When the rapture finally does happen, Patty’s husband and her Christian sister are taken. Her husband, however, decides to convert and believes that the rapture could happen at any time. Though people try to convert her, Patty remains convinced that the rapture isn’t real. We see her sister convert to Christianity, but Patty refusing (along with her other sister). The film actually begins with Patty waking up in her bed to discover her Christian husband is missing, but the majority of the narrative follows earlier events.
Unfortunately, the rapture happens, and she gets left behind. The film follows a young woman named Patty, who - though religious - refused to believe in the evangelical theory of the rapture or accept Jesus as her Lord and Savior. Rock and roll and women in short shorts is a rare sight for an evangelical movie of this era. Furthermore, the soundtrack of the movie prominently features “I Wish We’d All Been Ready” - a song by the father of Christian rock and roll, Larry Norman. There is more ‘skin’ shown in this movie than most other Christian films (even today). Men are seen shirtless, and women are seen wearing popular outfits of that age. In fact, both of these elements are featured in the film. For example, they didn’t dress according to strict modesty standards, and they listened to rock and roll. While still quite conservative in their theology (as is evident by the film we are talking about), Jesus Freaks were more ‘liberal’ in social policies than the fundamentalists. The Jesus Freak Movement was a giant religious revival of counter-culture Christians, who were disenfranchised by both religious institutions and hippie-culture. Second, this movie bears influence from the ’70s Jesus Freak Movement. However, horror movies were still considered a big no-no by evangelical audiences, so including any horror elements at all is a significant move for this film. Ron Ormond had already introduced exploitation/grindhouse horror elements into Christian film before this film came out. The intro is actually quite suspenseful and would be a decent opening to most other horror movies: a clock timer ticks rapidly as a radio news broadcaster announces the sudden disappearance of millions of people (more about this later). First, A Thief in the Night invokes certain kinds of horror elements - especially in the opening and ending scenes. The interesting thing about this film is that it represents a break with the norm of evangelical movies that came before it. The intention of this film is to be shown in churches as either youth group entertainment or an evangelism tool. Here’s something to blow your mind: Doughten actually worked on the classic sci-fi film, The Blob (1958). Thompson and written by Russell Doughten Jr. BackgroundĪ Thief in the Night was directed by Donald W. I know that my history of slasher films is incredibly simplified - and ignores important films like Black Christmas or Blood and Black Lace - but I hope my point comes across. Left Behind is like Jason in the Friday the 13th franchise - it took the tropes of the genre, and eventually became a ‘standard’ for how to follow them. A Thief in the Night is like Carpenter’s Halloween - it set the tropes and codified tone for the genre, serving as a quintessential guideline for the rest. To compare this development to the slasher-horror genre, Ormond’s Footmen is like Hitchcock’s’ Psycho - it included early elements of the genre that would be used later on. According to my knowledge, the first film to include these rapture elements was Ron Ormond’s If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? However, A Thief in the Night took on an ambiguous four-part film series with one single narrative about people facing the fallout in a post-rapture world, which set the tone for rapture films to follow. Even the History Channel did a ‘found footage’ style TV series on the concept. There are endless movies and TV shows around the evangelical theological concept of the rapture and apocalypse. Or, perhaps the remake with Nicolas Cage in 2014. You’re probably familiar with early-2000s Left Behind trilogy, staring the king of Christian cinema and most handsome Christian man ever, Kirk Cameron.
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