O Massacre da Guiana

Stuart Whitman got the part of Reverend James Johnson/Jim Jones the first choice for this type of film Richard Burton who in 1978-79 was regularly doing tax haven made films may have been offered the role of the reverend or maybe one of the US Justice officials looking to bring the reverend to justice but most likely turned it down or the producer couldn't afford him (Richard Burton was along with Sean Connery, Roger Moore and Michael Caine in the late 1970s were the big 4 bankable British actors who would sell cinema tickets all over the world so producers around the world would be sending scripts to their managers/agents for them to look at) this was a Tax Haven funded project shot in the US, Mexico and the West Indies financed in Spain with American stars doing this film to pay off their tax bills.

Rene Cardona Jnr's attempt to cash-in on the contemporary Jim Jones cult that resulted in the mass suicide of almost a thousand followers. Stuart Whitman plays the megalomaniacal cult leader, deviant, zealot and polygamist who leads his flock into self-inflicted hardship becoming isolated then paranoid to the point of total delusion and eventual self-destruction.

Frequent Whitman collaborator Bradford Dillman plays Jones' doctor-in-residence who administers the fatal dose, Gene Barry is the doomed American senator trying to investigate the secretive community, and a host of former Hollywood heavyweights (Cotten, DeCarlo, Ireland) and welterweights (Young, Chanel, Noriega, Lucero) fill out the expansive acting ranks. Good to see Cardona's preferred local talent Hugo Stiglitz on board along with beauties Jennifer Ashley and Erika Carlsson playing Jones' long-suffering wife (the trio reunited from "Tintorera"). Whilst not to trivialise the subject, you know you're watching an exploitation movie when those guys are prominent.

Fatally overlong, the long-awaited climax is agonising to watch and not necessarily worth the wait although knowing the conclusion doesn't help the pacing, nor is there much attempt at suspense.

Although there's an apparent ambition to present a serious docu-drama, it's firmly exploitation fodder made for a particular audience. If you want to see the more deferential treatment, then the "Guyana Tragedy" (1980) is probably your go-to picture. Whilst sordid and overlong, I'm faithful to the Rene Cardona factory and appreciate his trademark excess, so it's a thumbs up from my perspective.

From the Mexican film crew that gave us the infamous 1976 exploitation flick SURVIVE! comes the equally disgusting GUYANA: CULT OF THE DAMNED, loosely (and I do mean LOOSELY) based on the events leading up to the Rev. Jim Jones leading more than 900 of his cult followers to a cyanide-laced death in the Guyana rainforest. Only this time, however, the filmmakers managed to bribe a lot of big names to play real people whose names have been changed to protect the innocent and the guilty. Gene Barry, John Ireland, Stuart Whitman, Yvonne DeCarlo, and a whole host of others can hardly call this either one's shining hour.

But just as SURVIVE! necessitated the making of ALIVE, CULT OF THE DAMNED would be followed (inevitably, and much sooner) by the superb 2-part TV film GUYANA TRAGEDY: THE STORY OF JIM JONES. This film is simply nothing more than gruesome horror exploitation that even slasher film exploiters in the American market would have had a hard time stomaching.

Universal released and re-edited this Mexican film starring an all-star cast! I saw both prints and it's intresting how Universal added a voice over of a survivor, and made the film more fast pace. I hate to give this film any credit, but some of it more accurate than the TV film GUYANA TRAGEDY. And Stuart Whitman as Jim Johnson (jones) gives a pretty good performance. The rest of the cast looks like they did this film for the money as they look very tried. This film was hated by most critic (especially Siskel & Ebert) and is very offensive at times. If you have to see it, I strongly recommend you see the short version for it more professional put together. But I doubt Universal will ever put this film on tape.

I have to admit that ever since I first heard about this cult I've been terribly interested in knowing just what the tag line of the movie implies that this movie tells you: The Truth Behind the most shocking crime of the century. This movie did everything but fulfill its' promise.

We get introduced to the cult in an opening scene with Reverend James Johnson, the leader of the cult, preaching in a church. He explains that they have gotten a piece of land by the "friendly socialists" in Guyana where they will establish a religious community. This is a key sentence, because the connection between Johnson and socialism becomes established over and over again. For example, in the "Johnsontown agricultural project", they listen to a woman that is trying to teach them Russian while they are working. Later in the movie, the U.S. Ambassador calls Johnson a socialist.

I think that the movie was made too soon after the incident to have any perspective. I was bewildered by the ignorance of the director that actually believed he could get any real insight in the event when not even a year had passed since! He tried and failed miserably, as far as I'm concerned. This movie is not even trying to tell the truth. The director is making almost desperate efforts to draw parallels between "suicide cults" and "socialists" using the infamous "guilt by association" method. I think that this is a very interesting movie if you watch it from that perspective - and bear in mind the echoes of the cold war. If you're trying to get to know what happened - look elsewhere.