Directed by:
Donald W. Thompson
First sequel to the Christian apocalypse megahit A THIEF IN THE NIGHT (1973). Let's recap. In the previous film, Patty Myers (Patty Dunning), a decent churchgoer who tried her best to live by the teachings of Christ and be a dutiful housewife, was accidentally led astray by her own well-meaning, yet too liberal and thus incorrect, reverend. As a result, Patty's loving, understanding God slammed the door in her face when it came time for the Rapture. Now with her husband and most of her closest friends whisked away to heaven, she's been left behind in an unsure world where the rise of the Antichrist is being shepherded along by the United Nations (!) The UN had put together a task force of soldiers called U.N.I.T.E., whose job it is to force people into being tattooed with a 666 "identification" symbol, thus collecting another soul for Satan in the process. Detractors face imprisonment or death. Refusing to be ID'd, Patty was chased around Iowa by U.N.I.T.E. agents and then got ratted out by her "friends" Diane and Jerry Bradford (Maryann Rachford, Thom Rachford), forcing her to leap from the top of a tall dam.
Except that all turned out to all be a nightmare... or a psychic premonition... or it kinda sorta really did happen and she's now caught in some kind of time loop (?) I wasn't so sure at first. The film ended exactly where it began, with Patty startled awake in bed, finding her husband missing and hearing on the radio all about the Rapture.
We meet up with Patty once again at church in the present day, only this time she and other Christians are being held prisoner. Patty's having a crisis of faith. After all, she wasn't a bad person and was a believer, so why is she even in this situation to begin with? Some other captives try to comfort her; looking at her with their empty, glassy-looking eyes and lecturing her about Christianity with their creepily soft, so-sure-of-themselves monotone voices, but she's not having it: "Do you expect me to love a God that let all these hideous things happen?!" We then - dammit! - go into multi-flashback mode as Patty recounts what really happened starting on the morning of the Rapture, which either means at least half of the first film wasn't real or that it would have been real and now Patty can find a Groundhog Day-style way to alter course.
With knowledge of how things could conceivably turn out if she does the same exact things and trusts the same exact people again, Patty instead decides to go visit her grandma and retrieve a "Tribulation Map" she has in her possession. Discovering granny has already been zapped away, she plops down on her bed, pouts, screams and renounces God ("I Haaaaaate YOUUUUU!") No, Patty, dear, pissing off the puppet master who already has you on his "meh, maybe" list does not constitute taking a proper course of action here. Try again.
We're then back in flashback land, which technically make these flashbacks-within-a-flashback-that-are-maybe-inside-a-premonition, so more biblical "truths" can be explained in greater detail. Stuff like the "Seven Seals" that will be opened during the 7-year Tribulation Period, which include four men (metaphorically speaking) riding on colored horses, with the white horse representing peace, the red horse representing war, the black horse representing famine and the pale horse representing death. The other three seals are 1. Every evangelist's favorite, persecution, 2. Destruction i.e. the sun turning black and dying and 3. Silence. Then we (re-)learn all about those 666 "Satanic credit card" tattoos and about how the Antichrist will be a great, beloved, charismatic leader for the first half of Tribulation but then do a 180 and become evil in the second half.
Because they factored negatively into her nightmare, Patty gives the cold shoulder to former friends Diane and Jerry and instead packs up her bellbottoms and moves into her grandmother's country home, along with her girlfriends Wenda (Sally Johnson), whose husband and newborn baby have been raptured, and baby-voiced Sandy (Sandy Stevens), who is quite possibly the worst actress in a film filled with consistently terrible acting. Despite the constant threat of U.N.I.T.E., the girls continue to attend church services, where Reverend Matthew Turner (co-writer / executive producer Russell S. Doughten Jr.) has deep regrets about being so nice and open-minded at the pulpit pre-Rapture and not doing a good enough job "threatening people with the word of God" (!)
There are clear signs the world is quickly moving through the 'horse' stage of the prophecies as outlined in Revelation. There's global unrest, extreme weather conditions, famine, shortages of gasoline, food and other basic supplies, a nuclear bomb being dropped on Uganda (Uganda?), Israeli missionaries being murdered, earthquakes, wars, the sun going dark in the middle of the day and more. While they don't actually show most of that stuff (though, surprisingly, they did construct a plywood room to tear apart during an earthquake scene), I was disappointed most by the promise of a plague of random, unprovoked animal attacks. All we get to see here is a horse side eyeing someone and a barking dog, which is promptly scared off when a missionary (Tim Doughten, Russ' son) wanders by and starts preaching.
With the corrupt and evil UN now in charge of everything, they ration out necessities only to those who've received their binary 666 tattoo. U.N.I.T.E. then institute new regulations. There will be "severe penalties" to those that refuse the mark of the beast and by "severe penalties" I mean you either do it or be executed. Seeing how our gutsy heroines have thus far refused to get it, they're now in a world of trouble, which is where the "present day" stuff comes into play. Things end on a cliffhanger as Patty and Wenda's numbers finally come up. They're led down the aisle, blindfolded and then taken outside where a giant guillotine awaits... The end!
So now these mofos actually think I'm going to sit through another one of their stupid, cheap, poorly-made films?! Well, they're right, of course. I need to know what happens to Patty since I've now spent three hours watching her flail her way through the apocalypse and do the same dumb shit over and over again. This is also what happens when I run out of Christmas movies to watch and end up stuck with Christian movies instead.
Admittedly, this shows some technical improvements over the first, including better camerawork and smoother editing. It also appears to have had a somewhat higher budget. Otherwise it's no better in the areas that really count like the script, performances and overall messaging. These folks don't possess near the talent needed to pull off the ambitious plot structure, and do a particularly inept job at establishing a coherent timeline. It wasn't until the film was almost over that I realized it had actually jumped ahead several years at some point awhile back... and I'm still not sure where exactly that happened either!
Every time Patty makes a reasonable point, say, about how fire-and-brimstone preaching can alienate people from the church, or about how God sometimes has a strange way of showing his love, she's promptly shut down with a response that always seems to begin with "God DOES love you, buuuuuttttt..." And remember, if God murders your child, it's not because he's a bad dude, it's because it's part of his master plan for you, so you've no right to be upset or angry about it! It's just one little piece of a giant puzzle you're too dumb to understand! Got that?
Other scenes are kind of laughable in their sad irony. We see a mean old 6x3'd hospital receptionist reject an infant for care because her mother is a Christian. Of course we're supposed to be outraged to see a baby denied healthcare, and we are, but it's also pretty rich considering evangelicals have been fighting tooth-and-nail against affordable health coverage and taxpayer-funded programs to provide health services to children, the poor and the needy since like, well, forever ago. And then you have the evangelicals in this film suddenly concerned about the welfare of "foreigners" during global conflicts / wars when they're typically the first ones waving their flags and cheering on 'Murica whenever we drop bombs on third world countries. Self-awareness has never been a strong suit of the evangelical community but... yeesh... these folks are downright shameless!
This was followed by IMAGE OF THE BEAST (1981) and The Prodigal Planet (1983). Like the other films in the series, it was self-distributed on VHS and is now sold on DVD through many Christian retailers so it can continue to do its part in helping to fuck up the world until we destroy it ourselves. Or get raptured. Whichever comes first. Since I'm basically the poster boy for the type of person who's gonna get left behind, maybe see ya there?
★1/2
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