Author: Unknown
Year: Unknown
Back in 2002, I worked at a video store over in Colorado. It was a mom and pop type thing attacked to a gas station, but we were the only store for 50 miles that sold movies. We also bought VHS tapes and DVDs from people who wanted to get rid of them. One day, a middle-aged man came into our store with about 500 video tapes he wanted to unload on us for $100. His father, a retired General, had just died and his son didn't want the video tapes he had been willed. Even though the VHS format was dying, 500 tapes for $100 was a good deal. The next day, he brought a van full of tapes to us. We paid him the money in cash. He was a nice guy, and even helped bring the boxes of tapes in. I was given the job of sorting through them and throwing out the broken ones. I was supposed to watch them and determine which ones were marketable, too.
I began looking through the boxes and there was the usual fare. I saw seven copies of Jerry McGuire, two copies of Dracula, a rare director's cut of ET, and other Hollywood blockbusters. There were some old B-movies too, but half of them were broken. By the third box, I saw a movie so campy and shitty-looking that I couldn't resist popping it in. It was called "The MONSTER from Planet SPACE: IN the YEAR 2000!!!" That was the exact typography. I kid you not. The description on the back said "A delightful romp through one of the worst movies of all time! A must-own for classic B-movie collectors!" I had never heard of the director, one "Marc-Antonio Guttierez."
Jesus, it was shit. It was sort of like something by Ed Wood, but even worse (if you can even imagine that). The basic plot - if you can call it that - was that a monster from "Planet Space" (seriously, couldn't they think of a better name for a planet than that?) was invading a pseudo-futuristic Earth. The dialogue and acting was shit. I even saw one of the characters obviously reading from a script. I was about to give up on it when something weird happened: midway through the movie, it rewound. Two seconds later, grainy footage appeared on the screen, but the quality was still better than the rest of the tape. I was intrigued.
It appeared to take place in some sort of brick room. There were torches and some kind of pentagram drawn on the floor. Standing around it were people in cloaks. Strangely, I could recognize most of them. One of them had a silhouette that looked like he was wearing a stereotypical General's outfit - I could only assume this was the previous owner of the tape. The rest I could recognize were extremely powerful people. I saw Ronald Reagan chanting in a low voice, Richard Nixon, a younger Bill Clinton, George Bush Sr., George Bush Jr., Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, John F. Kennedy, Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nikita Kruschev, Leonid Brezhnev, and someone who looked like Adolf Hitler. All of them were chanting in a language I didn't know. I think it was Latin.
After about three minutes of this, two babies were brought in. They were put on a stone table in the center of the circle. Reagan, at the head of the group, stepped forward and stabbed one of the crying infants. He smeared some of the blood on othe other child's forehead as the group chanted...something over and over. It sounded like "Contra-Christus" to me, which I'm pretty sure is Latin for "Anti-Christ". A cup of the baby's blood was passed around the group and each member took a sip.
A dark figure appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. I felt a chill go down my spine. The figure stepped forward and blessed the child the cloaked figures had chanted toward. It then turned toward the camera and looked directly at it. The figure had an evil, demonic face. It was scarred and its eyes appeared to just be black holes. Looking at it, I'm pretty sure I was gazing into the eyes of Satan himself. The video jumped and that terrible movie began playing again. Wherever this footage came from, someone had taped over this movie to record it. I shut it off and told my boss. He viewed the footage and puked when he saw the child get stabbed. He immediately shut it off after that and never saw the Satan figure. He put the tape in the store vault and I was given the rest of the day off.
The next day, several black-suited individuals appeared at the store and asked for the tape. We gave it to them and they placed it in a safe they'd brought in. We were told to never mention the tape ever again and, if asked about it, claim it never existed. They then put the safe into an armored truck and drove off. Years later, I saw another copy of "The MONSTER from Planet SPACE: IN the YEAR 2000!!!" in another video store. I bought it and watched it, fearing for what would happen. There was no cult footage or satanic rituals. It was just that shitty movie. The copy I had seen was unique and probably at the bottom of some government vault now. Still, I wish I had never seen what I did.