The session: "April is the Cruelest Month -- Cardona's Catastrophes"
Four movies by the two Rene Cardonas -- father and son
Week 4: Guyana: Cult of the Damned (1979)
Directed by Rene Cardona, Jr.
My Level of Prior Knowledge:
I hadn't heard of this.
Plot:
A cult leader moves his whole congregation from San Francisco to Guyana. There, he rules as a kind of cross between a messiah figure and a dictator -- until he makes everyone drink poison
Reaction and Other Folderol:
This was essentially a docudrama of the Jonestown Massacre, though the names of the major players were changed owing to the recency of events. I was thirteen when the massacre occurred, so I remember it, but I wasn't much of a news junkie then, so there were many details that I didn't know. Keith told us that this movie was reasonably true to events, though it made it appear as though the Jonestown victims were mostly White, when in fact they were mostly Black. And, of course, there's the minor detail of name changes -- for example, Jim Jones was represented as Jim Johnson and Jonestown was therefore rebranded as Johnsontown (which, in my opinion isn't as catchy). But, in terms of realism, the final scenes did a really good job of recreating some of the famous news photos that I remember from the time.
Stuart Whitman gives the performance of a lifetime as James Johnson. The movie opens with an extended scene of him preaching in his an Francisco church, and he's mesmerizing. He exudes the charisma that the real life Jim Jones must have had. And he just gets better from there. By necessity, the film focused on only a handful of the Johnsontowners, and they weren't particularly well developed. But that didn't seem to be a real issue.
The ending -- the poisoning scene -- dragged on a bit much, but it did serve its intended effect, as we heard Whitman (as Johnson) talking the whole time -- still with that fiery charismatic delivery.
Ratings
Me: 8.5
Dave: 9.5
Ethan: 10
Joe: 8.5
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