ThedevilChoose
When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.
BelSports
This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.
Sameer Callahan
It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.
Anoushka Slater
While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.
Edgar Soberon Torchia
A real mess coproduced by México, Spain, Panamá and the U.S., done by the Cardonas with the same sensationalism of other 1970s "films", as "El triángulo de las Bermudas", "¡Tintorera!" and a few others that father and son signed together or separatedly. Everybody spoke their lines in their native languages, many tried to speak English for the "international market"... and were indeed recorded, but finally dubbed for the American version. It is awful in any version. Little was left (I can only guess) of the real facts that made headlines on newspapers. All I can remember now is Stuart Whitman in a blood-red shirt, playing the head of the cult, and all those old familiar faces, probably making fun of what they were doing in Acapulco for a few dollars...
sol1218
#Slight Spoilers# Based on the true story of the late Reverand Jim Jones who's paranoid obsession of an impending nuclear holocaust as well as him and his followers, of the People's Temple in San Francisco, being rounded up and put in concentration camps lead to the biggest mass-suicide in recorded history in the hot steaming and snake-infested jungles of Guyana back on November 18-19 1978.The entire event is told to us, off-camera, by a 24 year-old survivor of the Johnsontown massacre in the movie "Guyana Cult of the Damned". The movie goes back to a lawsuit against the People's Temple's founder Reverand James Johnson, Stuart Whitman, by the father of one of his followers who was "accidently" killed when he quit being a member of the Temple. California Congressman Lee O'Brian, Gene Barry, organizes a special task force that travels down to Guyana where Johnson has built a town for his some 3,000 followers to see if the accusations of torture humiliation and even murder of some of his followers against Reverand James Johnson are true.James Johnson over the years has gone from preaching the words and teaching of Jesus Christ to becoming both a dye in the wool Marxist/Socialist even secretly joined the American Communist Party. Johnson has also become dependent on proscription drugs and the drugs were slowly killing him. That may well have been the reason for his state of mind in the two years that lead up to his grand exit, together with over 900 loyal and not so loyal followers,on that infamous "White Night" in November.Life was hell in Johnsontwon with James Johnson ruling it with an iron fist and having anyone who disobeyed his orders or will tortured and humiliated in view of all the other Johnsontown members. In one case when a young couple were caught making love in the woods they were made to be forced to have sex, or other men of Johnsontown have sex with them, with male members of Johnsontown in full views of the entire Johnsontown community including the very young children!When Congressman O'Brian came to Johnsontown to investigate the charges against Johnson all hell broke loose with scores of Johnsontown residents wanting to leave with him. Johnson himself already suffering from advanced brain and stomach cancer went berserk and ordered his men to ambush Congressman O'Brian before he, and the defectors of Jonsontown, the newsman and cameramen left Guyana brutally massacred most of them including Congressman O'Brian.With the news of O'Brian and his fellow American citizens murdered Johnson got his followers ready for the big night that he's been planning and rehearsing for years the terrifying "White Night". With his faithful physician Doctor Gary Shaw, Bradford Dillman, mixing the deadly cyanide into a giant vat of fruit-punch Johnson had, and forced, his followers to drink it. Some 1,000 people in Johnsontown died before the US, and Guyanan, military could get there to save them from this murderous madman. When they finally got there, Johnsontown, the rescue squads found to their, and the worlds, shock and horror the biggest organized mass murder, by suicide, in human history had already happened. Even though Johnson's wife of 27 years Marilyn, Ericka Carlsson, and one of his young children took a drink of the death fruit-punch potion right in front of him thus going immediately into painful death-rattlings convolutions and dying the good Reverand Johnson, coward that he was, refrained from taking a drink and was shot,in the neck, instead by one of his loyal henchmen.Shocking but true story about madness and murder with James Johnson using the most naive of people who thought that he was a kind noble and God-like man. Instead the crazed and drug addicted James Johnson sent them and their families, even their infant children, to a hell not heaven on earth like he had promised them. In the end Johnson destroyed everything good, if there was any, that he did in his life making him one of the most evil, and God-less, men that ever walked the face of the earth. For some strange and ironic reason James Jonhson had a placard over his throne, or seat of power, at Johnsontown quoting the Spanish philosopher George Santanya stating " Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to relive it". Let's hope that we and the world learned from the evil deeds and actions of James Johnson aka Jim Jones and will always remember what he did and stood for and see to it, like Santayana's famous quote, that we never forget and never live to see or let it, or him, ever happen again.
virek213
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.
Casey-52
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!
