“In this documentary film narrated by George Kennedy, we investigate the planet Jupiter and the secret power it holds over our planet Earth.  Directors Peter Matulavich and Lee Auerbach have combined years of research and interviews with the nation’s leading scientists and historians.  The result is a documentary with such impact that it must be watched and then watched again to fully grasp the tremendous amount of information and prophetic study packed into all 80 minutes!  Discover the Jupiter Menace!” 

The world is doomed, and nothing can be done about it.

Directed by Lee Auerbach and Peter Matulavich (who wrote several episodes of In Search Of) and written by Matulavich and Alan Coats, this tells us that by the year 2000 — 26 years ago — the poles of our planet would move and send us into space, as a grand alignment would cause volcanoes to explode, earthquakes to shatter cities and, well, you wouldn’t want to live on this planet, let me tell you that much.

That’s because Jupiter and Saturn — “Jupiter and Saturn, Oberon, Miranda and Titania, Neptune, Titan, stars can frighten” — were about to move as well, and the Bible says that will happen, and so do astrologers and the Anasazi. Chester Brooks, a computer programmer and church deacon, explains in this movie how he programmed his computer with every reference to natural catastrophes in the Bible, then uses a simple map to calculate that the Dome of the Rock will be destroyed in the near future. 

So do John Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann, who said that this alignment of the planets would cause major disasters, including a large earthquake on the San Andreas Fault, in their 1974 book The Jupiter Effect. A rare planetary alignment when Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto would be on the same side of the Sun would produce enough tidal forces on our system’s big star. 

The documentary highlights the San Andreas Fault as a scar and features Peter Franken (a former Pentagon researcher) describing a nightmare scenario where Los Angeles is taken out, resulting in over 100,000 immediate deaths and grotesque injuries. Then, technicians use a computer to simulate a 12-point earthquake on the Richter scale, a force 10,000 times more powerful than the 1906 San Francisco quake.

When the alignment happened on March 10, 1982, no major disasters occurred. Gribbin later disavowed the theory, admitting in The Little Book of Science that he “don’t like it, and I’m sorry I ever had anything to do with it” In 1982, he and Plagemann published The Jupiter Effect Reconsidered, shifting the focus to a supposed 1980 event linked to Mount St. Helens, though this also lacked evidence, as you would expect.

Plagemann, Jeffrey Goodman and John White, who wrote Pole Shift. appear in this, along with psychics Clarissa Bernhardt (who claims to have predicted over 30 earthquakes and visualizes the San Francisco Bay becoming an inland sea and the East Coast being ravaged by volcanic activity) and Alex Tanous, and CSA leader James Ellison (an American white supremacist and this group means The Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord, a radical paramilitary and survivalist group active in the 70s and 80s). There is also a group of people who plan on living in the sky, the STEL Community, before they come back to the surface to rule. Located 60 miles south of Chicago, this group planned to build 3,000 airships by 1999 to hover above the Earth during the cataclysm, before building a new community they named Philadelphia.

What’s insane is that both of these groups are presented as sane and not at all fringe.

Why should you watch this? Because George Kennedy needed a paycheck, and I can respect that. It also has a soundtrack by Larry Fast, who is also Synergy. On his site, Fast says, “Larry Fast is best known for his series of pioneering electronic music albums recorded under the project name SYNERGY. He is also recognized for his decade-long work with Peter Gabriel, playing synthesizer on recordings and tours, and serving as part of the production team on many of Peter’s albums. During his career, Larry has worked as an electronic music composer/arranger and producer, contributing to numerous platinum-selling recordings with world-renowned artists. Performers as diverse as Nektar, Bonnie Tyler, Foreigner, Hall & Oates,  Annie Haslam (Renaissance), The Strawbs, Meat Loaf, Barbra Streisand and many others have called on Larry’s electronic production talents.” He also played synth on “Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young” and “Nowhere Fast” for the  Streets of Fire soundtrack, as well as on Hall and Oates’ “Private Eyes” and Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” 

Much like an off-brand Sunn movie, this has two narrators, the other being C. Lindsay Workman, who was the voice of God in Garfield: His Nine Lives. And hey — the cinematographer was Robert Harmon, who went on to direct The Hitcher and shot stills on Nocturna, Tourist Trap, Fairy Tales, Fade to Black and Hell Night.

You can watch this on YouTube.