"In Search of Noah's Ark" was the first Sunn "Classics" film about the quasi-paranormal aspects of Christianity, though it should have been the last. Narrated by the Great Bearded One, Brad Crandall, "In Search of Noah's Ark" is a collection of cheaply-filmed re-enactments surrounded by shots of Crandall talking to various pastors, "scientists", and eyewitnesses of eyewitnesses in various locales ranging from America to Turkey. The film begins by recounting the story of Noah, a Jewish man living in what is now Iraq, and how he was told by God to build an ark and populate it with all the world's animals and Noah's immediate family, "because of the world's wickedness." Somehow he is able to build a craft the size of six football fields (according to Crandall) with only his three sons as the workforce, then the animals CAME to Noah "because God had told them that Noah was their friend." All the while Noah's decidedly non-Semitic looking neighbors jeered and laughed, especially when the Santa-like Noah locked himself and his family inside the Ark. After a week the rains began, and we are treated with fake-looking waves smashing trees and buckets of water being thrown at the villagers from off camera. After some shots of a model ark in a swimming pool and the wives feeding the animals (who are mainly goats, chimpanzees, and a parrot!) the storm ends, and the ark lands on Mt. Ararat. After Noah exits stage right, the movie switches from being a Sunday school video and lurches into "In Search of..." territory. According to Crandall and the slew of "experts", there is proof of a world-wide flood in the fossil and archeological records. Unfortunately that "proof" was later debunked. (See the online "Skeptic's Dictionary" for more info.) After the "proof" is introduced, then come story after story of post-Biblical witnesses of Noah's Ark. From stories of early pilgrims who climbed Mt. Ararat in order to take bits of the pitch-soaked wood for relics (we see one of the caveman-looking dudes fall to his death,) to 19th century German doctors who saw the site and a nearby monastery filled with Ark artifacts (since destroyed by an earthquake), even an Armenian shepherd who climbed on top of the ark as a boy in the early 1900s! After 1900, the claims get wilder and wilder; in the middle of losing WWI, the Czar sent Russian troops to the Ark after Russian recon planes spotted it on the Russo-Ottoman front, but the records were lost after the 1917 revolution; that the Soviet Union did recon flights over Mt. Ararat from 1937 to 1947; that the "Stars & Stripes" Army newspaper printed photos of the Ark taken by US Army Air Force pilots supplying the USSR from Turkey duing WWII; and that a Frenchman brought bits of the Ark back in 1968. None of these claims has stood the test of time, especially the alleged "Stars & Stripes" photos. In fact, "In Search of Noah's Ark" has no eyewitness testimony, just people who claimed that they had spoken to eyewitnesses such as an illustrator who drew sketches of what the Armenian shepherd had seen, or a man who claimed to have met a Soviet Air Force pilot who said that his country had made flights over Ararat. What is weird about "In Search of Noah's Ark" is that it makes these claims, then points out how inhospitable the mountain is by telling the viewer that the mountain is rocky, avalanche-prone, and that the peak (where the Ark supposedly resides) is covered in a glacier which thaws and re-freezes every day, thus creating a dense fog. The only proof given that Mt. Ararat IS the "Ararat" of the Bible is that the Kurdish peasants in the area have a tradition that the Ark is somewhere on the mountain and have given every village in the area an Ark-themed name.
So what was the point of all of this? I mean, if you are a "Bible-believing" Christian, why do you need proof of Noah's existance? We have to remember when this film was made; the mid-1970s saw a revival of Fundamentalist Christianity and TV shows about the paranormal were beginning to be shown. (In fact, the Leonard Nimoy hosted "In Search of.." first aired in 1976; I'm guessing Sunn ripped-off the title.) So Sunn both gets the Fundy family dollar AND wanna-be Forteans cash! This "film" deservedly has been out of print on VHS for some time; I was only able to rent through the best video store in San Diego. Avoid unless you want to giggle a lot.
So what was the point of all of this? I mean, if you are a "Bible-believing" Christian, why do you need proof of Noah's existance? We have to remember when this film was made; the mid-1970s saw a revival of Fundamentalist Christianity and TV shows about the paranormal were beginning to be shown. (In fact, the Leonard Nimoy hosted "In Search of.." first aired in 1976; I'm guessing Sunn ripped-off the title.) So Sunn both gets the Fundy family dollar AND wanna-be Forteans cash! This "film" deservedly has been out of print on VHS for some time; I was only able to rent through the best video store in San Diego. Avoid unless you want to giggle a lot.