In Search of Noah's Ark

Re 'The individual who brought down pieces of the alleged Ark actually cooked them in his oven at home to "age" them'.

You're thinking of George Jammal, who appeared in CBS's 'The Incredible Discovery of Noah's Ark' in 1993 - and, yes, ultimately proved to be a hoaxer.

Jammal wasn't in the 1976 film.

The 1976 film is still certainly worth a watch today...in fact, I wouldn't mind seeing a remake of it, re-examining the accounts of eyewitnesses sources from 1976 and investigating claims of sighting which have taken place over the past 25 years.

I have this on tape and I'm not sure why. I enjoy watching it but I don't believe it. I do find it amusing how several other reviews refer to it as "Christian" when the story of Noah predates Christianity by 2 thousand years or more and is included in the Jewish and Muslim teachings as well - shows what they know (or do not know)about the bible and theology. In any case, whether or not you are a believer, this movie is totally unconvincing. I do not understand how so many people could have climbed the mountain with the sole purpose of finding the ark, and yet not one photograph or piece of video of the ark, exists after all of these endeavors. Oh the movie claims a guy found it and drew maps but he died, a guy photographed it from a helicopter but he was murdered etc. but the most amusing story is that of two atheists that were led up by a Christian and saw it. They became so outraged they wanted to destroy it and kill the Christian! But... one asked the other "If we kill him how will we find our way back...?" so they spare this hapless person's life in exchange for his guidance and silence! Yea right! "How will we get back?" - let's see, you're up on a mountain... seems to me you head in a downward direction and you'll be "back" when you get to the bottom! The man finally breaks his silence on his deathbed. Right! I think Bill Cosby's story of Noah is more credible than this one. This movie could not convince even the most gullible viewer but for some reason I find it entertaining. Perhaps the absurdity of it amuses me, I don't know, it might be convincing if we were still living in 1976 when it was made but not today.

This movie was a lot like the earlier von Däniken books and movies like "Chariots of the Gods". But instead of attributing the mysteries of the world to space aliens, this movie started with existing Bible stories about the Great Flood. So instead of promoting space alien sensationalism, this movie exploits literal Bible belief.

As a child watching the movie, the documentary tone was interesting, but even then its "science" seemed backed up by people seeking to match a story to anything they could discover, rather than explain evidence they could find. If the movie was unconvincing to even me as a child, it didn't do its job as a documentary. The movie has nothing to prove -- a Bible literalist would believe the movie's claims before seeing it, and no one else would find the movie credible. It lacks even camp entertainment value.

My dad took me to see this film in 1976. I was 5, and bored to tears. You know a movie is bad when at 5 one can differentiate a toy boat in a disturbed bathtub from an ark on an angry ocean.

My dad was responsible for a lot of awful movies as a young child. It is amazing I grew up to love films after some of the things he dragged me to. Runners up include Pete's Dragon, and Popeye.

Curiously, I have kept an eye out for In Search of Noah's Ark, hoping to catch it out of the blue on television over the years. But, alas, no luck. I'm surprised there are so many people who remember this movie. Wow. Now I don't feel so alone.

I vaguely remember seeing this movie on TV as a kid. And while I only remember a few actual scenes - I distinctly remember buying into everything the movie said at the time, only to realize years later that pretty much all of it was bull-plop.

A lot of what the movie said was simply false. There have never been any confirmed expeditions that actually found anything remotely resembling Noah's Ark in Turkey or anywhere else.

Other things the movie presented were not exactly false - but nonetheless extremely deceiving. I remember a number of scenes in which a toy boat of the same supposed dimensions of the Ark bobbed in a bathtub while crew members shook the bathtub to simulate waves which would amount to 40-foot tidal waves if the toy Ark were actual size. Lo and behold - the toy Ark didn't sink, thus confirming (at least in the narrator's view) that such a design of real size could survive actual 40-foot tidal waves. Nice analogy - but total rubbish nonetheless since a basic principle of increasing size and mass is that while the strength of an object increases proportionately with its surface area, its weight increases proportionately with its entire volume. It's why you can drop an ant from a height that would amount to a 1000-foot drop for a person, and it will scamper away without so much as a sore ankle. And of course the dedicated scientists who made this movie placed toy boats of different designs into the same bathtub as a control group to demonstrate that only the toy boat that looked like the Ark wasn't crushed by the proportionate 40-foot tidal waves produced by jiggling the tub. And after that world peace broke out, Hillary volunteered to go to jail for violating federal security laws, and Trump released all of his tax records.

While the movie itself is quite bad, it is nonetheless an interesting example of how and why false information spreads so rapidly, and that it is a twofold phenomenon - those who disseminate false information, and those who believe it.