Russell S Doughten Jr February 16 1927 August 19 2013 was an American filmmaker and producer of numerous short and featurelength Christian films 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 films most notably as producer and director uncredited of the 1958 scifihorror classic The Blob he was best known for the religious Thief In The Night series which dramatizes the Rapture and Second Coming of Christ and the struggles of a small band of believers against an increasingly hostile worldwide Antichrist dictatorship The films of that series are A Thief in the Night 1972 A Distant Thunder 1978 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 the End Times events but does not fully believe in the Bible With his long graying hair usually worn in a ponytail and shaggy beard he didnt look the part of the stereotypical Christian fundamentalist a fact that is credited with earning him secular fans as is his use of unusual camera angles and layered audio While there had been featurelength Christian films before including the End Times film If Footmen Tire You What Will Horses Do directed by Ron Ormond in 1971 a sweeping ambitious project like Thiefwith three sequels telling one continuous story over the course of a decadehad never been undertaken even in Hollywoodcitation needed Doughtens identification of the Antichrist not with Communism as Ormond had done nor with Jack Chicks 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 A Thief in the Night is said to be the most widely seen Gospel film in the world and has been influential in many conversions to Protestant Christianity Tim LaHaye and Jerry B Jenkins cite Doughtens films as being the primary influence for their million selling Left Behind series of books and films Doughtens films are frequently shown in churches and on Christian television stations to this day In the mid1960s Doughten taught English and drama and supervised and directed student productions at South Pasadena High School in California His former students report that he was exacting in demanding their best efforts but they were proud of the results and the quality of the productions he directed and they regretted his departure in 1964 to return to film making in Ohio Doughten died from a cardiacrelated illness on August 19 2013 Wikipedia
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