- Russell S. Doughten
Russell S. Doughten Jr. is a film-maker and producer of numerous Christian short films and feature-length movies. His film work is credited under numerous variations of his name: with or without the "Jr." suffix or middle initial, and sometimes using the informal "Russ" instead of "Russell". Nearly all of his Christian films were shot in various locales in his home state of
Iowa .While he worked on secular films, most notably as producer of the 1958 sci-fi/horror classic "
The Blob ", he is best known for the "Thief In The Night" series, which dramatizes theRapture andSecond Coming of Christ and the struggles of a small band of believers against an increasingly hostile worldwideAntichrist dictatorship.The films of that series are:
* "
A Thief in the Night " (1972)
* "A Distant Thunder" (1977)
* "Image of the Beast" (1980)
* "The Prodigal Planet " (1983)Doughten appears in all four films as Reverend Matthew Turner, a
survivalist who has an elaborate chart of theEnd Times events, but does not fully believe in theBible . With his long, graying hair usually worn in aponytail and shaggybeard , he didn't look the part of the stereotypical Christian fundamentalist, a fact that is credited with earning him secular fans, as is his use of unusualcamera angles and layered audio.While there had been feature-length Christian films before, including the End Times film "
If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? " directed byRon Ormond in 1971, a sweeping, ambitious project like "Thief" - with three sequels telling one continuous story over the course of a decade - had never been undertaken even in secularHollywood . Some consider it to be a forerunner of the modern action movie franchises. Doughten's identification of the Antichrist not withCommunism as Ormond had done, nor withJack Chick 's sinister view of the Vatican, but rather with a worldwide government that initially acts as a global peacemaker, would set the tone for most fundamentalist interpretations of the End Times in the decades that followed.While the films were clearly made on a low budget, and the dated 1970s fashions shown in the early films provide unintentional amusement today, there is no denying the series' influence among Christian fundamentalists.
Tim LaHaye andJerry B. Jenkins cite Doughten's films as being the primary influence for their million selling "Left Behind series" of books and films. Doughten's films are frequently shown in churches and on Christiantelevision stations to this day.The films also influenced the popular sci-fi
television miniseries "V", which hinted at the dramatic power that Doughten's films might have had if made on a higher budget. Fact|date=February 2007 Indeed, Doughten's films have many secularscience fiction fans who attest to his skill and vision. Fact|date=February 2007Trivia
* "A Thief In The Night" introduces
Larry Norman 's hit "I Wish We'd All Been Ready", one of the earliestChristian rock hits and one of Norman's best-known releases.
* Of the films in the "Thief" series, only the first one, "A Thief In The Night", hasclosing credits .External links
* [http://www.rdfilms.com/ Russ Doughten Films Website]
*imdb name|id=0234893|name=Russell S. Doughten
* [http://www.raptureready.com/who/Russ_Doughten.html Rapture Ready Bio]
* [http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?id=3199 Review of "A Thief In The Night"]
* [http://www.jesus21.com/content/movies/rapture1.html Two-part article on Russ Doughten's "Rapture Movies"]
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