A Thief in the Night (1972)

A sort of proto-'Left Behind' 'A Thief in the Night' is a low budget rapture film made by a bunch Lutherans in Iowa back in 1972. What is now fairly paint by numbers likely would have been rather novel to see in film form back during the Nixon era. Boasting some early Christian rock the film centers around three female friends, presumably just out of high school, some get saved and some do not. The rapture happens right off, then we have a flash back to the girls simple pre-apocalyptic concerns, there's a medical scare, a wedding followed by early married life shown in film strip form, then we circle back around to the end times. Having not much of a budget most of what were hear of the outside world comes from radio talk, and some static speechifying on the TV. The UN takes right over with a world government called UNITE, marks on the hand or forehead become required to buy things, resisters move underground or are snatched by the one UNITE van they made for this movie (I wonder were that's at today, it should do car shows). You of course have a storyline about a 'mainline' preacher who didn't really believe, and comes to regret it. The movie is really quite bad, but thankfully it is short (69 minutes) and kind of fascinating as a cultural artifact, which is about all I can recommend it as. *1/2