Sci-Fi, Horror, and General Whoopass

Image of the Beast (1981)

Posted on Dec 27, 1999 under Sci-fi |

  • Produced and directed by Donald W. Thompson
  • Starring
    • William Wellman, Jr.
    • Susan Plumb
    • Patty Dunning

Remember a couple of months ago, when a bunch (or, if you prefer, a posse) of us b-movie webmasters got together and coordinated reviews of The Brain From Planet Arous? While we had tons of fun, we realized that there was a lot of eye-glazing, as readers found themselves subjected to seven linked reviews of the same movie.

But we couldn’t let the immanent end of Life, the Universe, and Everything go uncelebrated. So in honor of the coming meltdown (have you reserved your breeding females?), we decided to do different movies on a single theme: the apocalypse, i.e., the end of the world!

For your enjoyment, the other reviews are as follows:

Now, on to my review!

I have to point out that my selection, Image of the Beast, is more distinctly apocalyptic than all others, because mine actually deals with “the Apocalypse,” more commonly known as “The Revelation of St. John the Divine.” It was produced by Mark IV Pictures, a conservative Christian outfit, and is third in a series of four movies (the other three being A Thief in the Night, A Distant Thunder, and The Prodigal Planet). Getting the picture yet?

Yup, that’s right — it’s a picture about the End Times, the Tribulation, the Mark of the Beast, and all of it! And it’s supposed to scare you into the arms of Jesus!

We open with a brief pre-Raptural prologue, with a man and pregnant wife in the supermarket. (Ominously, the first thing we see is a close-up on a jug of some green kool-aid with a humongous UPC label). At the checkout, the following comes out: neither the wife, Elizabeth, nor the checkout girl, consider themselves fanatical Christians. The husband, however, is SAVED, and he blasts both of the lazy females for not giving themselves to Jesus. A note on this saved soul: he’s about the most inbred-looking fellow you’ve ever seen, with jug ears and a haircut from his mama’s clippers; he’s also completely disagreeable and bombastic.

As things turn out, he’s the only demonstrably “true Christian” we see in this picture, because we then fast-forward to three years later — smack-dab in the middle of the Tribulation. You know, the seven years of crap before Christ comes again. These filmmakers subscribe to to the common, if tortured, reading of scripture that says that the Rapture will occur, taking all true Christians up to Heaven, before the Tribulation. Obviously, this Christian putz got saved, leaving his wife on earth to give birth five days after the Rapture. (Anyone else have a problem with the theology of God pulling all of His favorites and then still sending innocents to earth?)

So. The Tribulation. As you would expect, a one-world government (called “UNITE”) has taken over, under the direction of the pseudo-religious figure of Brother Christopher, and Christians are being rounded up. ‘Course, they weren’t true-blue Christians, ’cause if they were they would have been beamed up, but they’ve refused to take the Mark of the Beast - which UNITE accomodatingly refers to as “the mark.” While they never give a close-up on it (it just looks like some kind of dark spot or tattoo), it’s shown to work like a barcode, accessing that person’s account in the world Central Bank computer.

But anyway. The Christians are being caught, summarily convicted, and guillotined if they won’t give up their faith. (That goes a bit beyond what’s actually written in Revelation, but anyway.)

Our plot follows Elizabeth and her three-year-old, Billy, as well as David, another Christian who has managed to:
a) get a UNITE soldier’s uniform as a disguise;
b) figure out how to make a counterfeit mark using a pocket calculator. (!)

It amazed me when Elizabeth and David had a debate about the morality of making a counterfeit mark, which will access the bank account of the soldier David killed (in self-defense, naturally). David won by saying they were in a war, and he’d do whatever he needed to do to avoid taking the real mark. Once again, does anyone else see a real problem with this code of ethics — that the real mark is bad, but wearing a mark to appear like the damned, plus stealing money, is okey-dokey? Yet that rationalization is allowed to stand through the movie; apparently it’s OK with God.

David, Elizabeth and Billy fall in with an old former preacher living alone in the woods. He also has avoided the mark, but by pretending to be crazy, he’s avoided the death penalty, and survives by scavenging. He provides the lion’s portion of the sermon material, as he explains to David and Elizabeth the giant chart he’s painted, showing the entire Tribulation time schedule.

They watch in horror as Brother Christopher, from Jerusalem, repulses an attack on Israel by Russia, then is wounded by an assassin’s bullet — yet miraculously is healed! Obviously, he is now the beast spoken of in Revelation chapter 13! (Look it up if you don’t believe me.) He then makes officious world proclamations sitting on the Mercy Seat in the Holy of Holies of the temple at Jerusalem (apparently the Dome of the Rock has conveniently disappeared), thus qualifying as the Desolation of Abomination spoken of by Daniel.

Our Christian heroes then watch as two “religious fanatics” are killed in the streets of Jerusalem and their bodies are left for three and a half days as an example by Brother Christopher, whereupon they rise up!

Then we get various plagues — fire from heaven, metallic locusts, bloody water — while our heroes try to evade UNITE’s Believers Underground Movement Squad (or, as Elizabeth instantly says on hearing the name, “BUMS”). David ends up getting caught when he and Elizabeth try to make purchases at the same time in a store (since both their fake marks have the same account code, they trip the computer alert). Serves them right for their stupidity, I say.

So David is caught, but he won’t recant, and Billy is caught, and they threaten Billy to get Elizabeth’s whereabouts from David. But then Leslie, the paraplegic Christian (yeah, I didn’t mention her before, but trust me, it doesn’t matter), teaches Billy about Jesus and has him say the 25-words-or-less prayer that brings Jesus in and saves you, so David exults as he and his companions are led to the guillotine, because they know they are saved.

The end.

Then a voice says, “If seeing this film has helped you want a closer relationship with Jesus Christ, please write…”

Which really galled me. What is actually said about the Christian’s life in this movie, except that God will wax medieval on your keister if you’re not Christian? How real is your conversion if you’re only doing it because you’ll switch teams to whichever side is winning?

Frankly, I spend the entire movie wondering who the target audience was. In the end, I decided that no one would be “brought to Christ” who wasn’t already a fundamentalist; in fact, I bet that the people who would enjoy it the most are those who consider themselves the “real Christians,” who expect they won’t be around to see any of this in the flesh. Given our examples of true Christianity here, one of the gifts of the Spirit must be insufferable smugness.

However, I’d like to end on a positive note, so here it is:

Production values were higher than you’d expect for this kind of movie, what with uniforms, sets, props, and a lone helicopter — about par for a TV-movie from this same time period. All the fashions, naturally, reflect the early ’80s “The Seventies are over and I don’t know what to wear” confusion.

Some Notable Totables:

  • body count: 5
  • breasts: 0, and you’re going to hell for even thinking about it
  • explosions: 6
  • dream sequences: 1
  • ominous thunderstorms: 1
  • actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: What, that bastion of humanism and moral relativism? Bite your tongue!
  • story-stopping sermons: 7
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