{"id":8726,"date":"2018-01-25T13:25:08","date_gmt":"2018-01-25T18:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=8726"},"modified":"2018-06-28T13:32:15","modified_gmt":"2018-06-28T17:32:15","slug":"sects-education-cults-in-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/sects-education-cults-in-movies\/","title":{"rendered":"Sects Education: Cults in Film"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the premiere of the Paramount Network\u2019s Waco<\/i><\/a> miniseries alongside continued controversy over Quentin Tarantino\u2019s upcoming Manson-era film, there\u2019s never been a better time to revisit the allure of the cult. But where real-life leaders like Jim Jones, Charles Manson, and David Koresh saw themselves as Messiah-like figures, most cult leaders in movies defer to a different power: Satan. From a filmmaker\u2019s perspective, presenting an incontrovertible example of evil eliminates potential divisiveness while boiling the plot down to its basic parts. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The 1943 Val Lewton-produced horror film The 7th Victim<\/i> exposes the Satanic doings of the Palladists, a group of business suit-wearing intellectuals bent on killing anyone who reveals their existence. The Palladists are bureaucratic; they don\u2019t actually commit violence themselves, and compel followers to commit suicide. They\u2019re hands-off, with little interest in attracting other followers. It\u2019s possible the Hollywood Production Code, which prevented the disparagement of any religion or the promotion of wanton lifestyles, limited any further delving into the group itself. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The Palladists were reimagined in the 1968 Satanic horror feature Rosemary\u2019s Baby<\/i>. Where the earlier Palladists were older, tony members of the hoi polloi, the Satanists in Roman Polanski\u2019s film are average elderly people. Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer\u2019s characters, the Castevets, are underestimated as evil cult leaders. When Mia Farrow\u2019s Rosemary discovers her child is the son of the Devil, the Castevets don\u2019t respond with threats. They tell her she won\u2019t have to become a member of the cult, and can instead luxuriate in the prestige that comes from being the mother of Satan. <\/span><\/p>\n

The classy Satanists would be brought to an extreme in the 2008 French feature Martyrs<\/i>, wherein a classy theological cult becomes obsessed with torturing a woman in order to make her a living martyr, and catch a glimpse of the afterlife. And 2015\u2019s The Invitation <\/i>sees a group of wealthy adults brought together after their friends join a chic-sounding cult that promises the removal of pain. In each of these instances, the cult is presented as a fad, accessible only to the wealthy or otherwise entitled. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The interest in demons extended across the pond. Night of the Demon<\/i> (1957) follows a doctor, played by Dana Andrews, who attempts to solve a murder associated with a Satanic cult. Directed by Jacques Tourneur, a Lewton acolyte, Night of the Demon <\/i>creates a similar world of academics attempting to solve a murder mystery first, a murder that just happens to have cultic connections. There\u2019s never a need to extrapolate on the world of the cult or mine ambiguous consequences because there\u2019s only one end result: the rampaging of a horrific, literal monster. <\/span><\/p>\n

By the 1970s, the cult world transitioned away from unleashing a literal embodiment of the Devil. With Vietnam and civil unrest worldwide, a demonic figure could no longer stand in for real-world horrors. Cults became more interested in working towards personal gain. (This was touched on briefly in Rosemary\u2019s Baby<\/i>; Rosemary\u2019s husband offers her up as a vessel in order to fuel his stagnant acting career.) The 1975 Peter Fonda-starrer Race With the Devil<\/i> sees a cult perform human sacrifice to garner undefined \u201cmagical powers.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Wicker Man<\/i> (1973) contains many facets of the modern-day cult film. It follows an isolated community on the Edenic island of Summerisle. The group is sexually free, unashamed to engage in free love and expose their children to sexual matters. Their folkloric remedies of placing toads in mouths to cure a sore throat hearken back to colonial times. The staunch Catholic, Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward), is the outsider by which the audience experiences Summerisle, and many later cult movies have an outside observer act as an audience surrogate. The goal is either to prove to the audience the cult is evil\/crazy\/dangerous or, if the subject becomes one with the cult, to raise the stakes for the third act. <\/span><\/p>\n

As the title implies, Summerisle\u2019s \u201cgod\u201d is a giant wicker man that houses a human sacrifice to secure a good harvest. Gone is the selfish desire for wealth and prestige; in its place is a need for survival and a simple solution to end their hunger. Though it\u2019s easy to see the residents as hippies and Howie as the authority figure dealing with \u201cthese crazy kids,\u201d the group represents an idealistic, and outre, means of ending world suffering. And unlike the previous cult films, The Wicker Man<\/i> has a clear leader, Christopher Lee\u2019s Lord Summerisle. He embodies the basic tenets of what would define the cult leader: intimidating, magnetic, dangerous to anyone who goes against him. <\/span><\/p>\n

With the genre hewing closer and closer to reality, the movies eventually turned to real-life cult figures. Charles Manson received his first biopic in the 1976 TV movie Helter Skelter<\/i>, while two movies recounted the tragedy of the Jonestown massacre: the 1979 Mexican exploitation drama Guyana: Cult of the Damned<\/i> and 1980\u2019s Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones<\/i>. Jim Jones remains one of the more open targets in cult features to this day, as evidenced by Ti West\u2019s 2013 drama The Sacrament<\/i>, a recreation of the Guyana massacre for audiences uninterested in Google.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Coming only a few years after the events themselves, these movies skirt the line of bad taste, making an effort to present the \u201creal story\u201d while demonstrating how the two leaders took broken people and controlled them. By transitioning the cult film away from the vague\u00a0<\/span>\u201cSatanist\u201d to the real-life figures whose deeds left a string of bodies in their wake, audiences were reminded that they could easily become enthralled by these people \u2014 or, worse, their children could face indoctrination. The 1984 adaptation of Stephen King\u2019s Children of the Corn<\/i> follows a group of children compelled to kill their parents at the behest of a charismatic child-preacher named Isaac whose teachings take the Bible literally, the religious dogma of Christianity subverted. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>House of the Devil<\/i> (2009) casts an eye toward a facet of history often forgotten: the \u201cSatanic panic\u201d of the 1980s. Ti West’s story of a babysitter who spends the night in the house of an unknown couple drew on the history of Satanists in cinema. The Ulmans (played by Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov) are an older, unassuming couple in contrast to Jocelin Donahue\u2019s young, chipper babysitter, Samantha. The increasing terror that Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) experiences alone in the house leaves just enough room for the audience to question whether these people are in a cult or whether Samantha is just overreacting \u2014 mimicking the feelings of many who assumed Satanists were living next door to them. And much like the beginnings of the religious cult in cinema, House of the Devil<\/i> lacks a tangible leader, instead bringing in a Rosemary\u2019s Baby<\/i>-esque twist involving the devil. Satanists also briefly returned in the 2000 film Bless the Child,<\/i> wherein a group of devil-worshippers attempt to possess the mind of a small child presumed to be a conduit to God. <\/span><\/p>\n

The cult has taken on an increased prominence in the last decade, possibly due to the religious and political divides the separate us. The emphasis on devil worship still stands, in features like Drive Angry<\/i> and the \u201cSafe Haven\u201d segment in V\/H\/S 2<\/i>. Others have a tacit awareness of specific groups without naming them. When Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s 2012 feature The Master <\/i>came out, audiences were excited about \u2014 and disappointed in its ultimate presentation of \u2014 the controversial religion of Scientology. Kevin Smith\u2019s 2011 horror feature Red State<\/i> featured a religious group whose hatred of homosexuality was a sly critique of the Westboro Baptist Church. The mere knowledge of reality acts as a means of enticement to watch. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Real-life cults remain a male-dominated medium, and when movies present female cult leaders, a sexual component tends to crop up. Sound of My Voice<\/i>\u00a0(2011) introduces Maggie (Britt Marling), a woman who touts herself as being from the future. Her cult doesn\u2019t espouse violence but a cleansing of body and soul. She doesn\u2019t control with physicality but is adept at mental manipulation. This comes in handy when a male outsider, intent on exposing her as a fraud, falls for her. <\/span><\/p>\n

Faults<\/i>\u00a0(2014) is part of the \u201ccult deprogramming\u201d sub-genre, with Mary Elizabeth Winstead\u2019s Claire revealed as the leader of a cult. Jane Campion\u2019s Holy Smoke<\/i>\u00a0(1999) also sees a male deprogrammer (Harvey Keitel) fall under the spell of a cult member (Kate Winslet). Their sexual relationship opens the door to a discussion of gender and how religion interacts within it. And the 2011 drama Martha Marcy May Marlene<\/i>\u00a0put the cult member as the outsider, with Elizabeth Olsen\u2019s Martha attempting to deprogram herself after escaping a Manson-esque personage played by John Hawkes.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is just a glimpse into the allure of the cult. All of these films attempt to showcase the cult as a false promise that claims to solve problems but only delivers pain and sadness. Whether the devil is unleashed by the end or not, the cult remains a fascinating film figure that we haven\u2019t yet seen the end of.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Kristen Lopez<\/a>\u00a0awaits her ascension in Sacramento.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the premiere of the Paramount Network\u2019s Waco miniseries alongside continued controversy over Quentin Tarantino\u2019s upcoming Manson-era film, there\u2019s never […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":467,"featured_media":8727,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1399,1381],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-looking-back","category-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/467"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}