Tribulation 99 is “both a skewed history of United States intervention in Latin America and a satire of conspiracy thinking . . . In one sense, Tribulation is a Cold-War sci-fi cheapster in the apocalyptic-warning tradition of Invasion U.S.A. and Red Planet Mars. Baldwin calls it 'the hidden history of postwar intervention in Latin America by alien invaders,' and the joke, of course, is on the notion of 'alien' . . . Rather than stage this comic drama, Baldwin illustrates it with a heady mix of images culled from a variety of newsreels, travelogues, industrial films, TV commercials, Mexican horror flicks, and Hollywood movies shot off the tube. The range of this found footage, as well as the sensibility, mirrors Baldwin's taste as programmer for the Other Cinema in San Francisco."