Mysterious Two

I got the chance to watch this twice on an obscure cable channel. Otherwise it's very difficult to get hold of (it didn't appear on IMDb for a number of years).

It's by turns quite dated and cheesy, and oddly creepy and atmospheric. We never do really find out what's going on. In that sense, it's quite close to "Picnic at Hanging Rock". Two cult leaders start indoctrinating people, and one by one they start disappearing. The lesson here, perhaps is about giving yourself over to the unknown, particularly when you don't know what its intentions are.

Basically this film is a reaction to the various UFO sects that have sprung up over the years (especially in the decade or so before the film) - Heaven's Gate, Raelians, Share International ("Maitreya"), George Adamski, the Aetherius Society etc, and also some of the tragedies resulting from New Religious Movements in general, e.g. the Jonestown Massacre, the Manson Gang etc. As it turned out, the film demonstrates a real concern, as there have been many more such tragedies since then. It's also about the souring of the hippie/New Age ideal, about peace and love distorted and gone horribly wrong.

This very interesting and disturbing TV film was based not on the Jonestown cult massacre but on the exploits of "The Two". This male and female pair of deluded UFO contactees roamed America in the 70's enlisting converts. I read articles about them then in major magazines such as TIME. They then disappeared and I wondered what had become of them. They resurfaced in the mid-90's as "Bo & Peep" the leaders of the suicidal Heaven's Gate cult. They believed they were in contact with a spaceship that was coming to Earth to collect them and was following in the wake of the Hale Bop comet. I think this TV movie takes an accurate and chilling look into the world of religious delusion, kooks, cults and the "outsider" mentality. I stumbled upon it late one night and it hooked me and has stayed with me. Highly recommended.

This movie was actually based on the Heaven's Gate cult that up and committed mass suicide in San Diego in 1997. The characters played by Pointer and Forsythe are based on Ti and Do, leaders of the UFO cult. Although the movie is profoundly hokey, it's a pretty chilling thing to watch when you realize that it's based on a genuine cult and sort of illustrates exactly what their plans were 15 years before they decided to act on them.