{"id":44,"date":"2010-06-15T23:16:00","date_gmt":"2010-06-15T23:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2010\/06\/oh-that-end-times-religion\/"},"modified":"2012-10-22T20:19:22","modified_gmt":"2012-10-23T02:19:22","slug":"oh-that-end-times-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2010\/06\/oh-that-end-times-religion.html","title":{"rendered":"Oh that end-times religion …"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I\u2019ve had Hal Lindsey\u2019s The Late Great Planet Earth<\/a><\/i> on the brain these last few weeks, so I figured now was as good a time as any to note that the film version of Lindsey\u2019s book, narrated by Orson Welles, is currently available for viewing on YouTube<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/iframe>\nMy essay on the film, which I wrote for a course on documentary films in 1996, is still available <a href=\"http:\/\/peter.chattaway.com\/articles\/lindsey.htm\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">here<\/a> \u2014 though a number of the links have died since I last updated the page nine years ago. (Among other things, you can no longer download the Daniel Amos album Shotgun Angel<\/i> from mp3.com.)<\/p>\nIt\u2019s funny, and kind of cool, that this film exists on YouTube now. It was originally produced in the late 1970s, and it\u2019s full of dire predictions for the 1980s, none of which came true. My parents taped it off TV at some point back then, and I watched it more often than I care to remember. (Part of the appeal was that the film concludes with a lengthy, and arguably gratuitous, montage of nuclear explosions; when you\u2019re a preteen or teenaged boy, you kind of go for that sort of thing.) The film remained pretty obscure, though, so when I pitched an essay on it to my film instructor at UBC, he agreed but only on the condition that I would be able to lend him a copy of the film itself. So imagine my surprise when I saw that the film was available on DVD just a few years later; apparently there was still a market for this film in the late 1990s, even though its predictions for the 1980s had all turned out to be wrong. And now, here it is on YouTube, and in much better quality than the VHS copy I lent to my instructor.<\/p>\nQuick footnote to my UBC story: Shortly after I finished the essay, my class watched a film called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0091943\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">Sherman\u2019s March<\/a><\/i> (1986), in which director Ross McElwee tours the southern states (the so-called \u201cBible Belt\u201d) and profiles some of the women in his life \u2014 and one of them, at one point, begins talking about the Rapture and the Second Coming. At this point, my instructor and I gave each other a look, and I had the delightful feeling that I had helped to put this small moment into a much bigger context for him.<\/p>\nAnyway. Why<\/i>, you ask, have I had The Late Great Planet Earth<\/i> on the brain lately? Four reasons, all of them unrelated:<\/p>\nFirst, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ottawacitizen.com\/opinion\/world+again\/3054274\/story.html\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">Dan Gardner<\/a> at the Ottawa Citizen<\/i> wrote a column on May 30 comparing the doom-and-gloom \u201cexperts\u201d of the current era to the doom-and-gloom \u201cexperts\u201d of the 1970s \u2014 and although he doesn\u2019t get into the religious side of that phenomenon, the fact is, people like Lindsey capitalized on the paranoia and pessimism of their times and are no doubt trying to do so again, now.<\/p>\nSecond, I took part in another <a href=\"http:\/\/thekindlings.ca\/content\/there-life-after-fundamentalism\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">Kindlings Muse<\/a> podcast two weeks ago, this time on the topic \u2018Is There Life after Fundamentalism?\u2019, and I found it impossible to discuss this subject \u2014 which was originally going to be called \u2018Growing Up Fundamentalist\u2019 in honour of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0830816186\/petertchatta\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">Stefan Ulstein\u2019s book<\/a> of that name \u2014 without discussing the role that Lindsey and his fellow dispensationalists played in shaping the evangelical culture of my own youth.<\/p>\nThird, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Dana_Key\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">Dana Key<\/a> of the Christian rock band DeGarmo & Key died of a ruptured blood clot on June 6. DeGarmo & Key occupy a significant footnote in pop-music history as the first Christian band to get a music video on MTV, back in 1985 \u2014 and, as it happens, the video in question was for an end-times flavoured song called \u2018Six Six Six\u2019. Ironically, however, the song was pulled from rotation because its depiction of the death of the Antichrist was deemed too violent \u2014 and so the first Christian music video to get significant secular airplay ran afoul of the same anti-sex-and-violence fervour that was propelling the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Parents_Music_Resource_Center\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">Parents Music Resource Centre<\/a> and similar conservative groups at that time. In the end, a slightly censored version of the music video was admitted back into MTV rotation; you can watch the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vUVj47rpuoo\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">before<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Z7Cdxl4INfw\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">after<\/a> versions at YouTube.<\/p>\nFinally, <a href=\"http:\/\/slacktivist.typepad.com\/slacktivist\/2010\/06\/tf-tribulation-baggers.html\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">Fred \u201cSlacktivist\u201d Clark<\/a> interrupted his weekly page-by-page evisceration of the <a href=\"http:\/\/filmchatblog.blogspot.com\/2009\/05\/gimme-shelters.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Left Behind<\/a><\/i> books last week to take a deeper look at the similarities and differences between Lindsey\u2019s take on <a href=\"http:\/\/filmchatblog.blogspot.com\/2005\/01\/end-times-fiction-article-archive.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">the end times<\/a> and the novels that Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins began writing in the mid-1990s \u2014 right around the time I wrote my essay on Lindsey\u2019s film, as it happens.<\/p>\nOh, and for the Trekkies out there: Yes, I do believe that the cliff from which the false prophet falls in the clip above \u2014 shortly after the 3:15 mark \u2014 is the famous \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/trekmovie.com\/2007\/11\/24\/famous-location-to-appear-in-new-star-trek-movie\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">Gorn Rock<\/a>\u201d that has appeared in several of the Star Trek<\/i> <a href=\"http:\/\/memory-alpha.org\/wiki\/Vasquez_Rocks\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">episodes and movies<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve had Hal Lindsey\u2019s The Late Great Planet Earth on the brain these last few weeks, so I figured now was as good a time as any to note that the film version of Lindsey\u2019s book, narrated by Orson Welles, is currently available for viewing on YouTube. My essay on the film, which I wrote […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n<title>Oh that end-times religion ...<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I've had Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth on the brain these last few weeks, so I figured now was as good a time as any to note that the film\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2010\/06\/oh-that-end-times-religion.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Oh that end-times religion ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I've had Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth on the brain these last few weeks, so I figured now was as good a time as any to note that the film\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2010\/06\/oh-that-end-times-religion.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"FilmChat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-06-15T23:16:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2012-10-23T02:19:22+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Peter T. 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