Started by Ron Ormond, and then finished by his son, Tim, It’s About the Second Coming was one of the many religious pictures he and his family made later in life. It’s not quite in the same league as the incredible If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? (then again, what could be?), but there are plenty of solid laughs and a few touches of the patented jaw-dropping lunacy you’ve come to expect from the Ormond clan.
Because Ron handed the directorial reins to Tim halfway through production, the film has a choppy feel. It’s essentially about The Book of Revelations. Our main story focuses on a guy who doesn’t have time for the Lord because he’s too busy going out to Ruby Tuesdays and disco dancing. Once The Rapture occurs, he finds himself Kirk Cameroned and left behind. He then is hunted down by the evil “global police”.
The Tribulation scenes are pretty great. They feel like a mix of Escape from New York, Star Wars (a Han Solo toy blaster is a prop), Freejack, and Left Behind. The parts where the “global police” ride around in jeeps and blast citizens with laser cannons in skid row alleyways are especially memorable.
It’s still really uneven though. You’ve got to sit through a lot of sermonizing and biblical recreations (like the story of Abraham) before you get to the good (cheesy) stuff. In one great bit, the Antichrist causes a preacher to have a heart attack mid-sermon. It almost plays like a religious version of Scanners or something. We also get a lot of weird/silly/cool imagery including corpses jumping up from their grave, glowing knights riding out of the sky, and a badass guillotine contraption. Even with the herky-jerky narrative, the fifty-five-minute running time flies by, and there’s enough WTF moments here to make it another winner from the Ormonds’ religious period.
AKA: The Second Coming.
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