A THIEF IN THE NIGHT

d. Donald W. Thompson (1972)

There's no time to change your mind / 

                        The Son has come and you've been left behind...

I’m not a religious person (far too cynical), but I am fascinated by the odd and occasionally disturbing things people of faith so fervently believe in. A classic example  is The Rapture, which is the subject of A Thief In The Night, the first of four Evangelical films made in the 70s and 80s that examine this phenomena in unprecedented detail.

As you may know (and if you read this), The Rapture is the moment when true believers (dead and living) will be raised into the heavens to join Jesus Christ. This is usually interpreted as an instantaneous event, i.e. one moment they will be there, the next they will be gone, forever. In typical style, true believers are those are only those who have accepted Jesus Christ as their personal saviour, and nobody else, no matter how much they believe in God or how nice they are will be accepted. It's the Christian church,  the selection criteria is not kindness, but compliance. This miracle will, of course, cause widespread social unrest, and will lead to the formation of a fascistic world government who will brand the remaining population with 666. Jesus will then come back to save the day, but it will mean the end of the world. There, now you know as much as I do.

This film, which is carefully and professionally presented, has lots of great moments: a fairground conversion to religion; a cobra snake attack; the realisation that loved ones have vanished; sinister broadcasts from the head of the emergency world government, The Imperium; a look at the stuffy bureaucracy of fascism; a helicopter chase, and a dream within a dream framework that almost manages to avoid cliché. Astonishingly, it is claimed that this film has been seen by 300 million people across the world – and it’s really, really weird. Result!

My favourite part of the film is its opening, in which an amateur band of teenagers sing Larry Norman’s song about The Rapture, I Wish We’d All Been Ready (later covered by Cliff Richard). It’s very earnest and intense, occasionally off key and sets the scene perfectly for the madness to come.