October Positivity: Image of the Beast (dir by Donald W. Thompson)

Posted on October 25, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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.

October Positivity: A Distant Thunder (dir by Donald W. Thompson)

Posted on October 24, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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.

Film Review: A Thief In The Night (dir by Donald W. Thompson)

Posted on August 25, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1972, A Thief In The Night is one of the most successful independent films ever made.

Shot in Iowa with a largely amateur cast, A Thief In The Night was made for a budget of $68,000. During the first decade of its release, it made a profit of 4.2 million dollars. Interestingly enough, the film itself rarely played in theaters and the majority of the money came from donations made by the members of the audience. Consider that. Audiences had the opportunity to watch the movie for free and still chose to pay. People were either extremely generous in the 70s or the film’s target audience really responded to it.

In a 1989 interview, the film’s producer estimated that the film had been seen by 100 million people. By the time the 2010s rolled around, that number had grown to 300 million. Though the film never got much attention from the mainstream press, it was a big enough success to spawn three sequels and to also inspire countless other films that dealt with the same themes as this film.

As for what the film’s about, it opens with Patty (played by Patty Dunning) waking up and discovering that her husband has disappeared. (His razor is sitting in the sink, almost as if he had been holding it before suddenly vanishing into thin air.) Over the radio, she hears reports that people all over the world have disappeared! Religious scholars are saying that perhaps the rapture has happened. Interestingly, those religious scholars have apparently been left behind and …. wait a minute! Patty’s been left behind too!

The first half of the film is full of flashbacks to Patty’s childhood and how she first met and married Jim Wright (Mike Niday). Interestingly enough, the flashbacks don’t necessarily play out in chronological order, which gives the entire first half of the film a stream-of-consciousness feel. We also get a somewhat random scene of Jim getting bitten by what appears to be a cobra. It feels like one of those things where you simply don’t turn down the chance to put a cobra in your film. If you’ve got a snake, you use it. And the first half of the film actually works surprising well. The low-budget and the random flashbacks and even the rather amateurish acting make the entire film feel like something of a fever dream.

During the second half of the film, the UN takes over the world and everyone is required to get the mark of the beast. Patty doesn’t want to get the mark but it turns out that those without the mark can’t shop for food or buy the latest fashions. Eventually, soldiers start to round up the unmarked and, before you know it, Patty is being chased through Des Moines by not only the United Nations but also by all of her friends, who now have the mark. Eventually, Patty ends up on a bridge with only two possible options. Either get the mark or jump. As opposed to the unconventional first half of the film, the second half is basically one long chase scene and it does get a bit repetitive after a while. That said, it’s kind of interesting to see someone being chased through downtown Des Moines as opposed to downtown New York or Los Angeles.

A Thief In The Night is undeniably crude and it gets a bit heavy on the preaching. Patty is continually told that it’s not good enough to just be a Christian. She has to be a super Christian or she’ll get left behind. I would think that would make anyone either extremely neurotic or extremely cynical. But if you can overlook the film’s preachiness, it’s a crudely effective in a dream-like way. You can tell that the filmmakers must have spent some time at the drive-in and that maybe they watched Night of the Living Dead when they weren’t in church because they whole film is full of skewed camera angles and abrupt jump cuts with a good deal of emphasis being put on Patty’s newly isolated status. In more ways than one, the film was obviously designed to scare the Hell out of its target audience.

A Thief in the Night works best when viewed as being a filmed fever dream. It’s crude but effective.