Guyana : La Secte de l'enfer

This is a review of the 115 minute directors cut not the 90 minute American cut.

This is a (supposedly) accurate version of the Jonestown tragedy of 1978 where Jim Jones got his followers all to drink Kool Aid spiked with cyanide and commit a mass suicide. This movie changed the names--JIm Jones is now Jim Johnson--who starts his own congregation in the US. He is deeply distrustful of the US and the CIA in particular and moves everybody to Guyana to start a utopian paradise. Unfortunately he treats his followers like slaves and subjects them to mental and physical torture and prevents them from leaving. The US government hears of this and goes to investigate. It all ends tragically.

Despite its reputation for being graphic and gory this film is really tame. How this got an R rating is beyond me--it's PG-13 all the way. No blood, gore or nudity. That doesn't make it a great movie though. Stuart Whitman plays Johnson and he's pretty good. They also got some respected actors--Gene Barry, John Ireland, Joseph Cotten, Yvonne De Carlo, Bradford Dillman--in major roles and they're all pretty good. It's kind of slow and the DVD transfer is crappy with bad sound and faded color. Still it is respectful and scary story of a tragedy that should never have happened.

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 keep getting this movie confused with "Guyana Tragedy", the TV movie based on the Jim Jones incident. But this is a fantastic film, truly bone-chilling and bizarre! I just saw it on TV (on FOX, of all places!) and could not believe how well-made it was. Having heard mostly negative reviews of the film, I am glad to say that they were all wrong. For the most part, "Cult of the Damned" is a lot more accurate than the TV movie and being a theatrical feature, can actually show more of the massacre than a TV movie's restricted budget and audience. Try to find this on TV sometime or even better, search for it on video! It's long out of print, but well worth the time to look around!

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.