Chariots of the Gods

Documentary based on Eric von Daniken's famous book, which deals with ancient mysteries and specifically whether aliens visited Earth centuries ago. The gimmick in the book is to suggest outlandish theories but always to phrase them in the form of a question. This way von Daniken can always backpedal and say things like "I didn't say that the Bible has aliens in it. I just asked what if it does?" It's a clever huckster's trick but it served him well as he made a career writing books like this using the same technique.

I love the footage of the various locations and artifacts. That the footage has that vintage '70s look is an added bonus. It's talky and a little dry but still interesting and worth a look. As far as documentaries on ancient aliens or forgotten history goes, this is pretty good. For the absolute best in this type of material, you'd have to watch the Leonard Nimoy "In Search Of..." series.

Let me start off by saying that I love movies and documentaries about the paranormal, strange phenomena and unexplained mysteries. I particular enjoyed the old Rod Serling specials produced by Alan and Sally Landsburg, but I always regretted not having seen Chariots of the Gods.

I didn't miss anything.

On the face of it, this film would make a lovely travelogue of Mexico and South America because, despite the premise of exploring and/or revealing ancient mysteries, it actually does very little of either.

True, all the old familiar sites are visited, but the bland narration does little more than tell you that these places are associated with mysterious doings. It would be like a documentary on ghosts and hauntings showing only the exterior of the Amityville house and saying vaguely "...and the Lutz family claimed to have experienced something here, in this house."

The photography is very nice, the camera angles fresh and dramatic, but as I mentioned earlier, the narration (both the text itself and the narrators) is monotonously bland and surprisingly UN-informative; which negates any instructional value the film might have had as a documentary. Again, just change the narration and this could be a fine travelogue.

I suspect that the high ratings people give this title are based merely on that -the title and its association with the excellent and influential book- and less on the film itself. I also suspect that people are remembering the soundtrack LP (and later CDs) of the excellent Peter Thomas score -which ironically is almost unrecognizable in the garbled monaural sound mix of the film itself.

My opinion is that you should ignore this film and look instead at the much more dramatic and informative In Search of Ancient Astronauts (which is itself a far superior re-edit of this film, narrated by Rod Serling), or any of the other Landsburg productions, like In Search of Ancient Mysteries, The Outer Space Connection or Encounter With The Unknown.

For that matter, track down the old In Search Of... TV programs or Robert Stack ferreting out those Unsolved Mysteries.

I still recall what a stunning impact this "documentary" had on my family -- including my father, a professor -- when we saw it on television in the early '70's.

Of course, all of von Däniken's assertions have been thoroughly and utterly debunked in the meantime, and von Däniken turned out to be a complete fraud, but still, this was the first time I had ever heard of the Plains of Nazca, so I have to thank Erich for that.

I much prefer the German title to the English: "Erinnerungen an die Zukunft" or "Memories of the Future".

In the beginning there was the book "Intelligent Life in the Universe," whose co-authors (Iosif Shklovsky and Carl Sagan) cautiously postulated that the ancient Babylonian legend of Oannes might represent an instance of paleocontact. There were also the Tassili frescoes, whose nominal discoverer (Henri Lhote) believed that they depicted extraterrestrial beings. And that was pretty much it.

Then, in 1967, came Erich von Däniken. Millions read his book "Chariots of the Gods?" and millions more saw this documentary film that was based on it. The viewer was presented with beautifully-shot footage of various archaeological ruins around the world (accompanied by Peter Thomas's shimmering, irresistible soundtrack), and the belief that "aliens built the Pyramids" became cemented in the popular consciousness. So, too, did the patently ridiculous notion that the Nazca lines of Peru were landing strips for alien aircraft. Von Däniken later conceded that he had simply made this up.

And that's the problem: he was happy to make things up if it sold books. Shklovsky and Sagan had emphasized very specific criteria in the interpretation of ancient legends as reports of contact between earthlings and intelligent extraterrestrial lifeforms, hence their careful choice of a single legend which *might* represent such contact. In von Däniken's view, any legend or pile of ruins was fair game; if it was old, then it was attributable to aliens. It goes without saying that this total indifference to accuracy has done enormous damage to the field of Paleo-SETI.

(Incidentally, von Däniken's critics have been just as indifferent in their dismissal of the Paleo-SETI theory's particulars, and two wrongs don't make a right. Yes, von Däniken is a clown, but that doesn't explain away the Piri Reis maps, whose mysteries were documented well before the ancient astronauts craze in Charles Hapgood's "Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings." And yes, *some* of the Tassili frescoes were faked, but the two featured prominently in this film--the horned faceless figure and the so-called Great God Mars--evidently are not among the fabrications. This can be confirmed via a Google search, but of course most people won't bother.)

Now being a man of no religious faith at all, I was curious to see just how far this ultimate in conspiracy theories could be strung out by Harald Reinl and you know what, I think he makes a decent fist of asking some questions and suggesting some plausibly alternative answers to some long-held imponderables. Hollywood has long shown us bamboo scaffolding being use by willing (or not) labourers to build the pyramids at Giza or in Mexico, or to sculpt the effigies and tombs at the likes of (the original) Abu Simbel or at dozens of sites across Mesoamerica. Ok, so he does quote some highly spurious statistics and source a few Soviet-style scientific sceptics of all things deific, but a lot of the questions it raises about engineering, construction and man-hours do merit a bit of thought. Just how long did it take to build the tomb of Khufu at 2 tons per stone multiplied by one million stones that they had to raise up to four hundred feet off the sand? Why are all the stone heads on Easter Island so exact, and similar? Why was the obsession about the sun and the moon and stars so prevalent across the globe when contact between peoples was impossible? Could there really have been visitors from outer space who founded every religion on earth? Who gave us architecture or geometry or even fire and the wheel? Of course it's all highly speculative stuff, this, and is very easy to cynically dismiss as nonsense, but looked at with an open-mind it is no less believable or unsubstantiated at times than claims that there is an an almighty deity out there somewhere taking credit for our glories whilst blaming humanity when it goes horribly wrong. Regardless of it's flawed philosophy, it's still a good excuse to go on a trawl to some amazing archeological locations across the world and admire some astonishing and enduring artistry that symbolises and chronicles much of the early evolution of the human race. The rest of it? Now where did I put the salt?