The Late Great Planet Earth

Internet Explorer crashed just after I typed a large review comment, and I'm not about to enter it again. Suffice to say that these guys claim to know about the Bible and they do not. Their views are either uninformed or narrow. See the movie yourself and review it on its own merits, not on whether it matches your own set of beliefs.

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.

The book on which this film is based is a fine COLD WAR era interpretation of revelation. Written in a era when NATO and the WARSAW PACT treaty nations trembled at the prospect of conventional and nuclear conflict; now that the mind numbing smog of hatred and fear is being blown out, this film needs to be re-written. Lindsey's approach caters to the right wing heavily. Many people have flocked to go see this film or read the accompanying book;or both! This film and films like them are from dime a dozen fear merchants who prey on the minds of the peaceful with a dogma of troop deployments to har meggido, marks on right hands or foreheads,and the U.S. government turning evil. The problem with this film is it is dated badly. Lindsy has since moved away from doing videos and has turned to a weekly current events right wing TV show on TBN. If the U.S. government wanted to do some good why not produce films like this one to offset the work of the fear feeding vampires in the Christian media world.

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.

The simplest way to tell if you'll enjoy this movie is to read the other reviews here and see the type of person drawn to comment on it.

That is if you can actually interpret(and stomach) the ramblings.

In reality, it sums up nicely the 'Age Of Aquarius' paranoia so rampant in the '70s, a decade where lifelong borderline personality disorders could be mistaken for immediate divine insight. And its this very outlook which dates it so badly.

If you keep an open mind, it can be amusing in a certain way. I saw it, for instance, shortly before the 1st Gulf War, and wondered how many people watching it on late night cable TV believed they had found the reason for, and ultimate outcome of, the approaching conflict.

But reality prevailed-it has a nasty habit of doing that..

Definitive proof that people will take meaning from just about anything. Even worse, proof that poor Orson sadly outlived his talent, reduced to shoddy documentaries like this to keep him in cigars.

Kane would Weep!