The Summary for this partially viewed film was compiled from the 5 Feb 1991 Village Voice, the 3 Jul 1992 LA Reader, and the 7-13 Dec 2006 LA City Beat.
       No production credits are given other than the following: “Reported by [Craig] Baldwin, assisted by [director of photography Bill] Daniel and [narrator Sean] Kilcoyne.”
       Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies Under America begins with the following information: “Warning: This film is not fiction. It is the shocking truth about the coming apocalypse and the events that have led up to it.” The story is preceded by the following biblical passage: “And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be loosed from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations which are at the four corners of the Earth, to gather them for battle.--Revelation 20:7.” A title card establishes time and place: “1000 A.D. Planet Quetzacoatl.” Voiceover narration introduces the following information: ”Quetzacoatl, a hidden planet orbiting the sun exactly opposite the earth. A thermonuclear war a thousand years ago blasts the planet apart into the billions of pieces that formed the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Despite massive genetic damage, an elite corps of Quetzils managed to escape in their disc-shaped space craft to earth.” During the story, compiler-filmmaker Craig Baldwin flashes information cards, including “The Beginning of the End,” “The Bottomless Pit,” “Climax of the Sunspot Cycle,” and “Men Scorched with Fire and Great Heat.”
       Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies Under America was presented as a documentary by retired U.S. Air Force Captain “Craig Baldwin,” who has “looked long and seen deeply enough to unearth the sinister currents which threaten our world,” according to the 2006 DVD release, whose subtitle was changed to Alien Anomalies Across America. Baldwin claimed that the aliens, and their minion earthlings, had suppressed all knowledge of their evil deeds, and he was forced to recreate the “truth” by editing together old Hollywood horror movies, newsreels, industrial and educational films, and various other “found” sources. Eventually, the Quetzils were able to brainwash Baldwin into dismissing his own Tribulation 99 as a “pseudo-pseudo-documentary obsessively organized into 99 paranoid rants.”
       According to the 12 Aug 1992 Time Out of London, England, Baldwin compiled his script “from journals like Covert Action Information Bulletin, and stuff from the wacko fringe people who have a network underground about flying saucers and the Hollow Earth.” Baldwin defended his modus operandi with: “I thought these types of fantasy had some sort of truth value [that] reflected some psychic truth about fear and paranoia.”
       Tribulation 99 premiered 8 Feb 1991 in New York City, according to the 28 Jan 1991 Var and 5 Feb 1991 Village Voice. Reviews were positive. The 31 Dec 1991 HR declared, “By cross-referencing actual events in our history with their counterpart movie monsters, Baldwin actually hopes to seriously attack the evil political infrastructures around the world that threaten to ultimately destroy us.” The 27 Jul 1992 Var wrote, “In the current climate of escalating local and international disasters, the effect [of Baldwin’s scattershot use of real and fictional images] is at once hilarious—and almost credible.” The general consensus of critics, who went along with Baldwin’s conceit, was that there was no more reasonable explanation than secret space aliens for modern U.S. foreign policy.
       The 27 Jul 1992 Var reported that Tribulation 99 won the “New Visions” prize at the San Francisco Film Festival’s Golden Gate Awards.