11/20/08: Guyana: Cult of the Damned (1979)
It’s been nice to see so much attention being paid to the 30th anniversary of the Jonestown massacre. More conservative sites should cover tawdry things like the Reverend Jim Jones and his cult of lemmings. We’ve still noticed that nobody’s written about Reverend James Johnson and the Johnsontown massacre.
Legendary schlock writer/producer/director René Cardona Jr. did an exceptional job of rushing his Jim Jones fictionalization into theaters.
Guyana: Cult of the Damned was playing in the U.S. by early 1980. To be fair, the CBS telemovie
Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones would air in April of that same year. We should acknowledge that (slightly) classier production for doing a fine job of capturing the Leftist tendencies of Jones’ pathetic followers.
The title role also launched Powers Boothe’s career. That’s probably the Jonestown adaptation that keeps sad supporters of Jones’ cult insisting that the loony losers of Jonestown should be remembered for their good intentions.
Guyana: Cult of the Damned is a lot trashier, though. It’s also more brazenly political. Media coverage of Jonestown soon began ignoring that the genocide was a typically Commie climax to a good Leftist’s maniacal dreams. Jones also remains the perfect culmination of a godless religion—which is what Communism is to plenty of sad cases who still wander San Francisco.
Of course, that’s the city where Jones prospered with plenty of adoration from local officials. Cardona really dwells on that aspect of Jones—or, you know, Johnson. The reverend (played in a glowering turn by Stuart Whitman) is quickly established as a creepy Christian who ditches God for Leftist beliefs, culminating with his becoming an official member of the American Communist Party. Johnson’s cult lands in Guyana courtesy of the local socialists, and it’s not long before his followers are learning Russian. You’ll want to cheer when loyal sidekick Bradford Dillman starts stirring the cyanide into the camp’s biggest vat. On a more tragic note, lawyers Joseph Cotten and John Ireland manage to sneak out of Johnsontown without having to prove their loyalty.
There are lots of sleazy moments where we see how Reverend Johnson uses sex to control his minions.
Guyana: Cult of the Damned still isn’t some kind of grisly grindhouse classic. The film’s almost restrained, and never appears overblown. It’s not difficult to accept that the San Francisco hippies of 1968 could find an even dumber destination by 1978. Cardona’s film is only based on a true story, but he preserved the facts that plenty of people want to ignore.
Make it your own: The good news is that a
Guyana: Cult of the Damned DVD can be
had cheap—but it’s repackaged as
Guyana: Crime of the Century and might be a TV print. We’ve seen some good bootlegs, though. At least you can get decent
VHS tapes of
Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones.
There was going to be a clever graphic at the end of this entry, but
Kathy Shaidle beat us to it. We knew we shouldn’t have skipped a posting last week.
