Russell S. Doughten Jr. (February 16, 1927 – August 19, 2013) was an American filmmaker 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. Early career Doughten studied drama at Drake University. He then taught high school for a number of years, after which he studied drama at Yale University. While on the East Coast, he began working for Good News Productions in Pennsylvania as a producer, director, editor, and writer. With Good News, he produced feature films, a children's gospel hour, and a Salvation Army recruiting film. Good News Productions partnered with Jack H. Harris and Valley Forge Films to make the 1958 sci-fi classic, The Blob. Doughten worked as Associate Producer on the film. In the mid-1960s, 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 Iowa. Becoming disillusioned with Hollywood, Doughten returned to Des Moines, where he started his first production company, Heartland Productions in 1965. His early feature-length films were The Hostage (1966) and Fever Heat (1968). He would eventually produce a total of eight feature films through Heartland. A Thief in the Night In 1972, Doughten launched Mark IV Productions in partnership with co-founder Donald W. Thompson. They would produce 12 feature-length Christian films over a 12-year period, including the films that Doughten is best known for, the Thief In The Night series. The series dramatizes the Rapture and Tribulation and the struggles of a small band of believers against an increasingly hostile worldwide Antichrist dictatorship. The films in the 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 did not fully believe in the Bible until after the Rapture, even if not accepting Christ