| I plunked down my $3 and rented "The Jupiter Menace" the other day. Bill,
if you want to invite yourself over to see it, fine, but I'll leave the room
to avoid being sick.
Remember the big "Grand Alignment" scare of a year or two ago? This was
when most of the planets would be "aligned" on one side of the Sun, and would
therefore cause cataclysmic changes on the Earth. Of course, said "alignment"
was over about 160 degrees of a circle, and the gravitational effect of the
Moon is far greater than the sum of all the rest of the planets, giant
Jupiter included, but what the hey?
Anyway, "The Jupiter Menace" is a movie about the impending doom of the Earth
because of the Grand Alignment. Narrated by George Kennedy, it comes off
looking very much like Nimoy's "In Search Of..." program, but this is 84
minutes of pure dreck.
It starts off with a bunch of ancient (5000 BC) American Indians and a human
sacrifice. (Said sacrifice has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the
plot, if any, of the film.) Cut to George Kennedy saying that these Indians
had an "amazing grasp of science and astronomy", with no data to back up these
claims except a Stonehenge-like ruin said to be able to predict planetary
orbits.
Next we get some Biblical scene, where a believer in the "God of Abraham"
shows off in front of a bunch of Baal followers. Again, completely irrelevant
to the story, and includes some awful effects of lightning from the guys hands,
rocks falling, etc. George comes on to say that there's this temple in
Jersualem that is supposed to be destroyed three times; the third due to
an incredibly large earthquake sometime in the 1981-1983 timeframe, according
to some guy who's a Bible researcher and a computer programmer (bad sounding
combination; they show him with what looks like a VT100 and LQP02). Of
course, said prophecy did not come to pass.
Next he talks about earthquakes in California and the film includes a drawn-out
"special effect" akin to the Millenium Falcon going into hyperspace; this
is meant to illustrate how earthquakes happen. Dire warnings about the
disaster that will fall on Los Angeles, clips of "survivalists" stocking
up for the Apocalypse, etc. etc.
By this time, I wasn't paying attention, so I missed the rest. The music
was interesting, but nothing to write home about. Did people actually PAY to
see this? (On the other hand, I just did... thanks a lot, Bill!)
Steve
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