Image of the Beast (1981)

'Image of the Beast' is the third movie in the  'A Thief In The Night' series of evangelical end times films. After a brief pre-rapture sequence we return to where we left off at the end of 'A Distant Thunder', Patty our lead in the first two films is quickly dispatched by guillotine, and we are introduced to our new leads who form a romantic triangle hinged on William Wellman Jr., an actual actor and the son of the Oscar winning director William Wellman.

This film has more movie traditional sequences of chase, intrigue and suspense, but pauses throughout for expositional biblical exegesis, with the Reverend Turner being brought back for that purpose, turns out that he is the through line for this franchise. Well actually not just Turner but also Thom Rachford as Jerry, who has to be given increasingly important positions in Satan's plan as an excuse to keep him in play, he's come a long way from the fire and rescue squad.

The seemingly quick passage of time within the story owing to years between films becomes increasingly visible in this movie, not only does Jerry's awesome 1970's muttonchops become an obvious prostatic for continuity purposes early in the film, but now its clearly the 80's even in the shoehorned in pre-rapture sequence at the beginning of the film. As a result this series is now very interested in computers. However despite everything that has happened we still have characters annoyingly dithering about weather to accept Christ or not, despite Biblical prophecy being very explicitly fulfilled all around them. Still there is a guilty pleasure element here at times, 'Image of the Best' has really become something different from the first two films, but it's kind of watchable. **