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American filmmaker

Russell S. Doughten Jr. (February 16, 1927 – August 19, 2013) was an American filmmaker and producer of numerous short and feature length 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". Doughten made both secular and Christian films. His work included the 1958 science fiction classic The Blob. He was best known for his four part series A Thief in the Night. Nearly all of his Christian films were shot in various locales in his home state of Iowa. He has been referred to as "the godfather of independent film in Iowa" and his body of work ranks him as the leading filmmaker in that state. He mentored many indie filmmakers in Iowa.

Russell Doughten, Jr. was born February 16, 1927, on the way to the hospital in Iowa Falls, Iowa. His father was a rural mail carrier. Although Doughten grew up going to church, he notes that he was baptized three times before he was "born again". After living in several small Iowa towns, Doughten graduated from Chester High School. As soon as Doughten reached enlistment age, he enlisted in the Navy. At one point, he was stationed at Naval Station Great Lakes. He was honorably discharged in 1946. Doughten was active in the Methodist Church and served in youth ministry and boys' camps as a recreational director and swimming instructor. After his discharge from the Navy, Doughten attended Drake University on an athletic scholarship, but he became more interested in studying drama. After completing a fine arts degree at Drake in 1949, he began teaching English and drama in Williamsburg, Iowa in 1950. Doughten married Gertrude Spraugue June 2, 1950 in Evanston, Illinois, while Doughten was performing summer stock in Chicago. He had met Gertrude while attending Drake. He left teaching high school in Iowa to study drama at Yale University.

After completing graduate studies at Yale, while still living 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 1958, Doughten returned to teaching English and drama, as well as supervising and directing 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.

In 1964, he resigned from teaching in California. Having become disillusioned with Hollywood, Doughten returned to Des Moines, initially planning to produce a film called Heartland about an Iowa farm family. He started his first production company, Heartland Productions, in 1965. He formed Heartland to make quality, low budget films, stating that, "there are two ways of making movies these days, either expensive blockbusters or low budget pictures. Since we obviously could not make Ben Hur, the low budgeters seemed the answer." Heartland concentrated on good stories rather than star quality actors. His first movie with Heartland, The Hostage (1966), was the first feature length movie made entirely in Iowa. Doughten employed about 100 Iowans as either extras or in technical slots. The film premiered in Des Moines October 26, 1966. The film was distributed by Crown International Pictures. Doughten followed up with Fever Heat in 1968. Doughten directed the film and produced it under the Heartland label. A story about the excitement of stock car racing, Fever Heat follows a big time driver who gets into small town dirt track racing. The film was shot in Dexter, Iowa, using the Stuart Speedway. The production company converted a former boat factory in Dexter into a soundstage used for interior scenes in the film. Doughten had planned to film the entire picture in three weeks, but heavy rain right before filming started turned the dirt speedway to mud. Doughten changed the film schedule to shoot interior scenes until races could resume on the dirt track. Doughten used 40 De Moines area Iowans as extras and three local race drivers. The film was distributed by Paramount Pictures. Although Doughten would eventually produce a total of eight feature films through Heartland, the first two films had lost money, forcing Doughten to take out an SBA loan. The terms of the load prohibited him from making movies, so the company shifted to acquiring and managing theaters.

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 tetrad included A Thief in the Night (1972), A Distant Thunder (1978), Image of the Beast (1980), and 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 as his savior. 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 Ormond in 1971, a sweeping, ambitious project like Thief—with three sequels telling one continuous story over the course of a decade—had never been undertaken even in Hollywood. Doughten's identification of the Antichrist not with Communism as Ormond had done, nor with Jack Chick's sinister view of the Vatican, but rather with a worldwide government that initially acts as a global peacemaker, i. e. the United Nations, is consistent with many other Biblical interpretations of the Tribulation. While the films were clearly made on a low budget, and the dated 1970s fashions shown in the early films provide unintentional amusement today, there is no denying the series' influence among Christian fundamentalists. A Thief in the Night is said to be the most widely seen gospel film in the world and has been influential in many conversions to Christianity. Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins cite Doughten's films as being the primary influence for their million selling Left Behind series of books and films. Doughten's films have been frequently shown in churches and on Christian television stations.

Doughten continued to produce films through Heartland Productions even during the time the Thief franchise was continuing. Some of his later credits through Heartland were Sammy (1977), Nite Song (1978), Whitcomb's War (1980), and Face in the Mirror (1988). The volume of work Doughten produced through Heartland Productions, Mark IV Productions, and Russell Doughten Productions ranks him as the leading filmmaker in the history of Iowa. In 2001, Doughten was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the WYSIWYG Film Festival, and the National Religious Broadcasters Association presented him the Milestone Award for 50 years of achievement in presenting the gospel through film. Casting agent Kimberly Busbee referred to Doughen as "the godfather of independent film in Iowa." He was a regular attendee at Iowa's Wild Rose Independent Film Festival, and had mentored many indie filmmakers in Iowa. Doughten died from a cardiac related illness on August 19, 2013.