Maryann Rachford | Through the Shattered Lens

1981’s Image of the Beast picks up from where A Distant Thunder ended.

The world is in economic and political chaos, largely as a result of millions of people vanishing a few years before. (The government says the people were abducted by UFOs but everyone left behind knows it was actually the rapture.) Brother Christopher and the United Nations are controlling the world. Order is kept by UNITE. Those who fail to get the Mark on either their palm or their forehead are not allowed to buy food or get healthcare. In fact, Brother Christopher has declared that the mark is no longer optional and anyone who refuses to get it will be executed.

A Distant Thunder ended with Patty Myers (Patty Dunning) facing the guillotine and that’s where Image of the Beast picks up. She is given one final chance to voluntarily take the mark before being put under the blade but, in obvious fear and shock, Patty says nothing. Two UNITE soldiers tie her the ground, with her neck directly under the guillotine’s blade.

Finally, Patty yells, “I want the mark!”

However, at the same time that Patty makes the declaration, an earthquake hits and the skies turn black. The cowardly soldiers run off, leaving Patty under the blade. Realizing that she is witnessing the breaking of one of the apocalyptic seals, Patty attempts to free herself from her bounds. Unfortunately, she moves around so much that the loosened blade comes crashing down and she promptly loses her head.

So much for Patty!

The action then shifts to a new character, a Christian rebel named David Michaels (William Wellman, Jr., who also played a different role in every single Billy Jack movie). David, who has disguised himself as a member of UNITE, is looking for Leslie (Wenda Shereos), another Christian who escaped from execution during the earthquake. David doesn’t find her but he does stumble upon Kathy (Susan Plumb), Kathy’s son (Ben Sampson), and the Rev. Matthew Turner (Russell S. Doughten, JR., who not only produced the Thief In The Night films but who also directed films like Nite Song). Rev. Turner lives in a farmhouse and looks a lot like Santa Claus. He has a helpful graph on his wall that can be used to understand just how far along the world is into the apocalypse.

As Rev. Turner explains it, computers are the new “golden calf.” Why, people believe that computer can do anything better than humans! They’re letting computer run their lives and Brother Christopher is using that to his advantage! (Keep in mind, this film was made in 1981 so the computer that he’s talking about are those big, boxy computers that took hours to do the simplest tasks.) Fortunately, David used to be a computer technician and he thinks that he’s come up with a way to 1) create a counterfeit mark and 2) corrupt Brother Christopher’s precious computer system!

(Calculators, interestingly enough, are referred to as being hand computers. If nothing else, this film proves that paranoia about technology is hardly a new phenomena.)

Much like the previous films in the series, there’s a lot of scenes of the heroes trying to sneak around Des Moines without blowing their cover and revealing themselves to be believers. And like A Distant Thunder, there’s a lot of talk about events that are happening that we never actually see. This one of those films that deals with its low budget by having all of the big events happen off-screen. The characters in this film spend a lot of time listening to breathless news reports on the radio and on television. And while that can feel a bit anti-climatic, it’s also strangely effective in its way. It captures the feeling of finding yourself in a situation where you’re never quite sure if you’re hearing the truth and it also captures the feeling of helplessness that comes from knowing that there are huge things happening that you can’t control. While the film is a bit too talky for its own good, director Donald W. Thompson does a good job of creating an atmosphere of sustained paranoia. Every time that David and Kathy walk around Des Moines, you’re expecting someone to grab them. The fact that Des Moines, itself, is hardly a shadowy metropolis adds to paranoia. “If this could happen in Iowa,” the film seems to be saying, “it could happen anywhere.”

Image of the Beast was a success on the church circuit and it was followed by one final Thief in the Night film, which I will discuss tomorrow.

The 1978 film, A Distant Thunder, opens with a group of people confined in what appears to be a high school gym. They have cots to sleep on and not much else. They have been informed that they have a choice to make. They can either agree to take “the mark” and declare their allegiance to the United Nations and Brother Christopher or they can be executed. They have a day to decide.

Many of the people are willing to go to their death rather than get the mark. But Patty Myers (Patty Dunning) isn’t so sure. Her friends and fellow prisoners encourage her to refuse the mark but Patty says that she doesn’t know if she can stay loyal to a God who would allow so many bad things to happen. One of her friends asks Patty to tell the story of how she came to be a prisoner of UNITE, the UN’s secret police force….

A Distant Thunder is a sequel to 1972’s A Thief In the Night and the first twenty minutes of A Distant Thunder is made up of flashbacks to the previous film. Once again, we see how Patty had a dream about waking up to discover that her husband and all the other Christians in the world had mysteriously vanished and now, the UN was in charge of everything. We even get the phenomenom of flashbacks within flashbacks as Patty remembers the times that she remembered her former life. A Thief In the Night ended with Patty being tossed over a bridge by her friends, Jerry (Thom Rachford) and Diane (Maryann Rachford), just for Patty to then wake up and discover that her husband really was missing and her dream was coming true!

Once A Distant Thunder finishes up its recap of the first film, it follows Patty as she hides out on a farm with her friends, Wenda (Sally Johnson) and Wenda’s little sister, Sandy (Sandy Christian). While they hide out, the world around grows more and more hostile. There are wars. There is a plague. Brother Christopher announces that everyone will be required to have a special form of identification if they want to buy products, receive government food, or even get healthcare for their children. Eventually, Brother Christopher announces that the identification is no longer optional. People can either get the mark or they can face execution. Wenda, who goes from being a nonbeliever to being a Christian, is determined to not get the mark. Patty is more conflicted.

At a church-turned-death house in Des Moines, Patty, Wenda, and Sandy wait for their time with the guillotine and also their chance to make their final decision….

A Distant Thunder was made by the same people who did the first film and the majority of the first film’s cast returns for the sequel, which provides a nice sense of continuity between A Thief In the Night and A Distant Thunder. Unfortunately, A Distant Thunder never quite reaches the fever dream intensity of A Thief In The Night. A Thief In the Night worked because its imagery often captured the stark horror of an intense nightmare. A Distant Thunder is a much more talky film and, as such, it exposes the defecencies of the largely amateur cast.

That said, there are a few moments where A Distant Thunder matches the first film’s atmosphere of paranoia. As with the first film, A Distant Thunder benefits from having been filmed in Ames, Iowa. Seeing the forces of UNITE invading the actual heartland was surreal in a way that the film never would have been if it had been set in a large and familiar city. The scene where Patty and Wenda first see the guillotine is also effectively done. It’s a frightening sight, all the more so because it’s standing in front of a fairly innocuous-looking church. Seriously, people make fun of guillotines now but, as devices of punishment, they pretty much radiated the promise of a bloody death.

That said, the film is done in by its slow pace and its less than convincing performances. Still, A Distant Thunder was enough of a success that it led to a sequel that I’ll look at tomorrow.