The Rapture is one of the more fascinating aspects of Christian theology. All the truly faithful vanish into thin air and are taken to Heaven, the non-believers are left on Earth to suffer through seven years of tribulation while the Devil rules the globe, and then Jesus finally returns to reign supreme…it’s the stuff of epic fantasy. You could make a pretty damn impressive movie out of it if you knew what you were doing, but I guess none of the people who have ever tried even remotely knew what they were doing.

The closest thing to a good Rapture movie is The Rapture, a masterful film from the early nineties which actually has little to do with the Rapture itself until the very end. For the most part it’s the story of one woman’s journey into and out of faith as she comes to believe that the return of Christ is imminent. When that movie finally does get around to the Rapture, it offers some awesome imagery: angels bearing flaming swords, the Four Horsemen riding through the sky, even a trip to the shores of Hell. But that’s the last ten minutes. I want to see a Rapture film that’s full-on Satan vs. Jesus final battle from start to finish.

In my quixotic quest to find such a film, I have stumbled upon Years of the Beast, an early-eighties low-budget film that claims to chronicle the seven years of tribulation. If that’s the case than we can all stop worrying because tribulation is so calm it’s downright boring. I can appreciate that, with basically no money, they couldn’t exactly give us hardcore apocalyptic action, but when they try they fail so miserably it’s sad. If Roger Corman could give us StarCrash on a five-cent budget, this movie should at least be able to show us one city crumbling. Stock footage, people! Use the stock footage!

Heck, they could have even given us a Satan figure. That’s right, folks: Years of the Beast portrays the reign of Satan without giving us Satan. The “Beast” of the title is a man known as The Prime Minister, a politician who unifies all the world governments to pull all the world’s nations out of an economic depression and a crippling famine. The guy basically becomes dictator of Earth and should be our antagonist, but he’s barely in the film. We see him for a moment early on and then he doesn’t show up again until near the end when he is assassinated and then possessed by teh Satan (is that how it goes in the Bible?) so he can return to life and, well, dictate some more. Only now he’s super-dictatorial I guess.

But I get ahead of myself. Like I said, this film has fuck all to do with Satan. For the majority of it’s run time, Years of the Beast is a tale of backwoods survivalists roughing it out on leftover sets from The Capture of Grizzly Adams while they avoid the nuisance of a would-be Joe Don Baker sheriff who shills for el Diablo. Seriously, I haven’t seen so much Pacific Northwest nature scenery since House of the Dead. God loves a tree-hugger I suppose.

Stephen Miles is a college professor at one of those damned liberal-loving campuses that doesn’t have the word “Bible” in it’s name, so even though he’s a Christian he’s a non-literalist and that’s just as bad as an atheist. Or at least that’s what his colleague Dr. Klineman, who is a believer in Bible literalism, seems to think. At film’s beginning, Stephen is called into Klineman’s office for three reasons: one, to find out that the campus is temporarily shutting down due to economic hard times; two, to hear that Klineman got fired; and three, to be asked to proof-read Klineman’s new research paper, titled “Current Events and Biblical Prophecy Literature”. Gee, what a coincidence about that paper, given that two seconds later Klineman gets raptured into thin air. Stephen takes it pretty well, assuming that his portly old friend must have just walked out the door, gotten into his car and gone home in the blink of an eye. Look pal, there’s skepticism and then there’s outright denial…

Stephen heads home to find his wife June all distraught because she can’t reach her father on the phone. And when I say “distraught” I mean “mildly annoyed” because this woman is an awful actress. Anyway, they decide to drive up to pop’s farm to check on him. Unfortunately, our intrepid heroes are idiots who never fill the car up, so they run out of gas on the highway in the middle of the night. Luckily, pop’s farmhand Gary just so happens to drive by, and he gives them a lift to the farm where they find that pop has vanished, leaving his clothes behind, and ma’s grave has blown open and her body is missing. I don’t need to tell you they were faithful Christians.

Ma and pa and Dr. Klineman have vanished. Radio reports tell of thousands of people vanishing. Volcanoes erupt, the earth trembles, fire rains from the skies, el Diablo Prime Minister outlaws religion and demands that all people worship only him. And still Stephen and June and especially atheist (“I don’t believe nothin’!”) Gary are skeptical that God and Jesus might be involved here. Again, there’s skepticism and there’s outright denial… Stephen pores over a Bible for years trying to decrypt the prophecies until he finally has no choice but to accept Jesus as his Lord. Somehow this causes June and Gary to do likewise, and they all join a secret order of Christians who worship in secret as they await the end times.

All the while Sheriff McKifer is up everyone’s butt. A one-dimensional portrait of law enforcement slavishly devoted to whoever happens into power, McKifer treats the Prime Minister like God and celebrates every new oppressive law that comes down. He even gleefully gets 666 tattooed on his hand to show allegiance, and uses martial law as an excuse to execute people for petty reasons. I. Hate. This. Character. Played with all the subtlety and grace of Joe Don Baker’s Mitchell, but without the benefit of actually having Joe Don Baker - who is merely a wretched actor, whereas the one here is abominable - Sheriff McKifer is the kind of character that is just begging to die and when he does it’s not satisfying because you hate the character, but rather because that means the horrid film that dumped him in your lap is nearly over. Hallelujah! The fact that this idiotic and poorly developed character serves as out agent of Satan for the duration of the film is unforgivable. Satan should have cunning, conniving and seductive servants. Not ones who go Walking Tall. The only glimmer of hope this character has is when Heaven’s light shines down to kill him and he starts taking potshots at the sky, like Take that you rascally Savior! or something. I liked that. He dies two seconds later.

Unfortunately, there aren’t enough of those over-the-top moments to keep this film going. Years of the Beast is dreadfully boring. People talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk. They talk about shit we want to see, namely: DESTRUCTION. We get one brief (and horribly filmed) scene of a city under attack from Heaven’s wrath, but otherwise all we ever get is discussion of such events.

Word to Christian filmmakers: If you can’t afford to show the Rapture, DON’T MAKE A MOVIE ABOUT THE FUCKING RAPTURE. And if you’re going to try, make sure your special effects add up to more than slightly overcast skies and a photo-negative camera filter effect.

I’ll give the movie this much credit, though: at least it has a body count. Most Christian cinema is too tame for such things, but Years of the Beast shows men, women and children being killed on camera. Like, shot point blank. No blood or anything, but still: we get to see people getting shot to death because they worship Jesus or horde too much food. It’s something, anyway. And to be perfectly fair, the movie isn’t that poorly directed. Aside from a couple of bad scenes, most of the movie is just average in terms of photography and editing. Hell, the acting isn’t even that bad for the most part, other than June and the Sheriff. For a Christian film, these things are massive praise.

It’s really just the screenplay that makes this film truly bad. You have a story set near the end of days and you devote most of it to people in the woods being bugged by a rude cop? FAIL.

The Quick and Dirty: Years of the Beast is no great shakes, but at least it’s not a Jack van Impe movie.