A 40 Year Old Thief in the Night

The film that changed my life is 40 years old - and looks it.  The fashions and hairstyles are dated, the acting is amateur, the script is weak.... and-worst of all - the theology is just plain awful.

Amy Frykholm at Religion and Politics has written about the 40th anniversary of the film A Thief in the Night.   And Slactivist, Fred Clark, has written about the Rise of the Antichrist Movie.

I say that this film changed my life - and it did, in a couple of ways.  

First - it made me afraid.  Afraid of God.  I don't think this was the intended effect.  A Thief in the Night is a horror film, but it's supposed to scare us toward God, it's supposed to 'scare the hell out of us.'  But these films just made me afraid of God.

Later, after I had worked through those fears and had left behind the pre-millennial dispensational theology that directs the narrative of A Thief in the Night  and its three sequels (as well as the bloated Left Behind franchise....) this film is part of what makes me want to make movies.

In fact. I've made two short  movie-collages that are an ironic pastiche of the hysterical end-of-the-world-jesus-is-coming-scare-the-hell-out-of-the-kids movies that so affected me when I was young.

This is the Beginning of the End

This is the Beginning of the End from jeff carter on Vimeo.

(originally posted here - includes a list of most of the source material)


The Sign of the Antichrist


The Sign of the Antichrist from jeff carter on Vimeo.

(originally posted here - includes a list of most of the source material)