1978’s Jonestown massacre was one of the first times that cults entered the public imagination, after 909 extreme Marxist followers of Jim Jones died in Guyana after drinking Kool-Aid laced with poison. That includes the Rajneesh group. As a child, she became so lonely she would talk to the taps in the bathroom, and tried to make friends with the rats and mice that scuttled into the kitchen. I typically hate dramatic reenactments and everything else that’s in the realm of being cheesy and unnecessary, but said scenes in Jonestown totally work and the film is basically better for it. Didier adopted a 6-year-old girl, who he groomed to become his wife. I’ve dealt with more than 1,000 different cults. I hope that our society becomes more compassionate so not only Jonestown's end could never happen again, but that our community would never be that cold to those returning from the horror. “When she asked me if I had time to answer a few questions for what I thought was market research, I said yes.”. Haworth read the piece and contacted Katz immediately to verify his facts. Vernon Gosney. DIRECTOR. Born in Lancashire, the son of a farmer, Haworth emigrated to Canada in 1972 while in his twenties. “She was slapped with slippers or a stick from a McDonald's balloon you kept for the purpose.”. It was an almost textbook recruitment, and Haworth firmly believes he would have been lost to everyone who knew him but for one error on the part of the cult. In 1978, cult leader Jim Jones lures his followers to Jonestown, Guyana where they commit mass suicide of … And good sense would dictate that was the point he turned his back on cults forever and got on with his life. Featuring never-before-seen footage, this documentary delivers a startling new look at the Peoples Temple, headed by preacher Jim Jones who, in 1978, led more than 900 members to Guyana, where he orchestrated a mass suicide via tainted punch. With Rebecca Moore, Janet Shular, Tim Carter, Stanley Clayton. As this documentary doesn't show even half of the stuff that went on in the People's Temple long before they even got to Jonestown. “If you’re born into a cult you don’t have that ‘Real Ian’ vs ‘Cult Ian’ internal battle that I had,” says Haworth. Blending interviews and dramatic reenactments, this film documents the fraught last days of Jim Jones’ cult, before the mass suicide took 918 lives. Crash course for those who have never heard of Jonestown: … Forty years after the Jonestown massacre – one of the most horrific incidents in recent American history – a documentary will shine a light on cult leader Jim Jones and his followers. “You emerge from that and the first question is… who am I? This doc begs the question as to how or not Patrick’s large underground network followers became their own kind of cult. A Storyville documentary. Believers of the Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ followed Reverend Jones to Guyana in the Seventies, hoping to create a utopia in the jungle. Create a commenting name to join the debate, There are no Independent Premium comments yet - be the first to add your thoughts, There are no comments yet - be the first to add your thoughts. Tim Wolochatiuk. The documentary not only covers the horrors of Ivan’s treatment of his captives, it also lays out the very real and difficult task that Israel has of locating and convicting war criminals. Related post: The Best True Crime Documentaries of All Time We don’t have the answers, despite our addiction to brainwashing-themed programming, but maybe the following docs do. Cults are back in the news again, but for Ian Haworth they never went away. Due to the sheer scale of this comment community, we are not able to give each post the same level of attention, but we have preserved this area in the interests of open debate. He’d already looked into smoking-cessation courses that were of comparable cost, so decided he’d give this one a go. “They start off wanting the usual things,” says Haworth. Besides, he soon had more than enough on his plate as more and more people began to get in touch, especially after he had relocated back to the UK. Reverend Jones wanted to create a glorious sacrifice, a defiant act of “revolutionary suicide” that would echo through history. Some disciples willingly colluded, cheering as he exhorted them to kill themselves and their children. Tim Reiterman. Katy Morgan-Davies last month published a book about her experiences living in Brixton with the cult leader – and her father – Aravindan Balakrishnan, who was jailed on charges of rape and imprisonment in 2015. When they finally counted the bodies after what would become known as the Jonestown massacre of 18 November 1978, the total came to 918, of whom 304 were children. These people didn’t do that,” he says. Morgan-Davies managed to flee the cult in 2013 after 30 years – her entire life. Rent American Experience: Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple (2006) on DVD and Blu-ray. A society where people own all things in common, where there is no rich or poor, where there are no races.”. Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, also known as Osho, and the free-love community which was built up around him in Oregon in the 1980s. Forty years on from America’s most infamous massacre, this harrowing documentary traces the Rev Jim Jones’s suicide sect – and hears from the handful who made it out alive Jonestown: Paradise Lost (Netflix and Hulu) The Jonestown incident is how the phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid” came to enter the popular vernacular. “A woman was talking about her addiction to alcohol and drugs, and how this group had helped her. Rajneesh, who died in 1990, was a charismatic Indian guru (who relocated to the US after the Indian government frowned upon his activities). During his trial the judge said he had treated his daughter like “an experiment”.

This particular flick, starting with it's title, implies that everything was fine until they got to Jonestown when the last stop is what it really was. So wild you’ll just have to watch it to understand what we’re talking about. She says she was subjected to 18 years of controlling and manipulative behaviour by her father Louis Didier, an alcoholic who belonged to an esoteric lodge of Freemasonry which believed in the occult. “She was very attractive and I was very single,” remembers Haworth. Boarded up windows in Peckford Place, Brixton, south London. Revealing her real identity, Miss Morgan-Davies said that waiving her anonymity was an important step – “to retrieve the identity the cult tried to steal from me”. What does it take to get someone to leave a cult? They had been persuaded to “drink the Kool-Aid”, Flavor Aid, used to mask the bitter taste of cyanide, mixed with a dash of Valium. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh relocated his followers there in the 80s in search of enlightenment and utopia, but in episode one we’re already being told by the FBI that the move resulted in the largest poisoning case in the USA (amongst other truly awful things). “There are two kinds of people in the world — people who love Jesus and people who don’t,” says one of the mothers in Jesus Camp, about why she’s chosen to enroll her children in a program that turns them into God’s soldiers. Truth and Lies: Jonestown, Paradise Lost. It took that long for the nagging whispers of “Cult Ian”, as Haworth describes the person he was when he was with the group, to be finally silenced, and for “Real Ian” to reassert himself. He forced her to drink whiskey before making her walk in a straight line, which she says led to the liver damage she lives with to this day. A neighbour gave him a copy of the Toronto Star which had featured a front-page exposé of the group Haworth was involved in, written by the investigative reporter Sidney Katz. Watergate in comparison in the same decade was a non-violent burglary but those connected to it went to jail, had careers ruined and spent the rest of the lives in atonement. They care about money, and controlling people, and power.”. Wild Wild Country. Faced with Haworth’s evidence, many of them did. Watch it now or check out the trailer first! “By the end of the course I’d given notice at my job, promised to dedicate my life to the cult, and handed over all my savings, which amounted to about $1,500.”, Even now, Haworth cannot identify the tipping point that turned him from someone who’d turned up for a meeting at the behest of an attractive woman to someone who gave himself, body and soul, to a cult, other than mid-way through the course when he stopped smoking. A Storyville documentary. Nothing about modern life and its complexities has inured us against the attractions of a charismatic guru or cult leader. Yes! Waco: what really happened when David Koresh’s cult faced the FBI? They will promise freedom from addictions or improved physical or mental health. And that was what saved him. Ted Biggs. He was finally free of them. Maude Julien, now 60, was forced to hold onto an electric fence for without showing feeling as a child. Fast, free delivery. Directed by Andrew Jones. Seemingly everyone we know is obsessed with Netflix’s Wild Wild Country, the six-part documentary about the Rajneeshee cult in Oregon. With the latest Netflix documentary series shining a light on the murky world of cults, David Barnett meets the man who has devoted the last 40 years to fighting these shadowy organisations which ruin lives, Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile. He likens the trauma that recovering cult followers go through to PTSD, and says systems to deal with and help them are variable, if present at all. TVPG Documentaries TV Series • 2018. hd; You May Also Like. It’s one thing to try to help cult members who have managed to break free return to their old, pre-cult lives, but what of those born into cults? Fast, free delivery. “They got out.”. The Netflix documentary series has generated a lot of interest internationally, which can’t be a bad thing.”, That interest comes in peaks and troughs, naturally, with particular focus at the moment thanks to Wild Wild Country and Morgan-Davies’ memoir. Of course, mathematically, the millennium ended at the end of the year 2000, not the end of 1999, but cult leaders don’t really care about such things. This was a tragedy that not many people know the full story of; I was glad to see a competent piece like this that serves to educate and move the audience. This is a Netflix documentary that you will never forget…definitely add it to your queue. This is a Netflix documentary that you will never forget…definitely add it to your queue. Incredibly, the leader they knew as “Andreas” still has a following in Hawaii, despite allegations of sexual abuse. The remote Guyana outpost of cult leader Jim Jones' Peoples Temple, Jonestown was the site of a 1978 massacre that resulted in the deaths of … Yes! If cult documentaries are what you’re looking for, then Netflix’s newest cult addition – Wild Wild Country – needs to move to the top of your queue. “Most cults programme their members against the media very early on. He then, as he describes it, “fell apart at the seams”. You can also choose to be emailed when someone replies to your comment. Ted ‘Black Lightning’ Patrick started an anti-cult crusade in the 1970s, at times snatching cult members so they could be forcibly mentally reprogrammed, with the help of friends and family, into non-cultists. 40 years ago, over 900 members of the Peoples Temple, living in the Jonestown settlement in Guyana, consumed a deadly cyanide-laced drink on the orders of leader Jim Jones. This particular flick, starting with it's title, implies that everything was fine until they got to Jonestown when the last stop is what it really was. It’s perhaps the archetypal image of the cult we’ve come to recognise: the followers of Rajneesh, who died in 1990, dressed in orange; their leader was a charismatic Indian guru (who relocated to the US after the Indian government frowned upon his activities); the disciples gave huge amounts of cash to their figurehead, lost contact with their families. Louis Theroux’s documentary is more personal than HBO’s exceptional Going Clear, but that’s not on Netflix. 1-month free trial! But cults don’t have to follow the pattern of Rajneeshpuram, as the Oregon ranch was renamed, or the bloodbaths at Jonestown or Waco, where David Koresh’s sect the Branch Davidians was raided by the FBI in 1993. To keep his devotees in check, Balakrishnan invented 'Jackie', which he said could kill or trigger earthquakes if anyone went against his will. In this eight-episode American documentary series, released on Netflix on March 2, 2018, we see how the police struggle to maintain law and order in the city of Flint, Michigan. Directed by Stanley Nelson. You've never seen Jonestown like this. Directed by Tim Wolochatiuk.

During his trial the judge said he had treated his daughter like “an experiment”. America's Book of Secrets. Evidence picture showing the bedroom of the imprisoned daughter of Aravindan Balakrishnan. Haworth says: “I suppose the biggest peak we’ve had began on 1 January 1999, when there was a huge amount of cult activity related to the millennium, when all kinds of things were promised or predicted. On 18 November 1978, over 900 men, women and children lost their lives at Jonestown, a remote settlement established by the People's Temple in northern Guyana. Just like everything else, cults are a reflection of their times, and the story of the primary color clad Rajneeshees is no different. So I did summat about it.”. Independent Premium Comments can be posted by members of our membership scheme, Independent Premium. STARRING. Cults are very much back in the public eye at the moment, due in no small part to the documentary series Wild Wild Country, which debuted on Netflix in March. Directed by Stanley Nelson. Here are the best documentaries on Netflix to watch if you’re cult obsessed. Sometimes they will promise success, artistic or creative talent, fulfil a desire in their targets to effect social change or, as with Haworth, to “give something back” to the world. Jesus Camp is a fascinating look into the psychology of Evangelicals in the USA, and how their warlike mindset has swayed the nation’s politics in their direction. You emerge from that and the first question is… who am I? New Releases; Coming Soon; Popular Movies; TV Shows ; Family; Collections; Blu-ray; How it Works; Plans; Since 1998, DVD Netflix has been the premier DVD-by-mail rental service. Please continue to respect all commenters and create constructive debates. ... Have seen every Jonestown Documentary and they just rehash the same facts and same interviews. “I come from a farming background in Lancashire,” says Haworth. Jonestown: Paradise Lost (2007) is available on Netflix since . Cults often thrive on feeding into people’s desires. To live in a heartless society after experience this trauma can only have been torture. From the Jonestown jungle massacre to the streets of Brixton, cults will always attract leaders and followers. “That includes the Rajneesh group. Scientology seems like a great place to start in your cult film (sorry) marathon, being perhaps the most well-publicized and well-funded secret society of modern times. Buddhafield were fantastically 80s, frolicking in Hawaii’s water in tight, neon swimwear. “Then, in the November, everything came out about the Jonestown cult. Read our full mailing list consent terms here. From Scientology to salvation in Jesus Christ, from Kool-Aid to killer abs, we've seemingly watched every documentary on the subject — and if they hadn't been so fascinatingly depressing, maybe we'd be ready to start our own. “I turned up and there were about a hundred people there,” he says. And don’t think it is only stupid people who would fall for a cult. But after only half a dozen questions, the tone of the exchange altered. Just a month previously, he had emerged from the clutches of a cult in Canada, and his experiences, his escape and the pictures of Jonestown prompted him to devote the next four decades to investigating, campaigning against and plucking people from the hold of cults. “People used to say, ‘If there’s summat up, then tha’ does summat about it’. This, along with interviews with former acolytes documents their slow descent into madness, makes it a truly fascinating chronicle of cult life. Get unlimited DVD Movies & TV Shows delivered to your door with no late fees, ever. Eventually, the resistance proved too much for the group. Having seen Katz’s research and evidence first hand, at the invitation of the journalist, Haworth angrily confronted the cult’s leaders, and they effectively banished him. Rent American Experience: Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple (2006) on DVD and Blu-ray. Aravindan Balakrishnan was jailed for 23 years in 2016. Get unlimited DVD Movies & TV Shows delivered to your door with no late fees, ever. Jim Jones, founder of the Peoples Temple sect in Jonestown, north Guyana, in 1978.

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