Decades before Left Behind was all the rage, this low budget Christian flick packed them in on the religious roadshow circuit.
Patty (Patty Dunning) finds herself on her own after her husband is taken to the promised land after the Rapture. Flashbacks reveal how she met him and how her poor unchristian-like choices led her to being left behind. It seems as though she had every opportunity to accept Jesus Christ as her Lord and personal savior but failed to do so again and again. Meanwhile, nations around the globe combine to form a singular world government called “Unite” and urges all “Citizens” to be tattooed. Patty refuses, and soon finds herself to be an enemy of the state.
The opening where Patty awakens to find her husband has been raptured up to Heaven while she is now stuck on Earth works surprisingly well. The title sequence featuring a weirdo Christian band also has an odd, eerie quality to it. In fact, the whole thing kinda feels like a Ron Ormond-directed version of Billy Jack or something. (And I don’t mean that as in, “There’s a guy in a funny hat who Kung Fus people”, but that “There’s a lot of hippie-dippy sermonizing” and the film has a scrappy low budget DIY appeal.)
Heck, even the more cliche aspects of the film kind of work better than they should. The effective montage scene of Patty and her husband in happier days plays out as a series of still photographs. This has more of an emotional impact than your typical romantic interlude since often, when you look back and think of a loved one, it’s usually through pictures and/or snapshots of a particular moment in time. The scenes of radio broadcasts detailing the widescale disappearances kind of have a Night of the Living Dead feel to them too.
The final act is perhaps the least effective, but that’s mostly because the film’s budget is so low that it can’t quite pull off its ambitious aims. Still, it’s a nice try, and some of the Dutch angles during the final chase are pretty cool looking. Sure, A Thief in the Night is little more than a religious scare film, but hey, when it works it works.
Three sequels followed.
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