Russ Doughten

Russell S. Doughten Jr. (February 16, 1927 – August 19, 2013) was an American film-maker and producer of numerous short and feature-length 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 sci-fi/horror 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 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 unusual camera 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 by Ron Or…