about 12 years ago, i got tricked into going to a church lock in party (cant remember what denomination) part of the “celebration” was a film about the rapture. from what i remember it looked about 1970s or so, was about getting left behind after the rapture and all the bad stuff that was gonna hapen and all that kinda hoohah. i think it ended with agents of evil cornering the main charachter then they woke up and it was all a nightmare… or was it! complete with a god-awful hippy singing a song about being left behind, that haunts your brain for years.
I used to be forced to watch these kinds of movies too. I can’t find any through the usual channels, but I’m sure there must be someone out there who collects them, no?
A lot of these movies were credited as “A Ken Anderson Production.” I’ll check the link now, it’s probably his company. Did the lead have shaggy hair and a beard and crotch-hugging white Levis? I saw that one back in the day.
Not the movie the OP was asking about, but Michael Tolkin’s 1991 drama The Rapture, starring Mimi Rogers and David Duchovny, is definitely worth a look. Well done and memorable in a disquieting sort of way.
A Thief In the Night is available on netflix. I saved a copy - not because I’m a devout christian or have any belief in the apocalipse , but because this sounds like a can’t-miss camp classic. Is it really as bad as it sounds?
apparently the internet archive has the first one, “a thief in the night”. and yes… its reeeeally bad… but its what i was lookin for. never woulda guessed there were sequels
Every now and then, I think about that movie. Not because it was good, but because it was so campy, and so agenda-ey. I really want to see it again, too, just for laughs. That bad singing at the end, “You’ve been left behind…You’ve been left behind…” It is agony and hilarity strangely combined.
When I saw the film, it was less than a decade old (I think I saw it around 1980-81), and I remember that song performance feeling embarrassingly outdated, though my impression may have been colored more by the hippy singer’s appearance than anything else. Appearance notwithstanding, the singing itself was horrible.
So I was surprised a couple years ago when I attended a concert by Dennis Agajanian (the guy’s an amazing guitarist) and he performed an eminently listenable, moving version of the song.
A third recommendation also. If I could get an edited-for-TV copy, I’d be showing that to my fellow church folk (FX has broadcast it in a finely-edited version).
Wait a minute! How can you have a sequel to “The Rapture”? I mean, when it happens, that’s supposed to be basically it, isn’t it? Or is it that in Part II we find out that Satan wasn’t really defeated, and while Jesus is trying to work His mojo on the world, Satan freezes one of Jesus’s disciples in carbonite before chopping of Jesus’s hand? And in Part III do we find out that Satan’s really Jesus’s father, Mary Magdelen’s His sister, and that all it takes to beat Satan’s ass is an army of teddy bears? What happens in Part IV? Does a Jesus who’s staring middle age in the face have to battle a Russian boxer in the ring to avenge the death of His best friend?