The Hellstrom Chronicle

1971 mockumentary documentary

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A fake scientist explains how bugs will wind up outliving people.

So the scientist in this might be completely fake, but the message--that the insect world, savage and resilient, will be around long after we superior humans have scienced ourselves into oblivion--certainly is timely with very real scientist making terrifying pronouncements about the doomsday clock and very stupid politicians ignoring the whole thing. Man, I dig that scientist guy, the titular Dr. Hellstrom played by Lawrence Pressman. You're just about duped that he's this scientific prophet of the apocalypse even with the poetic narration, all the talk about how "Life must take life for the sake of life itself" or "Learn the inevitable destiny of ignorance" or something being "as limitless as the imagination of the insane."

The real star of this faux-documentary-with-an-actual-documentary-hidden-inside would be the insect photography. The whole thing begins lava-tastically, a scene that can only be described as lava rape. From there, you get these impossible close-ups like in Microcosmos or The Besieged Fortress, and if you like either or both of those, there's more than enough for you to love here, too. Almost impossibly beautiful, these time-lapse shots or tight shots on insects could almost fool you into thinking CGI was involved. It wasn't though because Dr. Hellstrom would never lie to you.

This would make a great double feature with The Day After, that TV movie about nuclear apocalypse. Insects, you feel, will giggle at our corpses after we're gone. Dr. Hellstrom tried to tell you so.