I'm watching The Story of Jim Jones:Guyana Tragedy!!!

Hear Powers Booth is terrifying in this.

I LOVE Powers Booth; always have. He's great in "Tombstone," too.

I was shown this movie at my Catholic school as a warning against cults...

Yes, Powers is a sex bomb. Intense.

Powers Booth became Jim Jones in that film. Another movie on cults, also based on a true story, is "Ticket to Heaven."

It is pretty interesting so far. Jones' father was in the Ku Klux Klan and the little Jim finds comfort in religion.

Interesting to see how this unfolds psychologically. I know the story of what Jones did but never really heard why.

I remember the first time I saw this. Powers Booth was so impressive in this I was sure he was going to be a huge star. I wonder what happened.

Jesus Christ, they also showed us that fucking movie @R4's link.

Diana Scarwid just entered!!! She's a hippie check who wears her dark glasses low on her nose!!!

Keep an eye on Scarwid's boyfriend, OP. ;-)

Parts of it are campy but it's ultimately really disturbing. Boothe gives a great performance.

WHAT CHANNEL?

On dvd.

Wow there was almost a gay kiss. I didn't know they allowed that in the seventies.

Scarwid was very sweet and subtle (surprised.)

Intermission !!!!

I read that the expression "drinking the Cool Aid" is now considered an offensive description. It wounds the survivors of the cult!

The expression supposedly mocks the victims of the cult and some people find that offensive.

But was it even Kool-aid?

I've seen it two or three times. I always try to figure out how I could have escaped (if I'd been there) when he's rounding them up to drink the cool aid. When he is sitting there rambling on to the people at the end, its really creepy.

You couldn't, R15. The gunmen were watching to make sure everyone drank.

R13, and it wasn't even Kool-Aid that the victims drank. It was grape Flavor Aid.

Here is that bizarre article about why the Kool-Aid expression is offensive!

"The phrase ‘drank the Kool-Aid’ is completely offensive. We should stop saying it immediately."

People will never stop using it. It has officially entered the lexicon.

This isn't the movie with Colleen Dewhurst as the kindly older lady next door who poisons little Jim's mind with religion?

it is r20

Finally! Irene Cara enters as Levar Burton's fiancee!

I bought this on VHS tape about 8 years ago. I saw it years ago and thought it was fascinating. Powers Booths was so good. I love the scenes where he gets in bed with Brad Dourif, who he's helping to detox from drugs. Later Brad 's character becomes his lover and PB plays it very seriously. I remember my eyes bugging out at their almost kiss - it was pretty shocking for the times.

The scenes where J.Jones is telling his flock to drink the poison are chilling. Watching families line up and feed their children the koolaid... what's worse are the men under him who pick up guns to kill the folks who resist. Then the bloated bodies ::shiver::

[quote]ater Brad 's character becomes his lover and PB plays it very seriously. I remember my eyes bugging out at their almost kiss - it was pretty shocking for the times.

plus he makes Diana Scarwid watch.

Anyone know if the supporting characters in the film were real or fictionalized?

Scarwid, Douriff, Brenda Vaccaro, Madge Sinclair. So Levar Burton got away? They don't really follow up with a scroll or anything saying how many got away etc. (I guess I'll have to look that up.)

The end was very chilling and shocking.

This was a CBS miniseries which aired over several nights- it was either 6-8 broadcast hours. I was a little disappointed that the videotape I bought was only about 4 hours of this epic (it wasn't available on DVD back when I got interested in seeing this again). I can only wonder what was deleted.

Guess I'll check if the DVD has more content than my tapes.

OP Is your DVD edition good quality? I just checked Amazon and 99% of the reviews there say the DVD looks like a bad bootleg with poor quality video and "is missing the last part".

It was a 4-hour broadcast spread over two nights, R25. 192 minutes total, that's all there ever was.

I bought it on Amazon. It is three hours seven minutes so I guess it is the whole thing minus commercials.

It is not great picture quality but is totally watchable for the 6 bucks it cost. Not sure if it is a boot leg. It looks like a lot of those old miniseries you see on the History Channel like War and Remembrance and stuff.

[quote] and "is missing the last part".

I don't know. It ends as soon as Jones dies. Was there originally more?

This whole movie is on YouTube, for free.

Documentary...

Seen it a few times. Chilling and very realistic.Really great cast.. Boothe deserved the Emmy. He was the only actor to show up that year to collect it since SAG was on strike and boycotted the event.

Documentaries about Jim Jones and the Guyana tragedy always include actual tapes of him talking to his followers. They're horrifying; Jones has a laugh like a psycho in a horror movie. There's also a tape of the mass suicide which is ghastly. Actually, a lot of people did NOT commit suicide; they were murdered, forced to drink the poison. And of course, ALL of the children were murdered. On the tapes one poor brave woman tries to argue that the children should be allowed to live their lives. Jones counters with "don't they deserve peace?" He of course gets his way, and all those innocent children were murdered, dead because of Jones's insanity and their parent's stupidity.

Even today, after all these years, it's still incredible, incredible to think that people would pack up and leave the country with their children in order to follow their "leader", an psychotic preacher named Jim Jones. What the HELL is wrong with people like that? It boggles the mind. I'll never be able to understand people like that. It's so crazy.

R32, I think it's worth noting that the late '60s and '70s was a peculiar time when the youth of America and the Western World were so distrustful of the establishment (society, government, religion) that many rejected it and sought fulfillment (secular and spiritual) elsewhere. The gullible among them embraced whoever offered an alternative worldview. And the more exotic and outré the better. Beginning with the Beatles and Mia Farrow trekking to India for the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's guidance, and continuing with the Rolling Stones in the pleasure palaces of Marrakesh, traveling to distant lands for enlightenment was the cool thing to do. And by the '70s there were so many cults and charismatic leaders to choose from: the Moonies, the Hare Krishnas, Children of God, Twelve Tribes, Peoples Temple, etc.

[quote] think it's worth noting that the late '60s and '70s was a peculiar time when the youth of America and the Western World were so distrustful of the establishment (society, government, religion) that many rejected it and sought fulfillment (secular and spiritual) elsewhere.

Jones' followers weren't particularly young. There were a lot of older and even elderly people who followed him to Guyana.

Did you read that? R28 bought the TAPE! Get her, girls!

Is it just me or does anyone else think about how gullible and stupid these people must have been and say to yourself, "no big loss"? The children's deaths are sad, sure, but this is what religion (and stupidity) can do to people.

R36, it's just you. Now go to bed like a good boy.

I seem to recall before the TV movie there was a low budget trashy movie about Jim Jones that came out that exploited the sexual aspects of the cult. Anybody else remember?

These people were not religious R36. By the late 60's Jones was an atheist who endorsed communism. In the tapes R32 refers to,Jones gets extremely graphic describing sex with men. He talks about "opening up" big men and how hard he fucked them, complete with sound effects.

Wow, I didn't realize that, R39. Makes me want to believe in a god! (Just kidding.)

I didn't know Jones had sex with men. That's really hot.

r2, I went to a Christian school and we were shown this too. Kids raised in a religious environment like parochial school are more susceptible to cults.

Somewhere online is an account by one of the guys who had to go in and help clean up the mess afterwards. It's very chilling to read. The bodies laid in the hot,steaming jungle for several days before the authorities got to them, so the bodies were in an advanced state of decomposition. The author of the account stayed until the camp was totally cleaned up, he reported that the stench of death stayed there after all the bodies had been transported out.

This isn't r42's on-line description, but there is a link to the Jonestown recovery effort on this Army Quartermaster Mortuary Affairs webpage:

[R40] thats hot? Seriously? You hoes think anything with 2 hard dicks is hot. THIS is NOT hot.

I had no idea that he was a rump ranger

Listen to these tapes. He is cursing and asking followers if they had sex, talking about cutting off pricks, and going on about 7 and 8 hour fucks.

Transcript of tapes where Jones talks about fucking men. Scroll down near the bottom.

from 3:19 on he rants about fucking huge men, opening them up, etc.

Christ, he sounds like a crazy person. How THE hell did he get anyone to follow him?

What kind of preacher curses like that and goes on and on about fucking.

Cults are scary things.

Listening to that tape, he sounds as though he had utter contempt for his followers. They must have been truly desperate to belong to something.

Well at least his sermons were never boring.

Were those sermons from SF or from Guyana?

Um, the reality was bad enough.

I've seen so much but nothing was as bad as the situation is today. Corporations in complete control of our government. I really don't believe we will ever recover from this.

Powers Booth was blacklisted for decades because he dared to defy SAG and cross the picket line to attend the Emmys. The real shame of that year's ceremony was that the phenomenal Party Duke also won for The Miracle Worker. It would have been an historic full circle moment for her career but I suppose when you're the president of SAG you kinda have to tow the party line.

The tapes were from Guyana.

I wonder, on the conspiratorial side, how Jim Jones could have been so entrenched in SF civic life. He was not an outlaw.

So the people were already trapped, then, and had to listen...

But few insiders liked him r57 -- his photo ops were mostly of feds passing through.

Jones played tapes of himself over the loudspeakers 24/7. There was no escape.

Were there armed guards watching the exits? Didn't a handful of people run for it?

I'm going to have to track down the Powers Booth version, though normally I go for a detailed doc

R61, One of Jim Jones' sons survived along with his basketball teammates lucky to be playing in another city. A few of the security guards escaped. Also a couple of very elderly patients who were asleep were overlooked. Most were hunted down and killed.

Jonestown was isolated. Jim Jones feared interference from anyone else, and had become increasingly paranoid. His followers were totally unprepared for the harsh living conditions, unforgiving soil, and lack of food. Few would have been physically strong enough to run away to safety. Those that tried to escape on Congressman Ryan's private plane were shot.

Wow, reading the transcript, Jones was completely insane, and just browbeating people to agree with him. They all sound afraid of him. I'm surprised the guards didn't just escape themselves.

He was a psychopath who took advantage of people who were desperate for a better life. They were all easy prey for a sociopathic cult leader.

Of course they were afraid of him, he ended up killing them.

Speaking of bizarre cults, did anyone know someone involved with the Eternal Values cult? How about their justification for interracial gang bangs for purity rituals? Or the misogynist leader telling a top supermodel to sit on a 6 ft dildo in the middle of NY City?

[quote]I was shown this movie at my Catholic school as a warning against cults...

So an old cult showed a movie warning about new cults? Sounds about right. I'm sure they don't want any competition.

*

Bumpy

The BEST version is the one where Jessica Alba goes to find out what happened to her family.

R33 - $cientology. You missed a cult.