The Late Great Planet Earth

"The Late Great Planet Earth" is narrated by the late great Orson Welles. The film is a pseudo-documentary that purports to portray the events which lead to the rapture, as described in the book of Revelations, according to the deluded minds of evangelical Christian (kooks),Hal Lindsey and CC Carlson- who wrote a book of the same name.

The film blends documentary and stock footage, with interviews and fictional (well...biblical) re-enactments. The purpose of this loony Christian propaganda piece is basically to argue that the "prophecies" contained in the book of Revelations- discussing the lead up to the rapture- were being fulfilled by world events in the late 1970s.

The collection of people who participated in this film are, to say the least, odd- from Welles, to Noble Prize winners, to Physicists- a seriously weird array of characters, which might lead you to believe the whole project was actually undertaken as a joke. Cause if they were serious?...that's pretty sad.

5 out of 10.

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.

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.

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.

"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.