A generation before the Left Behind book/film series popularized
the Rapture as an evangelical Christian scare tactic, producer-director Donald
W. Thompson and his team of true believers created A Thief in the Night, an independent feature illustrating the
horrors of the end times, according to the filmmakers’ interpretation of the
Bible. The film revolves around Patty Myers (Patty Dunning), a young Everywoman
who wakes one morning to discover that millions of Christians have disappeared
from the face of the Earth, which religious scholars within the film label the beginning of the end times. In conversations with survivors (and
flashbacks to exchanges with her Christian friends and relatives), Patty learns
she wasn’t living a sufficiently Christian lifestyle prior to the Rapture,
because even though she followed the Commandments and went to church, she didn’t
take the Big Guy into her heart.
As if the prospect of being held back from
Heaven wasn’t sufficiently grim, the filmmakers introduce another conundrum
when agents of the Antichrist seize control over the un-Raptured. The UN forms
a group called U.N.I.T.E. (United Nations Imperium of Total Emergency),
requiring every citizen to get a U.N.I.T.E. tattoo—which is, of course, a coded
version of the 6-6-6 “mark of the beast.” Even though she doesn’t immediately
realize the nefarious nature of U.N.I.T.E., Patty resists the group’s authority
with deadly results. She also ends up seeming like the bimbo heroine of some
grade-Z slasher flick, since her entire characterization is predicated on
doubting the obvious—her journey is not so much a cautionary tale about religion
as it is a cautionary tale about stupidity.
A
Thief in the Night’s first sequel, A
Distant Thunder, is highly repetitive, with Patty once again trying to
understand the breadth of the Rapture while remembering lectures from friends
who warned her about not being sufficiently Christian. A Distant Thunder is a bit slicker than its predecessor—love the
new long, straight hair, Patty!—and it’s so grim it ends with a woman being led
to a guillotine by agents of the Antichrist. However, neither film is made
particularly well, since the style Thompson uses for both movies exists
somewhere between that of a clumsy educational film and that of a low-budget
horror movie. Additionally, the acting in both movies is across-the-board-terrible.
Plus, since the pictures are designed to communicate religious messages, the
drama stops at regular intervals so a preacher or some similar character can
pontificate about the obligations of faith.
Still, A Thief in the Night and A
Distant Thunder have a weird sort of intensity simply because of the
apocalyptic subject matter. The Christians in these movies spend all their time
frightening non-Christians with threats of eternal damnation, and during the
beginning of A Thief in the Night,
several Christians actually sing a gloomy tune called “I Wish We’d All Been
Ready.” Sample lyrics: “A man and wife asleep in bed, she hears a noise and
turns her head, he’s gone—I wish we’d all been ready.” Bummer, man! Anyway,
Thompson wasn’t done exploring the end times after making A Distant Thunder, so he wrapped up Patty’s story in Image of the Beast (1981) and then
concluded the series with The Prodigal
Planet (1983).
A Thief in the Night: LAME
Distant Thunder: LAME
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