A Thief in the Night (film)

Last updated
A Thief in the Night
A Thief in the Night poster.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Donald W. Thompson
Written byJim Grant
Produced byDonald W. Thompson
Starring
  • Patty Dunning
  • Mike Niday
  • Colleen Niday
  • Maryann Rachford
  • Thom Rachford
  • Duane Coller
  • Russell S. Doughten Jr.
  • Clarence Balmer
CinematographyJohn P. Leiendecker Jr.
Edited byWes Phillippi
Production
company
Mark IV Pictures
Distributed byMark IV Pictures
Release date
  • March 22, 1973 (1973-03-22)
Running time
69 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$68,000

A Thief in the Night is a 1973 American evangelical Christian horror film written by Jim Grant, and directed and produced by Donald W. Thompson. The film stars Patty Dunning, with Thom Rachford, Colleen Niday and Mike Niday in supporting roles. The first installment in the Thief in the Night series about the Rapture and the Tribulation, the plot is set during the near future, focusing on a young woman who, after being left behind, struggles to decide what to do in the face of the Tribulation.

Contents

Three sequels were produced: A Distant Thunder (1978), Image of the Beast (1981), and The Prodigal Planet (1983). An additional three follow-ups were planned but ultimately unproduced.

The film has been highly influential in the evangelical film industry and American evangelical youth culture. [1]

Plot

In medias res , Patty Myers awakens to a radio broadcast announcing the disappearance of millions around the world. The radio announcer suggests that this might be the rapture of the Church spoken of in the Bible. Patty, a member of a liberal church, finds that her husband, a born-again Christian, has also disappeared. The United Nations sets up an emergency government system called the United Nations Imperium of Total Emergency (UNITE) and declares that anyone who does not receive the mark of the beast identifying them with UNITE will be arrested.

Several flashbacks occur to times in Patty's life before the Rapture. The story begins with Patty and her two friends, who all have different destinies. Her friend Jenny considers Jesus Christ her Savior; her other friend Diane is more worldly-minded. Patty considers herself a Christian because she occasionally reads her Bible and goes to church regularly; however, her pastor is shown to be an unbeliever. She refuses to believe the warnings of her friends and family that she will go through the Great Tribulation if she does not put her faith in Christ. Meanwhile, her husband has been attending another church and has accepted Jesus. The next morning, Patty awakens to find that her husband and millions of others have suddenly disappeared.

Patty is conflicted: she refuses to trust Christ, yet she also refuses to take the Mark. She desperately tries to avoid UNITE and the Mark but is eventually captured. She escapes, but after a chase she is cornered by UNITE on a bridge and falls from the bridge to her death.

Patty awakens and realizes it has all been a dream. She is relieved, but her relief is short-lived when the radio announces that millions of people have in fact disappeared. Horrified, Patty frantically searches for her husband only to find he is missing too. Patty realizes that the Rapture has actually occurred and she has been left behind.

Cast

Themes

The film's title is taken from 1 Thessalonians 5:2, in which Paul warns his readers that "the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night."

A Thief in the Night presents a pre-tribulational dispensational futurist interpretation of Christian eschatology and the rapture popular among U.S. evangelicals, but is generally rejected by Roman Catholics, [2] Orthodox Christians, [3] Lutherans, and Reformed Christians. [4] According to Dean Anderson of Christianity Today , "the film brings to life the dispensational view of Matthew 24:36-44." [5]

Casual connections to Christianity and liberal theological beliefs are depicted as insufficient forms of the faith, with Patty's born-again Christian husband being raptured and Patty, herself part of a liberal church, left behind. [6]

In the film, everyone must receive the mark of the beast on their forehead or right hand in order to buy or sell. [7] : 185  Producers used three rows of a binary number six ("0110") to represent the number 666, an interpretation of Revelation 13:11-18. [8] : 207  The locusts from Revelation 9 with human faces, ready for battle – to torment those without the seal of God – are represented in the film as attack helicopters, taken from Christian writer Hal Lindsey's understanding of the end times. [1] [9]

Fears of globalism and big government are prominent themes in the film, with "the Antichrist...literally a branch of the United Nations claiming control over the entire world." [10]

Production

Background

In 1972, Iowa-based filmmakers Russell Doughten and Donald W. Thompson formed Mark IV Pictures to produce A Thief in the Night. [11] : 577-578  Thompson had been working in radio, [12] : 69  and Doughten had worked with Good News Productions on The Blob in 1958, [13] and had produced other films in Iowa through his production company Heartland Productions. [14] : 7-8  The film's actors had little to no previous professional acting experience. [1]

Filming

Principal photography took place entirely on location in Iowa, with scenes being shot in Carlisle, the Iowa State Fair, and at Red Rock dam. [14] : 83 

Music

The film's title track "I Wish We'd All Been Ready", composed by singer and musician Larry Norman, is performed in the film by The Fishmarket Combo, a band made up of local student volunteers. [5] [1] The song went on to become the anthem of the Jesus movement. [12] : 411 

Influences

Christian writer Hal Lindsey's 1970 non-fiction book The Late Great Planet Earth was an influence on the film and its Rapture depictions; Thief has been described as complementing Lindsey's book. [1] [9]

Reception

Produced on a $68,000 budget, A Thief in the Night earned an estimated $4.2 million during its first decade of release, the majority of which came from audience donations. It was "one of the first films to take on fundamentalist apocalyptic narratives within a fictional motif." [8] : 92 

Legacy

The film has been translated into three languages and subtitled in others. In 1989, historian of religion Randall Balmer wrote that producer Doughten estimated that 100 million people had seen the film. [12] : 62  More recently, Dean Anderson writing for Christianity Today says it has been seen by an estimated 300 million. [5] Christian Bookstore Journal listed it as the top-selling Christian video from 1990 to 1995. [6]

A pioneer in the genre of Christian film, the film brought rock music and elements of horror to a genre then-dominated by family-friendly evangelicalism. [5] Balmer has stated that "It is only a slight exaggeration to say that A Thief in the Night affected the evangelical film industry the way that sound or color affected Hollywood." [12] : 65  MIT professor of film and media Heather Hendershot says, "Today, many teen evangelicals have not seen A Thief in the Night, but virtually every evangelical over thirty I've talked to is familiar with it, and most have seen it... I have found that A Thief in the Night is the only evangelical film that viewers cite directly and repeatedly as provoking a conversion experience." [7] : 187-188  The film has been described by religion scholar Timothy Beal as having "tremendous influence on the emergence of evangelical horror"; Beal also compares aspects of Thief, such as UNITE and the zombie-like characters who have taken the mark, to Night of the Living Dead. [1]

It has been described as traumatic for children, who comprised a significant percentage of its original audience, and criticized for using scare tactics to produce religious conversions. A prayer to ask Jesus into one's heart depicted in the film serves as a template for viewers. [15] [1] According to Hendershot, "Evangelicals who grew up in the 1970s or early 1980s often cite Thief as a source of childhood terror." This is partly due to depictions in the film of characters who believe themselves to be saved but are not, and are instead left behind. [7] : 187  The film has been mentioned in online discourse of Rapture anxiety. [10]

A quarter century later, the authors of the Left Behind franchise have acknowledged their debt to Thief. [1] Indeed, even the title Left Behind echoes the refrain of Norman's theme song for A Thief in the Night, "I Wish We'd All Been Ready": "There's no time to change your mind, the Son has come and you've been left behind." [5]

Sequels

See also

Related Research Articles

Left Behind is a multimedia franchise of apocalyptic fiction written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, released by Tyndale House Publishers from 1995 to 2007.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rapture</span> Eschatological concept of certain Christians

The Rapture is an eschatological position held by some Christians, particularly those of American evangelicalism, consisting of an end-time event when all dead Christian believers will be resurrected and, joined with Christians who are still alive, together will rise "in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air."

Dispensationalism is a theological framework for interpreting the Bible which maintains that history is divided into multiple ages called "dispensations" in which God interacts with his chosen people in different ways. It is often distinguished from covenant theology. These are two competing frameworks of Biblical theology that attempt to explain overall continuity in the Bible. Coining of the term "dispensationalism" has been attributed to Philip Mauro, a critic of the system's teachings, in his 1928 book The Gospel of the Kingdom.

<i>The Late Great Planet Earth</i> 1970 nonfiction book

The Late Great Planet Earth is a 1970 book by Hal Lindsey, with contributions by Carole C. Carlson, first published by Zondervan. The New York Times declared it to be the bestselling nonfiction book of the 1970s. The book was first featured on a primetime television special featuring Hal Lindsey in 1974 and 1975 with an audience of 17 million and produced by Alan Hauge of GMT Productions. It was adapted by Rolf Forsberg and Robert Amram into a 1978 film narrated by Orson Welles and released by Pacific International Enterprises.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tim LaHaye</span> Evangelical Christian minister and author from the United States

Timothy Francis LaHaye was an American Baptist evangelical Christian minister who wrote more than 85 books, both fiction and non-fiction, including the Left Behind series of apocalyptic fiction, which he co-authored with Jerry B. Jenkins.

Russell S. Doughten Jr. was an American filmmaker and producer of numerous short and feature-length films. His film work is credited under numerous variations of his name: with or without the "Jr." suffix or middle initial, and sometimes using the informal "Russ" instead of "Russell".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Post-tribulation rapture</span> Doctrine in Christian theology

The post-tribulation rapture doctrine is the belief in a combined resurrection and rapture, or gathering of the saints, after the Great Tribulation.

<i>The Rapture</i> (novel) Book by Tim LaHaye

The Rapture: In the Twinkling of an Eye/Countdown to the Earth's Last Days is the 3rd prequel novel in the Left Behind series, written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins in 2006 and published by Tyndale House. This book is the final of the three prequels and covers events leading up to the first book Left Behind. The narrative of the novel The Rapture includes events that take place during the first chapters of Left Behind and provides a backdrop story for the book Left Behind. The book was released on Tuesday, June 6, 2006 (6/6/6), which is the Number of the Beast, a concept that plays a large part later in the series. It takes place from 14 months before to the day of the Rapture. For the week of June 19, 2006, Publishers Weekly ranked it the 10th best selling book in the U.S.

<i>Left Behind: The Kids</i> Book series

Left Behind: The Kids is a series of young adult speculative fiction novellas based on the Left Behind series, published by Tyndale House from 1998 to 2005. Written by Jerry B. Jenkins, Tim LaHaye, with uncredited contributions from Chris Fabry, The Kids follows a group of young Christians as they experience the Rapture and Great Tribulation.

<i>Left Behind: The Movie</i> 2000 Canadian film

Left Behind: The Movie is a 2000 Christian apocalyptic thriller film, based on the novel of the same name by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. It is directed by Vic Sarin and stars Kirk Cameron, Brad Johnson, Chelsea Noble, Janaya Stephens, Gordon Currie, and Clarence Gilyard.

<i>Tribulation Force</i> 1996 novel by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins

Tribulation Force: The Continuing Drama of Those Left Behind (1996) is the second novel in the Left Behind series, by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. It takes place from two weeks after the Rapture to 18 months into the Tribulation.

<i>Left Behind</i> (novel) 1995 novel by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins

Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth's Last Days is a best-selling novel by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins that starts the Left Behind series. This book and others in the series give narrative form to a specific eschatological reading of the Christian Bible, particularly the Book of Revelation inspired by dispensationalism and premillennialism. It was released on Sunday, December 31, 1995. The events take place the day of the Rapture and the two weeks following.

<i>The Prodigal Planet</i> 1983 American film

The Prodigal Planet is a 1983 American evangelical Christian horror film produced, directed and co-written by Donald W. Thompson. It is the fourth and final installment in the Thief in the Night series, based on an evangelical interpretation of Bible prophecy and the rise of the Antichrist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Historic premillennialism</span> One of the two premillennial systems of Christian eschatology

Historic premillennialism is one of the two premillennial systems of Christian eschatology, with the other being dispensational premillennialism. It differs from dispensational premillennialism in that it only has one view of the rapture, and does not require a literal seven-year tribulation. Historic premillennialists hold to a post-tribulational rapture, meaning the church is raised to meet Christ in the air after the trials experienced during the Great Tribulation. Historic premillennialism does not require that apocalyptic prophecies be interpreted literally. The doctrine is called "historic" because many early church fathers appear to have held it, including Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and Papias. Post-tribulational premillennialism is the Christian eschatological view that the second coming of Jesus Christ will occur prior to a thousand-year reign of the saints but subsequent to the Great Apostasy.

<i>Apocalypse</i> (film series) 1998 Canadian film

Apocalypse is an eschatological film franchise written and produced by brothers Peter and Paul LaLonde, the makers of the similar Left Behind series. Like the latter, the films were produced and released by Cloud Ten Pictures.

Rayford Steele is a fictional character and the de facto protagonist in the Left Behind series of novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. He is the leader of the group known as the Tribulation Force, and is the most fully developed character in the series.

Chloe Steele is a fictional character from the Left Behind series of novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. Chloe was a junior at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, during the vanishing of millions of people during the Rapture.

A Thief in the Night is an evangelical Christian film series about the rapture and the Tribulation. It consists of four films: A Thief in the Night (1972), A Distant Thunder (1978), Image of the Beast (1981), and The Prodigal Planet (1983). Three additional films were planned but never produced.

Donald Whitney Thompson was a film director, producer and screenwriter of Christian films. He was best known for the evangelical Christian film series A Thief in the Night about the Rapture and Tribulation.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Beal, Timothy (September 21, 2023). "The Rise and Fall of Evangelical Protestant Apocalyptic Horror: From A Thief in the Night to Left Behind and Beyond". In Gastón, Espinosa; Redling, Erik; Stevens, Jason (eds.). Protestants on Screen: Religion, Politics and Aesthetics in European and American Movies (Online ed.). New York: Oxford Academic. doi:10.1093/oso/9780190058906.003.0018.
  2. ↑ Guinan, Michael D. (October 2005), "Raptured or Not? A Catholic Understanding", archived from the original on February 26, 2014, retrieved February 8, 2021{{citation}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  3. ↑ Coniaris, Anthony M. (September 12, 2005), The Rapture: Why the Orthodox Don't Preach It, Light & Life Publishing, archived from the original on November 9, 2012, retrieved February 8, 2021
  4. ↑ Schwertley, Brian M., Is the Pretribulation Rapture Biblical?, Reformed Online, archived from the original on March 11, 2013, retrieved February 8, 2021
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Anderson, Dean A. (March 7, 2012). "The original "Left Behind"". christianitytoday.com. Christianity Today. Archived from the original on April 16, 2012. Retrieved February 8, 2021.
  6. 1 2 Clark, Lynn Schofield (2005). "Angels, Aliens, and the Dark Side of Evangelicalism". From Angels to Aliens: Teenagers, the Media, and the Supernatural (Online ed.). Oxford Academic. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195300239.003.0002.
  7. 1 2 3 Hendershot, Heather (2010). Shaking the World for Jesus, Media and Conservative Evangelical Culture. University of Chicago Press. ISBN   978-0-226-32679-5 . Retrieved February 8, 2021.
  8. 1 2 Edwards, Jonathan J. (2015). Superchurch: The Rhetoric and Politics of American Fundamentalism. Michigan State University Press. ISBN   978-1-62895-170-7 . Retrieved February 8, 2021.
  9. 1 2 Mollett, Margaret (2014). "Telescopic Reiteration". Religion & Theology. 21 (3–4). doi:10.1163/15743012-02103009. ISSN   1023-0807.
  10. 1 2 Burton, Tara Isabella (December 13, 2017). "#RaptureAnxiety calls out evangelicals' toxic obsession with the end times". Vox. Retrieved October 13, 2024.
  11. ↑ Balmer, Randall (2002). Encyclopedia of Evangelicalism. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press. ISBN   0-664-22409-1 . Retrieved February 8, 2021.
  12. 1 2 3 4 Balmer, Randall (2014). Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey Into the Evangelical Subculture in America. Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0-19-936046-8 . Retrieved February 8, 2021.
  13. ↑ Albright, Brian (2012). Regional Horror Films, 1958-1990: A State-by-State Guide with Interviews. McFarland & Company. p. 286. ISBN   978-0-7864-7227-7 . Retrieved February 8, 2021.
  14. 1 2 Knepper, Marty; Lawrence, John (2014). The Book of Iowa Films. ISBN   978-0-9904289-1-6 . Retrieved February 8, 2021.
  15. ↑ "Iowa's 'A Thief in the Night': Not Just a Horror Flick". Iowa Public Radio . December 13, 2012. Retrieved February 8, 2021.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.