These articles were written a few years ago for my online 'zine The Control Voice. Some of the outside links may be non-functional at this point. - VX
 If the 1960s set the stage for the apocalyptic wave of the 1970s, it was their crashing end that set it off for good. Two final ingredients were added almost simultaneously: the general air of paranoia that permeated society in the post-Vietnam and Watergate 1970s, and the United States' last great fundamentalist revival, the so-called "Jesus People" movement. If anything typifies the political 1970s, it's Jimmy Carter's infamous "general malaise." As the unpopular conflict in Vietnam slowly ground to a halt and it turned out that the President was, no matter what he said on TV, a big fat crook, the anti-establishment sentiments of the 1960s counterculture were mainstreamed. Science fiction, both literary and cinematic, became obsessed with "terminal visions" of bleak futures. Political speeches and literature of the time are filled with dire predictions, their fulfillment always just around the corner. The "Jupiter Effect" would rend the world asunder by the end of the 1970s, oceans would be poisoned by the 1980s, we'd all be wearing gas masks in the 1990s. The government was training to quell food riots and planning to issue "red money," worth one-half the value of the green stuff. In this respect the apocalyptic wave among American fundamentalists in the 1970s is not isolated or odd. The country was on a massive bummer for the bulk of the decade, Christians right along with everybody else. Christians had their own problems to deal with, too, including a whole wave of brand new converts who tended not to wear ties to church. Or shoes. Come TogetherCentered initially in Seattle and Southern California, then spreading to a few more easterly urban centers like Kansas City, tens of thousands of hippies, Commies and general dropouts converted to fundamentalist Christianity in the period period roughly spanning 1967-1974. This revival was noted at the time, but has been largely lost in the history of the two decades since. Look, Life and hordes of newspapers ran features on "the new, way-out Christians." 60s left-wing stalwart Ramparts ran an investigative piece, attempting to determine that "Jesus Freaks" were actually recruits of stealthy right-wing organizations. Time did a cover story on the revival and the brief secular "marketing of Jesus" that followed. More people tend to be familiar with the entertainment-world fallout of the Jesus People movement than the revival itself. Everybody's heard "Put Your Hand In the Hand Of the Man...," "Jesus Is Just Alright" and "Spirit In the Sky." Everybody who hasn't seen Godspell has seen Jesus Christ, Superstar, or at least they know the music. The Onion's book Our Dumb Century references this odd time in its August 10th, 1969 mock front page: "New Rock Opera Makes Christianity Appear Briefly Hip." In case you've ever wondered, all that Jesus business at once didn't come out of nowhere. It may seem strange that so many from the 1960s counterculture would be drawn to fundamentalist Christianity, but with some context, it makes sense. American Christianity is at its most occult, in the strict sense of that word, at the extreme ranges of fundamentalism. Catholic mysticism is nearly nonexistent in the States, although this is not the case elsewhere. Most mainline denominations differ in regard to the unknown only in the details of their explanations as to why miracles don't happen anymore. Although all denominations have had their charismatic (centered around a belief in the direct and active role of the Holy Spirit in Christian life) movements, nowhere has the emphasis on the irrational and miraculous taken hold as it has in fundamentalism. Charismatic Christianity was of great appeal to those recently "saved" out of wandering the back roads and byways of spirituality. (So much so that one notable Jesus Freak, Eldridge Cleaver, joined the Latter Day Saints when he forsook fundamentalism. The Mormons are big on signs and wonders, too.) Charismatic belief and practice reached its greatest acceptance during the 1970s thanks to this initial bumper crop of new converts, to the extent that it emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s as yet another mainstream religious belief and social force. The entire "Christian rock" industry came out of this revival — as a matter of fact, Maranatha!, the first "Christian rock" label, was started by the same church usually credited with starting the revival, Chuck Smith's Calvary Chapel. If the newly former-hippie was attracted by the more esoteric reaches of American fundamentalism, one aspect of that experience was extremely off-putting: anti-Communist fervor. These were people who, by and large, had just come out of either a direct experience with Communism or at least a sympathetic stance toward it. At the same time, extreme anti-Communism was becoming more widely accepted as a sign of political lunacy, restricted to tired old jokes like the John Birch Society.
Enter the kind of enemy fundamentalists of all political stripes could hate and fear in perfect harmony. Satan Is Alive and Well and Sold Ten Million Books Last Year On Planet EarthHal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth (1970) is generally considered the first notable book of the 1970s apocalyptic wave, but such is not the case. Lindsey's best-selling book and its sequels (from a secular press, even) mark the point when the wave begins to enter the mainstream. Hal Lindsey owes everything — his life, his show on Trinity Broadcasting and his still-continuing royalties — to a one-man cottage industry of doom and gloom, Salem Kirban. Salem Kirban, a greasy, slight Ichabod Crane of a man and a health food/naturopathic nut besides is, in short, pretty much the only competition Jack Chick has for King of Scary 20th Century Religious Kitsch. Beginning in the 1960s, he published a series of doctrinal books and novels that, frankly, are a little hard to tell apart. Kirban was (and is — apparently he's still alive and working) an unusual writer in both the best and worse sense. He makes his own grammatical rules, and he uses his own text formatting, for example:
Two things really make Kirban's books special, though. One is that nearly all are profusely illustrated with newspaper photos, photos Kirban took of himself and friends, decent if absurd commercial illustration, or best of all, assemblies of all the above. The other is that Kirban was and is still the genuine article, a man fully convinced that at any moment all the Christians will be whisked away, the Antichrist is going to show up, and everyone is going to become human beasts, save the rare and doomed convert. While Lindsey wrote up his first speculations, Kirban was selling a handbook for people left behind after the rapture, his Guide To Survival (1968). If Kirban hiked the ball, though, Lindsey carried it all the way. When The Late Great Planet Earth hit town, it kicked off a decade-long boom in Christian publishing. A trip to almost any thrift store will turn up the primary products of that boom: ripoffs of The Late Great Planet Earth. A secondary market for end times-oriented fiction began, however, and naturally all the Ernest Angley and Sydney Watson novels were reissued. Movies were only a matter of time. A Thief in the Night (1972)
A Thief in the Night also hit a psychic jackpot. It gave people nightmares that didn't necessarily stop when they woke up. (See Andrew Hicks' Yet Another Year in the Life of a Nerd for a good example of the waking nightmare: "I missed the rapture" terrors. We all had them. No, I'm not telling you about mine.) The movie's become almost symbolic of the entire apocalyptic wave, at least among those of us who grew up in it. It's usually the first or second thing that comes up, the first time you find out somebody else grew up in that craziness, too: "Hey, did you ever see those A Thief in the Night movies...?" Well, for all the hoohah, A Thief in the Night turns out to be pretty fucking tedious when you watch it again, with not a lot of rapture fun to be had at all. It does, however, set up the rest of the series, so you'll have to see it anyway. It's worth it.
First thing you have to know: Patty Myers (Patty Dunning — I'm guessing most of the actors in these films are amateurs. For one thing, they suck. For another, half of the characters have the same first names as the actors who play them.) is a whiny, whiny girl. You're going to follow her through happiness, tragedy, courtship, marriage, two raptures, two tribulations, three movies and all the way to Hell, and that's the thing you're going to remember best about Patty. Even when she screams — as she does frequently — she whines, with unnerving effect. She screams "NO!" rather often, and it comes out like a distorted cat yowl: "Neeeeoooowww! Neeeooow! Neeeoww!" The film opens with menacing scripture over the menacing sound of a ticking clock. It's Patty's clock, and she wakes up to a radio blaring quotes from scripture. (This is a motif in all the Mark IV rapture films: whenever anything prophetically significant occurs, it's explained by newscasters, awkwardly: "In other news, two men like unto Moses and Elijah have appeared in the streets of Jerusalem!") She wanders around, hearing her husband's razor, then walks into the bathroom and SCREAMS! (Sorry to pull a Kirban there, but Patty's infernal shrieks require it.) The razor is in the sink! He's gone! Flashback to a really sad looking guy (imagine Danny Partridge, only less) with an even sadder-looking band with the saddest name of all: The Fishmarket Combo. (In case you don't get why that's sad, the Christian fish symbol, the church's oldest symbol, became a popular Christian token for the first time since the Middle Ages during the Jesus People movement. Christ also called evangelists "fishers of men." Ha. "Fishmarket Combo." Get it?) Sad guy is preaching about the impending rapture to a bunch of bored-looking twentysomethings at the kind of "coffeehouse" that frowns on coffee. Patty's trying to look interested, her friend Jenny (Colleen Niday) is eating it all up, and her friend Diane (Maryann Rachford) is winking at some guy who looks like Bad Ronald1. Second thing you have to know about these movies: Diane is bad. Diane is very, very, very bad. You may think this flirting business is cute, but let me tell you, what starts with a wink will end in ETERNAL DAMNATION! Oh, and along the way, Diane hooks up with a guy, Jerry (Thom Rachford — also BAD!), and they become Satan's low-rent Mod Squad. I'm not exaggerating. You'll see... The Fishmarket Combo begins singing Larry Norman's "I Wish We'd All Been Ready," and the credits for the film finally begin, as well. For those unfamiliar with the Norman or this song, he's one of the founders of "Christian rock,"2 and this song was, literally, the earworm from hell of the fundamentalist 1970s. You couldn't get away from the damned thing. We sang it in church, which may not have any effect on you until you read some lyrics:
(Believe me, no matter how creepy the idea may sound of standing around with hundreds of people in a confined space singing that dirge, the reality is worse. The memory doesn't get any better with age, either.)
Patty and her friends leave for a carnival, but Jenny slips back — she's interested in finding out more about what that guy was rappin' about. Patty follows wicked Diane ("You can get converted any day! I paid good money for these tickets!") into carnal splendor, and they meet two fellows, Jim and Jerry. Right away, you can tell these two couples were meant for each other, and right away you can which couple is pure EVIL. (Hint: it's the couple that's always smirking and cracking wise. Also, the guy has an EEEEEEEE-VIL mustachio that will just keep getting bigger and scarier until the fourth movie, I promise you.) The bulk of the film is taken up with the excruciatingly dull details of Patty and Jim's courtship period. Jenny becomes a Christian in bizarre juxtaposition — the film jumps back and forth between her conversion-in-progress and that first double date for Patty and Diane at the carnival. Everybody goes out and has fun, except when the rapture comes up, which is often. Jenny takes her little sister to church where a visiting evangelist scares the living shit out of her with one of Salem Kirban's tribulation charts. Jenny's little sister has an episode of "missed the rapture" terror and she gets religion, too, as does Jim, after being bitten by a cobra (he works at a zoo, presumably just so he can be BITTEN BY A COBRA) and nearly dying. Somewhere between the snake and Jesus, Jim and Patty get married, and their happy home life is shown in a hysterical montage of bad still photos. Jim is driven to church by his experience and begins having a minister visit to argue with Patty. Jim gives in one night, accepts Christ into his heart, and boy does he get lucky, because the next morning the rapture takes place. Once-trivial reminders of vanished friends and family haunt the post-rapture sequences of this film and A Distant Thunder; Jim's electric razor, Jenny's mixer, her little sister's toy and the stick of butter she was carrying (don't ask), an impossibly loud off the hook phone at Patty's grandma's house. Patty wanders through the film for a while, shrieking and wailing at each relic, in turn, then finding another and turning on the hysterics all over again. Eventually, she settles down to do what most of would probably do, if we're honest: huddle on the couch and watch the whole thing on TV. We never see anyone but the same announcer, assuring us over and over that UNITE (the United Nations Imperium for Total Emergency) is acting in our best interests. (We also see this in hilariously bad fake newspapers, with alarming headlines like "IMPERIUM IS NO 'BIG BROTHER' SAYS UN" pasted over stories subheaded with things like "Local Swimmer Makes Good.") What's interesting about the tribulation period in A Thief in the Night is how comparatively low-key it is. You can see Donald W. Thompson's apocalyptic vision building through the four films, and at this point, it ain't much. The Antichrist never makes an appearance, nobody's rounded up and guillotined, and the only character who dies is shot during interrogation. There are no plagues or judgements of God of any kind. The mark of the beast is also slightly different in this film (you can see it in the title graphic for this article) than in the following films. A Thief in the Night is still stuck somewhere between Communist goons and the fleshed-out scenarios that would develop in the later films. Patty can't hide and watch TV forever, so she goes out and is promptly arrested with her pastor, The Reverend Matthew Turner (Russell S. Doughten, co-writer of the four films) because she doesn't have the mark. Turner, along with Jerry, is the only character who will appear in all four films. The third thing you need to know about these movies is that Rev. Turner is doomed. He dies in the first movie. Then he comes back and spends the entire series obsessing alternately over his personal tribulation chart and the fact that he's still around, post-rapture. Turner was a Christian-in-name-only, you see, and he misled all of his parishioners. Because of his this, and the fact that he'd heard the gospel message and rejected it, God will not have him. No matter how much Turner learns and despairs, he is cut off from God's grace, and boy are you going to hear about it. Turner is murdered at the police station and Patty escapes, driving off in one of the UNITE vans. (Another really cool thing about these movies, the cheap, but effective use of graphic design, especially vehicle logos. Man, I want a set of UNITE Hot Wheels! Oh, and look for the upside-down cross in the UNITE logo.) She calls Jerry and Diane, who agree to meet her on top of a dam. Barely making it there, she is shocked to see Jerry calling in UNITE forces on a big-ass walkie-talkie. The jig is up, and when Patty attempts to escape, Jerry pushes Patty off the edge to her death. Or so we suppose, because then Patty wakes up again and it was all a dream. (Bet you can't see what's coming.) Then it all starts over again, the clock, the radio, the razor and Patty collapses by her bed and just screams and screams and screams. "Neeeeeeeeow! Neow! NEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWW!!!" A Distant Thunder (1977)"It begins where 'A Thief In the Night' ENDED..." reads the tagline for this film, but that's not exactly true. A Distant Thunder has the same rough flashback structure, or at least similar enough that you may suspect you're being set up for another "Oh, it was a dream — no, it wasn't!" You're not, don't worry. The similarities to A Thief in the Night don't end there, but A Distant Thunder is a much better movie all around, and my personal favorite of the series. I know exactly why this one's my favorite: it was the first one I saw. My dad ran the kitchen at a Christian boarding school when I was eleven, and we lived in a house on the grounds. One night A Distant Thunder played in the school chapel, and my sister and I went to see it by ourselves. I can remember almost every detail of the terrified walk back to our house after lights out, still. Thompson really began to show his TV roots with this one, and the movie hits hard and keeps hitting as best it can, what with all the preaching. (That's yet another thing to know about these movies: lots and lots and lots of preaching.) The film opens with a shot of a church at night, over which plays yet another song we used to sing in church when I was a kid (and has, since I saw this movie, creeped me out every time I hear it). Inside the church, we find a predictably shrill Patty and a bunch of people we've never seen before, under armed guard. To get Patty to stop moaning for two seconds, a pastor invites her to "tell us all how you got here." "It all began four years when my husband and all the other Christians disappeared..." (You keep hoping that whenever Patty drops out of her flashback, her listeners will have killed themselves in bizarre ways, as in Airplane! They never do, though, being good Christians.) Now we get to "where 'A Thief In the Night' ENDED..." and we're introduced to Patty's neighbor, Wenda Johnson (Sally Johnson), whose infant vanished in "the emergency." Patty, Wenda and Wenda's sister Sandy (Sandy Stevens) decide to go live at grandma's house for a while, but are stopped on their way out of Patty's driveway by Diane and Jerry. The Evil Couple asks why Patty's been avoiding them, she tells them about the dream, they laugh and make sport and Patty finally leaves, not trusting her former friends. On the way out to grandma's, Wenda reads aloud a letter posted before the rapture but just received from her husband, stationed overseas. Three guesses how this scene ends, and if you don't guess "With Wenda choking out 'Wenda, honey, the most wonderful thing happened last night. I ACCEPTED CHRIST INTO MY HEART!' and then everyone in the car freaking out," you disappoint me. Patty and Sandy and Wenda hie to the countryside, where they talk a lot about the end times, ride horses, and gradually begin to run out of food. They're forced to rely on "food coupons" that Jerry and Diane sneak them, those two having become some sort of shadowy UNITE honchos. A Distant Thunder is not without its lulls, and this whole portion is one, pretty much. Rev. Turner shows up again and beats his breast before God and man, there's a barn fire, there's some boring but crucial subplot involving a suspicious transient. The Antichrist never shows up in this film, either, but at least he has a name: "Brother Christopher." (A nod, I suspect, to both Orwell's Big Brother and Kirban's Brother Bartholomew.) This part picks up once, though, when the JEW shows up. I've given only the briefest overview of the apocalyptic beliefs this film espouses, but the occasionally minor detail rates mention. "The 144,000" is one of them. In this apocalyptic model, 144,000 Hebrew men are converted to Christianity by a resurrected Moses and Elijah and then spread out across the world, the last missionaries. The girls run into one of them in a meadow one afternoon, and it's a scream. "Do you hear something?" asks Wenda, and suddenly the wind picks up. A chorus sounds out, gloriously, and across the meadow, a figure is seen approaching, a figure in a powder blue jumpsuit. This is not just a post-rapture Hebrew missionary for Christ, this is one motherfucking fine Jew. The camera zooms in as the wind rushes harder, and the windswept hunk of providence comes into view. That jumpsuit looks even studlier close up, or maybe it's just the perm, full beard and big honkin' Star of David pendant. (You can see the pendant, by the way, because the stud's shirt is open halfway down his stomach.) Wenda falls to her knees as soon as the JEW arrives, and small wonder. Unfortunately, it's just so she can accept Christ. As I said before, the film keeps bouncing between these flashbacks and the scenes in the church, and it develops that all the characters are waiting to be executed in the morning for refusing to take the mark of the beast. Patty, the eternally bitching fence-sitter, is afraid to take the mark but also hates God, so she's got about five hours to make up her mind or have it made for her. The two storylines eventually dovetail, and Patty never does make up her mind before she, Wanda and two strangers (Sandy already met her fate, apparently) are marched out of the rear of the church. Their blindfolds are stripped off to reveal a flimsy-looking guillotine in the church parking lot. Naturally, Jerry and Diane were in on the plot that ended with the girls' capture, but the big shocker comes when Sandy shows up, displaying THE MARK on her hand. Wenda weeps at her sister's betrayal and continues to plead with Patty to accept Jesus, then is led off to die while Jerry and Diane restrain Patty, forcing her to watch. The film ends with Patty's screaming, frozen face, over which plays a nasty "Sssssssssssssshwwwww-CHUNK!" guillotine sound effect. Image of the Beast (1981)
Now this movie starts right where the other one left off. Well, sort of. First there's a brief flashback, naturally. It just wouldn't be a Donald W. Thompson film without at least a little nonlinear storytelling. In case you hadn't noticed, several years passed between the production of all of these films. Patty and everyone else look quite a bit older in A Distant Thunder than they did in the first film. Jerry's mustache gets bigger and his hair longer. If you watch the two movies back to back, you can spot little continuity errors — Jenny's ever-running mixer in A Distant Thunder has a rotating bowl, where in A Thief in the Night the bowl was still. Still and all, though, for a cheapo sequel that was made five years after the original, the movie holds it together. Not the third movie, though. Image of the Beast opens with a very much older Patty shrieking again, this time at Wenda's headless corpse. Jerry and Diane are still restraining her, but...my god, what happened to Jerry? That mustache grew to encompass his entire head!
And then Sandy steps in. In the four years since the filming of A Distant Thunder, Sandy grew up, got a bust, got a perm, and got married. The effect (again, especially if you watch the films back to back) is disconcerting — you've got Sandy-the-little-girl in mind, and suddenly Sandy-the-woman jumps in abruptly and starts pleading with Patty to take the mark of the beast. She comes off like Satan's little Grow Up Skipper3. Patty continues to waver and weep, right up until she's strapped into the guillotine. As soon as she's secured, some heavenly judgement-or-other strikes, there's an earthquake, and the world in plunged into darkness. Thus begins the most horrifying sequence in the series, and absolutely the best piece of filmmaking.
And then the blade falls and Patty screams "NEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWW!!!" one last time. Exit Patty. One of the two no-names who accompanied Patty on her trip to the guillotine now has a name, Leslie (Wanda Shereos), and we follow her flight from the church. She holes up in an abandoned building with another woman-with-no-mark and her young son. When they're discovered by a UNITE soldier, the end seems to be nigh, but he asks to see their hands and purrs "Praise God," seeing no mark. Enter David Michaels (William Wellman Jr., a character actor you may recognize), the protagonist of the second half of the Mark IV rapture series. He's not really a UNITE soldier — he's just superbad. Not only can he get away with passing as a dead soldier, but he "knows about computers," and will spend the bulk of this film somehow creating a fake mark of the beast and setting up an account with UNITE, all using only a pocket calculator. (A pocket calculator, mind you, loaned to him by none other than Diane and Jerry.)
David and Leslie fall in love instantly, and with Kathy (Susan Plumb — the one with the kid) they try to escape their hiding place. Leslie is shot, however, and left with some kindly old folks to recuperate. Kathy and David escape to Rev. Turner's country lodge, where Turner provides one of the best moments of the series by saying "The authorities don't know I'm here, and they sure don't know I have this!" So saying, he pulls his prize possession down, a gigantic tribulation chart that covers an entire wall. They spend an awfully long time in the woods, mooning over each other and fussing over that calculator (don't even ask how Jerry and Diane came into the picture, they're just a given), and come out with fake marks of the beast (Kathy also "knows about computers."). They screw up the first time they try to use them to buy batteries for the calculator, and David is captured. The plagues of Revelation start coming in earnest during this time, which leads to one of the best bad special effects of these films. A plague of monsters is described in Revelation 9:7-10, thusly:
Somehow, out of that description, what Mark IV came up with to represent these monsters was a big giant tail that looks like a gnarly old inner tube and pops out of doorways. Jerry and Diane, who are now top-secret operatives with the Believers Underground Movement Squad (yes, the obvious acronym is pointed out), have the misfortune of chasing Kathy during this plague, and although they finally do catch up with her, they both get stung, Diane most amusingly. (She dies, apparently, even though the Bible points out that these monsters can't kill anyone. This is the last time we'll see Diane, though, wrestling with a big, twisty piece of rubber in a doorway.)
Somehow, David, Leslie and Kathy's kid all end up in prison together, awaiting execution. Leslie gets the kid to accept Christ, and he gives her his balloon, which leads to a real kick in the ass for David later. David is the last one left alive, and the film ends with him being led out to face his death by guillotine. The Prodigal Planet (1983)The last film is where the series leaves any kind of doctrinal adherence and incidentally completely falls apart. The Prodigal Planet is basically a long, dull combination of Damnation Alley and V, with heavenly plagues coming throughout, seemingly at random. It does, however, have a few prime moments worth watching. The Prodigal Planet, in the grand tradition of Mark IV rapture films, starts where the last movie left off, but if you thought the opening of Image of the Beast was a stunner, just wait. I promise you, you cannot believe what's coming, the worst cheat solution to a plot problem, bar none, that you will ever see. David is saved from his impending execution by a timely nuclear war, which wipes the entire area out, leaves the guillotine a smoldering mess, but leaves David unharmed. David doesn't have long to gloat over his good fortune, as a babe in a UNITE uniform quickly breaks him out and he's on the road again. "The road" takes up most of this two-hour-plus film, and it's almost as tedious as driving around with David and his newest gal pal, Connie (Cathy Wellman) probably would be. The two stop over briefly at Rev. Turner's place for a look at the tribulation map and some more chest beating, and then it's off to...I can't remember, for some reason or another. Oh, because David "knows about computers," he's the only person who can plug some simple-looking gizmo into a radio transmitter that the Believers' Underground wants to use to shut down the Antichrist's communications network. (No, don't ask me how.) Jerry sets off after them with a squad of the Antichrist's goons. They all just drive and drive and drive for about ten years. I think. It's hard to keep track of time in The Prodigal Planet, as the film provides conflicting clues. David and Connie seem to be on the road for mere days, but there are already mutants roaming the landscape, dressed in Omega Man-esque monks' robes. They hook up with a nuclear physicist (Lynda Beattie) and her teenaged daughter, Jodi (Teri Lynn Hall), who puts Patty to shame for sheer ability to annoy, and Linda (the scientist) keeps harping about how blasted areas "should be safe to enter now."
The film ends with Jerry sobbing in the wreckage of UNITE headquarters. Patty having been done away with, I guess somebody had to scream or cry at the end of this movie. Also-RansThere are several lesser rapture movies of the 1970s and 1980s, but none of them lives up to the legend or the sheer giddy badness of the Mark IV films. Years of the Beast (1980) is primarily interesting for starring Jerry Hauser, of Summer of '42 and The Brady Brides. The Ormonds actually made a rapture movie, eventually, The Second Coming, but I have yet to secure a copy, and it seems to have come rather late in the rapture movies game, anyway. Early Warning (1986?) tries to apply some kind of Moonlighting style smug hipster quality to its tale of the rise of Antichrist and fails miserably. Everything Right Is Wrong AgainThe apocalyptic resignation of 1970s fundamentalists couldn't last forever, and it gave way as the decade waned to the political activism of the Religious Right. Popular interest in eschatology remained strong, but new interests, like abortion, the Satanic Ritual Abuse scares and the "spiritual warfare" movement of the 1980s and 1990s caught more of the public imagination. Several "rapture novel" authors became "spiritual warfare" novelists in the wake of Frank Peretti's mega-bestselling tale of angels, demons and the people who fly them around like battling kites, This Present Darkness. Of late, though, the end of the world is making a comeback, all mixed up with Y2K and run through a few new doctrinal filters. There are new rapture novels and movies, and if the movies are not nearly as frightening or interesting as their 1970s counterparts, the ideas behind them may be even more frightening. Fundamentalists have been demanding a more active role in all aspects of life over the last two decades, and damned if the end of the world isn't one of them. Encouraged by early political victories by organizations like Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, a new doctrine began to sweep through fundamentalism in the early eighties. Called "kingdom" or "dominion" theology, this doctrine held that Christian duty was to occupy the world by any means necessary and hold it until Christ came. Strict adherence to the doctrine — which called for, among other things, the adoption of Old Testament law (all of it) as the official legal code of the United States — never really caught on. The doctrine did, however, color fundamentalist attitudes, particularly among televangelists and their followers, already taken by "prosperity" doctrine. "Prosperity" doctrine (mockingly called "health and wealth" doctrine by detractors) holds that material goods, wealth and physical well being are signs of God's favor — the more of them you have, the closer you are to God. Naturally, if you're sick or poor, God hates you for some reason. The newest rapture craze kicked off a few years ago with the still ongoing publication of a series of novels called the "Left Behind" series. Written by Tim LaHaye, a familiar name from the "old days" (LaHaye wrote a ton of those Late Great Planet Earth ripoffs mentioned earlier), the difference in this new wave should be clear from the title of one of the books: Tribulation Force. The new rapture novels and movies have most of the key elements; the rapture, the Antichrist, the persecution of Christians, the mark of the beast, etc. They are, however, ultimately upbeat calls to action that all seem to be based on The Running Man and similarly silly "fight the power" science fiction films. Televangelists Jack Van Impe and Peter and Paul LaLonde (of This Week in Bible Prophecy) teamed up in 1997 to produce Apocalypse: Caught in the Eye of the Storm, a truly dreary shot-on-video film, fully half of which seems to be video clips of LaLondes and VanImpes. Its one hilarious wrinkle is that it takes pains to point out that those raptured left their clothes behind, folded neatly. It had, however, been quite a while since anybody made a rapture movie, and the film's idiotic triumphant ending, which comes out of nowhere, struck a chord. Apocalypse did extremely well in the Christian straight-to-video market, well enough that a sequel, Revelation, with marginally better writing, production values and a pile of B-list stars came out this year.
Christian bookstores can't keep Revelation in stock right now, and why not — when was the last time a Christian movie starring Jeff Fahey was released? If Revelation isn't a great movie, it's about nine hundred times better than Apocalypse. It wasn't shot on video, and it's got a hip "virtual reality" subplot (lame, naturally) and some illicit thrills like mild sexual banter, and it just all around seems more like a "real movie." It also stars Carol Alt as a cynical blind chick who pulls a "Sandy," and Nick Mancuso (Stingray) as Franco Macalousso, the Antichrist. It also has, again, a giant happy ending in which the plans of the Antichrist are held at bay by heroic Christians. Revelation's success has touched something off, and as I wrote this piece, I received word that the Trinity Broadcasting Network was producing its own rapture movie, The Omega Code, starring Casper Van Diem (Starship Troopers), Michael Ironside (Starship Troopers, Scanners) and everybody's favorite Sandman, Michael York, as the Antichrist. On the one hand, these new rapture movies relieve me. There's simply no way anyone could be frightened by these films the way I was as a kid by the Mark IV movies. Stripped of the resigned paranoia of the 1970s, they're just Z-grade action fantasies that give a few nods to the book of Revelation. They frighten me, too, though. I wonder what today's not-terrified fundamentalist children are learning from films that combine the "your friends and neighbors will all turn against you" fears of earlier films with a strong message that these threats can be eradicated through espionage and violence. We're all going to find out someday what they learned, that much is certain.
Footnotes:1Bad Ronald is a hard-to-find 1974 cult TV-movie about a kid who kills another kid and hides in the walls of his house after his mother dies. 2He also appeared, with another "Christian rock" grandpa, Randy Stonehill in Larry Hagman's one and only feature film directorial effort, Son of Blob (1972). 3"Grow Up Skipper" was a Barbie sibling in the 1970s who grew boobs when you twisted her arm. Part Two, Appendix A: Salem KirbanThe following charts and illustrations come from Kirban's "So You've Been Left Behind in the Rapture" handbook, Guide to Survival and his rapture novel 666. 666 Illustration: Guillotine Erected Outside Church 666 Illustration: "From the depths of the earth flying men suddenly appeared!" Guide to Survival Chart: The First Half of the Tribulation Guide to Survival Chart: The Last Half of the Tribulation Guide to Survival Chart: The Historical Millenial "Week" Part Two, Appendix B: The A Thief in the Night Drinking Game!Part Two, Appendix C: Finding These MaterialsMany of those who remember "rapture movies" from childhood seem to assume that they're lost cultural treasures, which couldn't be further from the truth. The four Mark IV pictures, specifically, are still popular video rentals, as are many other apocalyptic films. If you've been looking for them and can't find them, it's probably because you never thought to look at a Christian bookstore. No matter where you live, you probably have access to one of these stores. A few tips may be in order before the newbie begins his or her excursion. Big, successful Christian book stores tend to aim for the lowest common denominator and avoid anything that might cause a ruckus, and your pickings may be slim-to-none. Stores specifically associated with mainline denominations like the Lutherans or Presbyterians are also iffy, and you can pretty much forget about Catholic stores. Start looking in the phone book under "Bookstores" and look for the places with the smaller, uglier ads. Call around and if you get a "no" ask if the person you're talking to does know a store that carries these films. Regarding video rentals, Christian bookstores tend to fall into one of two camps. Either they're paranoid freaks, and are going to want you to sign a contract in blood and put down a hundred-dollar deposit, or they're nice-as-pie, trust everybody who comes in to rent, and they'll forgive late fees. Your call, but we'd recommend the latter. You can also buy the four Mark IV films directly from the company at Mark IV Pictures Video And as always, your home on the Internet for Christian apocalyptic material is Armageddon Books, which advertises itself as "the World's largest Bible prophecy bookstore." Note 2001: You can now order the four Mark IV movies as a set or individually from Amazon.com (don't you love living in the future?) Go here for the combo pack, or look the movies up by name. Part Two, Appendix D: URLsAndrew Hicks' Yet Another Year in the Life of a Nerd Silly as the name may sound, you have to hand it to these folks for consistency. They started as communal hippies, trying to live out the commands given to the early church to "share equally," and they're still the same thirty years later. They also publish a fairly reasonable Christian magazine, Cornerstone, that has a keen critical sense and has been responsible for exposing notable Christian frauds like Lauren Stratford and Mike Warnke. Center for the Refutation of Dispensational Falsehoods International Intelligence Briefing (Hal Lindsey's site) RealAudio files of Hal Lindsey's weekly radio program, Week in Review Page making light of poor Salem Kirban's eternally wrong predictions There's a picture of him here you really must see. Larry Norman's web site "Redemptive Cinema" course syllabus My, A Thief in the Night is in some lofty company, here... (And some not so lofty.) Yes, by the way, this is The 700 Club's college. Brunching Shuttlecocks feature on Jack Chick's "Crusaders" comic books Antichrist Superstar and the Paperback Apocalypse (paper on rapture and antichrist fiction) Apocalypse (Official Movie Site) Apocalypse II: Revelation (Movie Site at Jack Van Impe Ministries) Revelation (Official Movie Site) "Your life depends on knowing this info about the Mark of the Beast" God, and we thought we were obsessive... Part Two, Appendix E: BibliographyStuart Brisco, Where Was the Church When the Youth Exploded?. Zondervan: 1972. Ronald Enroth, Edward E. Ericson, Jr, C. Breckinridge Peters, The Jesus People: old-time religion in the Age of Aquarius. Wm. B. Eerdmans: 1972. Salem Kirban, 666. AMG International: 1970. Salem Kirban, Guide To Survival. Tyndale House, 1968. Hal Lindsey, The Late Great Planet Earth. Zondervan: 1970. The Onion, Our Dumb Century. Three Rivers Press, 1999. Dan Raeburn, The Imp, No. 2. Imp Publications, 1998.
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This new convert, however, was also accustomed to a life of opposition to "the man and his rules," an attitude often reflected in Jesus Freak literature. Tracts and other evangelistic aids of the time stress reaction against the unsaved world, sometimes calling it "the system" outright, casting Christianity as the ultimate rebellion. Early on, the church itself took on "the man's" role, as the eager, young and redeemed walked into churches where, as it turned out, nobody wanted them until they got haircuts. New "hip" churches and denominations sprung up, however, and a new "man" was needed. Nixon tended to start fights with other Christians (not just "straights," either — the Jesus People were turning extremely conservative), and Ho Chi Minh just wasn't going to cut it.
Kirban also sprinkles all-caps throughout his work for emphasis. You never know when you're suddenly going to come across ARMAGEDDON! or UNITED WORLD CHURCH, and the effect is, as intended, startling. His novels are as heavily footnoted and peppered with sidebar references to scripture as any of his neo-dispensationalist tracts and study guides. He invents chapter titles like "A Civilized Nation Thrives on Uncivilized Music" and "Cemeteries, Watch Out!"
Mark IV Productions, a Christian film company based in Des Moines, Iowa (where all the Mark IV rapture films were made), hit the jackpot with the first fully-fledged fictional rapture movie, A Thief in the Night. (There had been "preachin' movies" and documentaries prior, but they're boring. We want a movie!) The brainchild of TV director Donald W. Thompson, the film spawned three sequels, a novelization, and is still in print and a popular video rental almost thirty years later.
The earth shakes, the ground splits, and everybody not strapped to a guillotine scatters. Patty tries to snag a passing guard, groaning "I'll take the mark! Give me the mark!" to no avail. Abandoned, Patty lies breathless in the pitch black aftermath of the earthquake, and the camera pulls back, slowly, to show a crack across the parking lot, ending just before the guillotine. This is a perfect, harrowing, quiet moment, and a beautiful one, worthy of some of the gothic Italian horror directors — certainly a Fulci, if not an Argento. The camera then switches between several close shots of Patty and the guillotine. Patty struggles to free herself, begins to get a belt loose, and then hears a sharp click. She gasps and tries harder to undo the strap, and we jump between her face from the blade's viewpoint, the blade from her viewpoint, the catch on the blade slipping gradually looser, and her fingers frantically working the buckle of the strap.
One last thing you should know about this series: David loves the ladies. David Michaels is basically the Christian James Bond. Naturally, he never gets beyond kissin', him being a Christian and all, and for the most part, he restrains his all-consuming lust to very meaningful glances. He's all about the clam, though, our David — he has a special ministry to women. He's constantly surrounded by them, fawning over him, chasing after him, or just mooning over him while he shares the gospel. Dan Raeburn, in his analysis of Jack Chick's comic books in The Imp, correctly identifies a deep sexual undercurrent to much of the "witnessing" that takes place. While neither Image of the Beast or The Prodigal Planet is quite as blatant as Chick's work, it's fitting to see David as a cinematic analog to Chick's "Crusaders" team of soul-winning studs.
At any rate, the less said about The Prodigal Planet, the better. The crew picks up a morose little mutant boy along the way who falls for Jodi, naturally, although not as hard as he falls for Jesus. The "Mutant Boy witnesses to Jodi" scene is almost the entire reason to watch the film, and it's priceless. I won't spoil it, save to let on that Mutant Boy uses his festering wounds as an evangelistic tool and threatens Jodi with a spanking, and Jodi talks like a chipmunk for one frightening moment. Mutant Boy is killed by Jerry, saving the others' lives, it turns out that Connie is a UNITE plant, and David plugs the thingie into the radio, whereupon earthquakes and more nuclear war strike and everything starts exploding for no good reason.
Part One: Commies and Heretics