to illustrate his argument with imagery designed to stoke the usual cold-war paranoia: before or around 1982, sez Hal, Russia and China will invade the middle east (didn't happen), the European market will grow to a prophesied ten member nations (25 and counting and still no armageddon), and the "nucular" bombs will rain from the skies like the falling stars seen by the biblical John on his island retreat (well, we're still waiting!). Nonetheless, this allows the filmmakers to go mad with stock footage, a delirious and depressing exercise in escalating doom that runs a full six minutes, unnarrated. Oh, the humanity!

Just because Christians love to fulfill prophesies, or see fulfilment where none rationally exists, doesn't mean the prophets were right. It just means that we'll always have to live with people like Hal, desperate to prove their "faith" has substance rather than just keeping it to themselves, and actually learning from it.

Orson Welles hosts and narrates this Christian docudrama, based on a popular book, about biblical prophecies and then current events that foreshadow the coming End Times. Obviously they jumped the gun on that last part as we're still here nearly forty years later. I generally enjoy stuff about prophecies and the apocalypse and all that jazz. That this has a religious bent doesn't bother me. It obviously triggers Certain Types. But then again the list of things those people are offended by grows every day. The dramatizations, filmed on location, are well done for this type of thing. Orson Welles had one of the great voices in movie history so having him be the narrator of this is a huge plus.

Nothing about this is going to convert you, hurt you, offend your deity of choice, or effect you in any way at all beyond the entertainment value you do or do not get out of watching it. It's just some speculation about the world ending thirty-eight years ago. It's fun and even silly at times, despite (or because of) its earnestness. The seventies was full of "the world is coming to an end" fear-mongering. This one takes the Biblical prophecy route but I've lost count of how many books, TV shows and movies back then claimed the world was in dire trouble and would be overpopulated and unlivable by the 1990s. That the air would be unbreathable, the oceans would be pure sludge, and the few brave souls who dared venture outside of their caves would be stung to death by hordes of killer bees. If nothing else maybe we should view movies like this whenever we get to thinking we're so special and our generation is going to finally be the last one. Because we're not and it isn't.

I can't say you'll like this movie. Maybe it'll send you into a white knuckle rage. If so, call up your local pharmacy and get a price check on chill pills. If, like me, you enjoy films like this or Chariots of the Gods and you aren't bothered by this being made by people with religious beliefs you may not share, then seek this out. It's entertaining if you go into it with the right frame of mind.

I was a theatre manager when this tripe was released and audiences laughed out loud at the absurd theories and assumptions.

Along with it's equally funny partner CHARIOTS OF THE GODS?, LATE GREAT asks ridiculous questions and then presents lame answers.

This movie could have become a cult film had the "take the money and run" type distribution failed. It is that silly.

A relative of the old sex education sensational films that promised everything, both LATE GREAT and CHARIOTS had massive TV campaigns and suckered large crowds for a week or two, then disappeared taking all the prints on to the next town.

Was Satan's ambassador to earth really Gerald Ford? Probably not. Are we really nearing the end of civilisation? No, movies like this one stopped being made. Does the bible predict the future? No, that would be STAR TREK. The bible is about the past.