Guyana: Crime of the Century

Guyana, 1978: 912 members of James Jones' People's Temple cult commit mass suicide - an act of 'revolutionary death' - as their dream of a promised land shatters. Hounded by press, congressmen, and his own paranoid imagination, the Bible-thumping socialist visionary Jones (played by Whitman) emerges as no more than a cardboard cut-out in this penny-dreadful hash which is somehow both uninformative and tedious. The strictly token emphasis on lurid sex/torture, and its ageing rent-a-star cast, shows up producer/director Cardona's past reputation for factory-line quickies for South American markets. DMacp.