Pluskylang Great Film overall

Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Syl I will never forget this film or the events that lead up to Jonestown in Guyana. It just seems so tragic but needs to be told. Powers Boothe give a commanding performance as the leader Rev. Jim Jones from obscurity until total madness. It would have won him an Academy Award easily if it was released in the movie theaters. It is the kind of mini-series you won't forget. You won't forget the images of the cult's brutality, control, and obsessiveness of it's leader. His rise and fall and the threat from the outside world to destroy what he considered to be paradise. The mass suicide is horrifying, almost unreal to anybody's imagination as to why so many people (900+) went willingly or resisted JOnes' orders. They don't make mini series like these anymore where we're left with out mouths open and hungry to know what happened to the others.

richard.fuller1 I remember well the newscasts that weekend, showing the man leap out from behind the truck. This clip would be shown over and over and over again. What was I watching? We would hear about the congressman, interviews with cameramen and reporters. One media fellow said his arm was hit, and he fell and the blood ran to his head, so they thought he had been shot in the head. What was I watching?Then the mass suicide was discovered. What was going on?All from cyanide poisoning. Jones and his secretary were found shot. Who shot them?It would take the movie for me to understand what had occurred. I have not seen this thing in a while, but because I remember the suicides (for some reason this is the only way I look at that moment in November 1978) from back then, I have remembered everything about this movie rather well.Standouts for me? It was a woman's show; Carol Lynley, Dianne Ladd, Meg Foster, Veronica Cartwright, Madge Sinclair (she fought back, but was stuck with a needle and then stopped resisting), the breaking down of Irene Cara, and I did like Randy Quaid as well.I often wondered if Meg Foster and Quaid were based on real people and if they could have possibly survived.The movie doesn't point out there was at least two survivors; I think it was a young girl who had her throat slit survived and a woman was found in the hospital ward. The movie also doesn't point out who may have shot Jones (I always believed it was LeVar Burton!). Since then I have seen things such as History Channel programs showing Jim Jones on that fateful final day, and the audio recording of the suicides is even played, which apparently was recreated for the movie.In the late eighties I would cross paths with a young man who lost his mother to the Guyana tragedy.Even 20/20 has shown a program of Jones two sons, one an actual son from his marriage to the woman portrayed by Veronica Cartwright (by chance he was out of the country, perhaps in America, when this took place, but he wasn't there) and the other, an adopted Black boy.When they visited the site of the camp, now a desserted field and found only a piece of a bench was all that was left, the birth son became very upset. He would spend the night out in the woods where they stayed. It's impossible to judge anyone who followed Jones and made this story true, because there but for the grace of God go I.

dtucker86 This is an awesome film and Powers Boothe's performance is what makes it. When it was first broadcast on CBS-TV in 1980, Time Magazine even had an article on it. The magazine didn't think much of the film in general, but it said there is one unforgettable performance in it, "a young actor named Powers Boothe captures all the rage, power, evil and charisma of "Dad" Jim Jones. It was most unusual for them to cast a young unknown actor in such an important role, but Powers Boothe proved his worth in spades! He won an Emmy for his dynamite portrayal. There was an actor's strike at the time and he was one of the only ones who showed up to accept his award, "this may be the bravest moment of my career or the most stupid" he said. This film shows Jone's rise to power in the People Temple. Originally he was a good man of God who wanted to help others, but something went horribly wrong. Boothe captures the sinister evil that was Jim Jones, but also his charisma and charm as well. Debbie Layton was one of the few people who survived the massacre in Guyana. She knew Jones very well and said that Jones was evil but he was also very clever and good at fooling people. Jones appealed to poor blacks and people without a direction in life. He promised them a better life and a utopia in "Jonestown". The final scenes of the film detailing the horrible mass suicide in November 1978 are gut wrenching. Out of 913 dead, only Jones and his nurse had not taken poison. Boothe captures Jones rhythmic, haunting preacher cadences and his words to the dying are taken from Jone's actual words. He was recording himself at the time. We must never forget this evil man and the horror he perpetrated upon the world. Those who forget the mistakes of history are only doomed to repeat them. In Search Of...had a show on Jim Jones once and at the end the host Leonard Nimoy said that there are still people who venerate Jim Jones who sleep with his picture and who believe that he is the only person who ever loved them. That is truly sad indeed. By the way, it surprised me that Powers Boothe's career never took off the way it should have after he made this incredible debut. He beat out Henry Fonda and Jason Robards to win his Emmy. He played Phillip Marlowe in an HBO series of short films and was in A Cry For Love, Southern Comfort, Red Dawn, A Breed Apart, The Emerald Forest, Extreme Prejudice and Into The Homeland, but the only really good part he played that was close to this one was when he played Soviet spy John Walker in the 1990 tv film Family Of Spies.

Ajtlawyer Certainly this is the best work Powers Boothe has done and he deservedly got an Emmy for it. As an aside, I can recall the awards night because there was a Screen Actors Guild strike or something and nearly all of the nominees failed to attend the ceremonies. But when Boothe's name was called out as a winner, he defiantly strode up to the podium to get his trophy. People may want to read the book "Raven" which is a biography about Rev. Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple; this TV movie can only scratch the surface of the demonic goings-on in the Temple without demanding more censorship than a TV show could allow, at least back then. Boothe is hypnotic as Jim Jones and you get the sense that he wasn't always whacked out and loony. A particularly good scene is when Jones stands in front of an abandoned synagogue in the black-ghetto part of town. The only white man there, he's soon surrounded by obviously skeptical blacks. "Will you pray with me?" Jones asks, and the bystanders do as Jones gives a heartfelt prayer that God will lift their burdens. The bystanders are impressed and in a short time the Peoples Temple is prospering. Boothe perfectly recreates the candence and timbre of Jones' preaching and phony faith-healing and his lustful disposition towards the women of his congregation. Jones's sexual exploits don't end there and he later has an affair with drug-addicted Brad Dourif, as well (in fact, Jones had sex with plenty of his male followers). The end of the movie where the cult members all commit suicide is very frightening. All the more so because nearly all of the dialogue is exactly what was spoken---Jones had been tape recording his harangues and the tape ended probably not long before he was killed himself. By the way, Jones never took the cynanide-laced kool-aid, he was shot which led many to believe that Jones had no intention of going off into the hereafter but was planning his escape when one of henchmen decided to have Jones join his "flock".