Image of the Beast (film)

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Image of the Beast is a 1980 film by Russell S. Doughten and directed by Donald M. Thompson. It is part of a series of four films popular in evangelical Christian groups, dealing with the subject of bible prophecy. The film is a fictional account of the rise of the antichrist, who establishes a world government and forces everybody to take the mark of the beast. A handful of Christians refuse to take the mark and try to survive living apart from society. In this film the mark of the beast is depicted as a UPC bar code tied in with a world computer network, whereas in the previous films it was depicted as a simple tattoo.

The film picks up where A Distant Thunder left off. Patty Myers (played by Patty Dunning) is faced with the decision to either accept the mark of the beast or lose her head. The soldiers strap her to the guillotine, and Patty dies when after being left alone after a sudden earthquake, the blade falls on its own. Nearby, a woman named Kathy (played by Susan Plumbn) and David Michaels (played by William Wellman Jr.) have just escaped a government detention center during the earthquake along with Kathy's young son Billy, and another woman named Leslie (played by Wenda Shereos). They evade the soldiers of the government, UNITE (United Nations Imperium for Total Emergency), become separated from Leslie (with whom David reunites later), and eventually meet up with the Rev. Matthew Turner (played by Russell Doughten). By this time Rev. Turner's church has been forced closed by the government and he is living underground as a survivalist. Kathy and David attempt to use their knowledge of computers to create a fake "mark of the beast" which will allow them to move about freely in society; they rationalize this by saying they are not taking the real mark. Rev. Turner disagrees and does not use the fake mark himself, but remains in his hideout where he has been living off the land as a small farmer. The fake mark allows Kathy and David to move about freely through checkpoints where guards are checking people to make sure they have the mark, but when they attempt to use it to buy groceries the plan falls through. Meanwhile the Bible prophecies in the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation begin coming to pass. A new world leader is installed who speaks to the world through a computer-generated image broadcast on television. Earthquakes, wildfires, and a nuclear war occur. The story continues in the fourth and last film in the series, The Prodigal Planet.