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Jonestown - The Life & Death of Peoples Temple

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I was in the eighth grade in 1978 when the Jonestown massacre took place and remembered it well from nightly newscasts. I remember how preachers used the Jones tragedy as a cautionary tale against the dangers of cults. The late 70s were a time of mass confusion after the traumas of the 60s, Vietnam, and Watergate, and a lot of these confused people were looking for direction.

This DVD does an excellent job of using archival footage and the recollections of survivors of Jim Jones' sickness and lunacy (including his African-Americn adopted son Jim Jones Jr.). To their credit, unlike most followers of cults and similar movements, no one among his former followers continues to defend him and all seem to accept the reality of how evil he actually was.

As the story goes on, one really feels for the poor blacks, elderly people, and assorted sixties misfits who fall for Jones' baloney. In most cases, its easy to mock the followers of such people as Jones as ignoramuses who should have known better, but to its credit, this film doesn't do that. It makes clear that most of these people were rejected by everyone else in society and Jones was the only one who appreared to acknowledge their humanity, thus they fell for him hook, line, and sinker to where they were convinced to worship Jones instead of God. The scene of Jones telling a cheering crowd not to believe in a God they could not see is really frightening.

The testimonies of former followers to Jones' sexual preversion and vile public sexual humiliation of his flock is truly jaw-dropping. It is noteworthy to consider that he would not get into such antics until long after he convinced his following of his false divinity. All of course led to the ultimate tragedy of convincing his followers to move to a remote outpost in Guyana, South America, and to commit mass suicide.

The Jonestown tragedy has receded in public memory due to the many events in recent history that have eclipsed it, but as Elijah Muhammad's biographer Claude Clegg correctly put it, "In times of crisis, charlatans fare well." This film serves as a timely reminder for succeeding generations to understand the dangers of surrendering one's mind to charasmatic "leaders" and false prophets. Check out Matthew 24:24 while you're at it.

Jonestown, Guyana tragedy is still one of those tragedies that scare and fascinate me at the same time. The idea of people willingly drinking cynaide kool aid and dying under the burning sun. This DVD edition of Jonestown does not do enough in my opinion to help understand the situation. Deborah Layton's book, Seductive Poison, helped me gain a better understanding of the absolute horrors of Jonestown and how Jim Jones evolved from a good willing minister to a monster. Cults don't just pop up overnight. Jim Jones reached out to the disadvantaged and vulnerable like a predator stalking his prey. Once he lured them under his spell, he stripped them of their dignity, their finances, their free will, etc. It was like he possessed his followers and controled their outcomes. They were beaten, humiliated, embarrassed, and mistreated. Some who left were considered traitors to the church and the cause. This documentary displayed men and women, black and white, who wanted a society where it was more family. Jonestown became an Orwellian nightmare by catastrophic proportions. Could it have been stopped or prevented? Cults like the Peoples Temple start off well-spirited. The people like the members here felt that Jim who was charismatic and charming the pants of anybody lured them into his web. Once under his web, you were robbed of everything that made you an individual. Jim Jones feasted on the souls and the minds of his followers like a drug addict which he later became. The last day was the most horrifying to see those images of people lying together after drinking the poison. Tim Carter, one of the few survivors, recalled his wife and child drinking the poison and dying. Another survivor recalled laying his wife next to her grandmother on the ground. On November 18, 2008, it will mark 30 years of that tragic day. We forget such tragedies like Jonestown and Pan Am 103. Maybe the American public needs to be reminded of these events to help our future. You have to beware people like Jim Jones. I would have liked to see Stephen Jones, his son, in this documentary. I was glad for the final montage of pictures of those who died. They were murdered. They did not go willingly. After all, many of the followers were simply exhausted. In the interviews here, I didn't realize that the People's Temple Members were overworked, exhausted, and felt guilty for being tired. Exhaustion especially by Jim Jones' orders were sheer torture. Imagine being up for days working for your church while Jim Jones lived like a king but yet his followers did the work and weren't rewarded by him. Layton writes a lot more in her book which I recommend since it brings us to understand how she fell for him like so many other followers. Their loss is our loss in America. A third of the victims were children on November 18, 1978. I was five years old when it happened. I'm still haunted by it. I'm still shocked that a congressman like Leo Ryan was gunned down and the guilt of his death was brought upon the members by Jim Jones. The lies of Jim Jones was just outrageous and hard to believe. Layton writes about the white nights that occurred when Jim Jones called everybody to the Pavillion. The brainwashing was constant and lack of contact to the outside world was non-existent. Deborah Layton was one of the lucky ones to get out but she didn't forget the others including her brother who survived and her mother who died a week before Ryan's visit. They didn't mention Sharon Harris who was one of Jones' righthand zealot followers who killed her three children and herself in Georgetown only because Jones ordered her too. The others didn't in Georgetown that included his sons. There is still so much and there was that haunting letter telling us to keep investigating this tragedy to prevent another one. We are foolish to think that we can't be fooled when we know that smart, intelligent, wise, people are equally fooled as everybody else. Jim Jones was a master predator because he sought people who were vulnerable, insecure, ignored, etc. He preyed on their insecurities, isolation, abandonment worse than any predator could do. He robbed so many people of their lives, their homes, their finances, their health, their minds, their souls, and finally in the end, their lives. By the time, Jim Jones orchestrated his revolutionary protest or the mass murder at the pavillion, he had their souls and minds. Their bodies were just the shell that was carrying them around. It was Jones who dictated what they ate, heard, saw, etc. by then. He created a hell on earth that he masqueraded and sold as paradise. When the people came into Jonestown, they had no idea that it was really based more on the concentration camp during World War II. Only in those camps, people had more freedom than they did in Jonestown. Because once you entered Jonestown, there was no way out. We must not forget the lessons of Jonestown even now as if it was distant history.

Two films came out this year on Jonestown, the Discovery Channel, "Jonestown Paradise Lost" and "Jonestown: The Life & Death of Peoples Temple." The former presented actors in segments and this was a true documentary. This was a horrific time in the history of the Bay Area when one week after Jonestown both Mayor George Mascone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were shot and killed. The great tragedy in both events was the good intentions that caring people can make to change the world and the vicious response to such an effort. The people of Jonestown shared a vision of a world free from racism and the coming together of loving people for a united good. What happened to them during those years of declining paranoia from the demented mind of Jim Jones is by far the most compelling part of this Greek tragedy. I knew a woman who met Jim Jones and was recruited to go to Guyana. She was like many of the residents, a Black woman, religious and elderly. Her family did not go and they were spared. There were many people recruited to go to Jonestown. Most turned it down. I think many who went were either lost to the cause or so entwined in the thinking of Jim Jones that they could not see the storm ahead. To gain a deeper prospective, read "Deadly Poison," by Deborah Layton. This film gives an excellent overview on a very complex subject and I feel it is an excellent introduction to those who were too young to know about Jim Jones or were somehow not aware of this tragedy. I might add that I was in a cult for a short time and it is unbelievable how easy it is to be sucked in and I am not a weak minded person. Isolated and removed from any outside perspective, it is no wonder that they did what they did. I do think that the most horrific deed in this horrible event was the act of a mother, who was in the capital Georgetown, and who slit the throats of her three children and then her own. She was not even there but she had come under his spell. All in all, quite an unbelievable story.

"Jonestown" was originally a PBS "American Experience" program. It is presented only in the form of archival footage of the People's Temple and survivor interviews. There are no interviews of sociologists and there is no narration. This format is very powerful.

The DVD has good extras, including a touching interview with the director and some informative deleted scenes. The program has more information about the survivors interviewed during the final credits, so don't turn it off until the very end to see everything.

This program is horrifying and depressing, but IMHO, something that is important to watch because it illustrates very well how religion-based psychological and intellectual submission can, in the space of a few years, turn good people into slaves and good intentions into tragedy. I recommend watching "Jonestown" early in the evening, then watch something fun like "Wallace and Gromit" before you go to bed!

One note of caution. While it might be appropriate - even important - to watch this film with a strong-minded and mature teenager, young children should not be present while it's viewed.

I woke up with the following thoughts the morning after I watched the film (Unfortunately, I did not follow "Jonestown" with "W&G," so I went to sleep very agitated) :

Jim Jones and his People's Temple had a lot in common with many of today's (and history's) religious leaders and religious groups. Do any of these things sound familiar?

A CHARISMATIC AND PATERNALISTIC LEADER offers distressed and idealistic people hope - "new life" - and a profound sense of community. He tells the downtrodden that they are no longer "lost," that they are special indeed. He provides his followers a sense of superiority to the "worldly heathen" - which also instills fear of outsiders. He interprets scriptures, and chooses passages, in a manner conforming to the psychological needs and existing beliefs of his audience. He makes tithing a moral duty and a necessity for full membership. He presents himself literally as a wise and knowing "father," but eventually uses that status as a tool for abuse and self-gratification, sexually and otherwise. He develops an "inner circle" of people willing to do his bidding in an increasingly unquestioning manner. Once a solid group of followers is formed, he begins to teach that to leave the group is to "blaspheme" and that misery will befall those who leave, when in fact the greater misery is found by those who remain.

THE MEETINGS / SERVICES skillfully employ music and rousing speeches to excite the audience. The assembled people are asked to greet and embrace the people around them, which serves to increase solidarity, and whether by design or happenstance, to expose and create discomfort among the hesitant and the skeptical. Phony healings are part of the proceedings.

THE FOLLOWERS are a mix of individuals, but in general are characterized by either very difficult personal/social/economic backgrounds or by a deep sense of idealism. The leader's message promises hope and equality to the former - a feast for their starving psyches. For the merely idealistic, passions for love, community, and justice are inflamed.
Almost all of the followers are essentially decent and good people, but tend to be psychologically needy in one way or another. The tremendous sense of hope, of caring community, and the promise of utopia (in this life or the next) offered by the leader and his belief system causes the followers to suppress whatever critical faculties they might possess.

All of the above describes Jim Jones and his People's Temple. At least some of the above describes a zillion other religious groups, though of course very few come to such an horrific end.
However, if you watch this film, consider the point at which the People's Temple situation began to produce more harm than good. I think that point came long - very long - before the Kool-Aid was prepared. In fact, it came at a point where thousands - maybe hundreds of thousands - of churches, mosques, and synagogues operate every day - where doctrine, community, and leadership become more important than reason and reality. This is the point where, to be precise, the people become "as children" or "humble sheep."

Also, this program serves, in my opinion, to bolster the contention, recently made most vigorously by author Sam Harris, that religion is, and has always been, the most effective vehicle of mindsets that lead to senseless violence. Terrible ideologies and "leader worship" sometimes come in secular form, but history and any daily newspaper both show that nothing creates dangerous zealots like the idea that one is doing "the Will of God" on your way to heaven.

In the case of the People's Temple, Jim Jones skillfully combined his charisma with a Christian/socialist ideology - a devastating mixture long before the final Kool-Aid was prepared. But without his Pentecostal training, his ability to claim the authority of God (indeed, to be God), and without the concepts of heaven and hell, his reign would very likely have ended far sooner and with far fewer than 909 deaths.
The physicist Stephen Weinberg said, "With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." I would add only the words "almost always" before the words "takes religion."

This documentary is well made, but I feel bad for anyone who saw only the film and didn't see the DVD. Without the deleted scenes, which explain how some of the members escaped and what happened to them afterwards, the film makes even less sense, and frankly, there are many questions left unanswered. For example, why Guyana? We never hear how or why Jones chose that country to establish Jonestown. At 90 minutes, the film should at least be re-cut to include the deleted scenes, and could have gone much further in its exploration of People's Temple. That said, it's well done and interesting to watch.

This is a fascinating and chilling (if too brief) look into the history of Jim Jones and his People's Temple. What it offers beyond mere history, though, is a glimpse into the seductive nature of good turned into evil, through the eyes and words of people who at one time followed and believed in Jones. Most of them acknowledge some sense of strangeness, even psychosis, in the behavior of Jim Jones, but they chose to focus on the good he was doing and the utopian hope he was preaching publicly. And clearly in its early days, the People's Temple WAS doing good, and offering hope and a real sense of community - integrated community - to those who came through the doors. But somewhere, somehow, it all began to go wrong. And yet people averted their eyes, as Jones drifted deeper and deeper into madness and drug his followers with him. This film esposes these issues without rendering any judgment upon them - it reveals the dreams and the hopes that were shattered that November day in 1978 along with all those lives. It is a morality tale for anyone who knows the power and goodness, but also the dark side, of religious faith. I am a Presbyterian pastor, and I would highly, highly recommend this film - as hard as it is to watch at times - for anyone who is interested not just in history, but in the power of faith - a power that can do such good, and yet be used in the wrong hands, for such evil.

There are 2 polarizing views when it comes to historical analysis of Jim Jones and Peoples Temple. On the one side are psychologists and the anti-cult movement, who view Jim Jones as a sociopath/megalomaniac and openly criticize Peoples Temple for it's destructive cult practices dating at least as far back as its time in Ukiah, California and possibly Indiana. Then there is the other side, the Pro- New Religious Movement (NRM) scholars and people that tend to paint a positive picture of Peoples Temple and its social activism, and view Jonestown as a Utopian vision that merely went wrong in the end.

It's important to keep in mind that this film was made in collaboration with Rebecca Moore and Fielding McGehee, who run the Alternative Considerations of Jonestown website at San Diego St. University. Although their site is a great resource for documentation of Peoples Temple & Jonestown, Moore and McGehee are known to be firmly on the side of the pro-NRM movement (and as the sister of 2 of Jones' closest aides, Moore can hardly be relied upon as an un-biased source of information).

Although this film does try at times to present a balanced view of both sides, it is clear that it glamorizes the utopian vision of Peoples Temple and leaves out many key facts about its many disturbing and illegal practices, especially in the Ukiah years. For instance, there is no mention of the 1972 series of articles by the San Francisco Examiner and Indianapolis Star that exposed Jim Jones as a fake and described Peoples Temples' practices of psychological cruelty toward its members, its financial improprieties, its infiltration of local government and its general terrorizing of the Ukiah community. The film supports the misconception that the 1977 New West magazine article was the first public expose on Jones and PT, and that is simply not true. If not for the long line of California media and politicians siding with Jones and covering up the evil side of PT, the Jonestown massacre could have been prevented, and that is not addressed at all by this film.

There is literally no mention of the word "cult" or any distinct analysis of the mind control techniques used by Jones and his henchmen to control the individual lives of Temple members and not allow any dissention or defection. Interviewing experts on cult leaders and cult behavior would have given the film more balance and informed the viewer that despite the good intentions of its members, Peoples Temple was in practice the very definition of a destructive cult.

What worries me about this film and other more recent analysis of Peoples Temple and Jonestown is the revisionist history that seems to going on, whether it be by religious scholars praising PT as a legitimate "new religion" while brushing aside its long history of cultic practices, or the mainstream media's sensationalist portrayals of a madman who simply commanded his "robots" to commit suicide. This film for the most part takes the side of the former, although to its credit it is more thorough than your typical TV documentary on this subject.

I'm still waiting for the definitive documentary that explores in depth all sides of Peoples Temple. The closest thing to that in my mind is the book "Raven" by Tim Reiterman, which I would recommend to those who want to explore more about Peoples Temple/Jonestown.

This is the best and most extraordinary documnentary on what happen on Nov.18,1978.showing actual news reel footage of the events and interviews of the real participants not actors recounting their experiences as temple members and life under Jim Jones is truly chilling and shocking!!i like the special feature section where Stanley Clayton describes his escape plan from all the carnage that was surrounding him!!this is not some movie with actors but the real people who were thier!!

In each article, tv special or book about cults, Jonestown can't be missing. The cult with the largest number of victims in recent history is something to be studied and why many people still believe in those false prophets is not exactly a mistery, but not enterely understood.

Reading about sects and cults all over the world is good information to avoid of joining one. In the case of People's Temple, leaded by Jim Jones, there were many things that the people inside couldn't see as an obvious alert, like someone said "you don't want to get out because you don't even know you're in", if you don't see the smoke is because is your building that's on fire.

The aspects about what a leader is are all in Jim Jones, charismatic, charming, articulated, and able to manipulate the most people he wanted. Now, the difference between a leader of a religion, (the pope, a priest, rabbi, etc.) is they represent an authority inside of a religion, if one of them die, there will be another one. In the case of the leader of a sect, they don't represent god, they ARE gods. In the words of Jim Jones "If you see me as your friend, I'll be your friend, if you see me as your father, I'll be your father, if you see me as your god, I'll be your god" They don't tolerate anyone who's against them and take all critics as a personal offense to them, like a betrayal.
About the followers, mainly is people who's looking for something, maybe is in troubles, sick, unemployed or facing a personal crisis (a divorce, a death, a difficult disease)

The dvd is highly recommended, the whole evolution of Jim Jones since he was a kid obsessed with religion and death to the beginning of People's Temple (full of "miracles" made by Jim Jones), to their move to Guyana and the unavoidable death of his followers is something worthy to be studied.

How can we know we're facing a cult? If the group demands important changes in your personality (change of clothes, the name, the way of talking or thinking). If the group affects the relation you have with the family, friends, colleagues or couples or the entire world ("the rest of the world is evil..." "the family and friends don't really love you, etc."). If the group demands work beyond the human strenght (lack of food, sleep, excessive work), massive confessions, "bomb of love". If the group demands a "proof of faith" with acts that are against moral or common sense.

A cult can be destructive only if you let them.

If I'm reviewing the documentary, I'd say this is the best one out! It gives you all the details in awesome, suspenseful, dramatic fashion. And there is even a whole slew of extras! When I found out about this cult, the first time, I have to admit I got a little obsessed and did a huge amount of research on it and watched a lot of documentaries, and none of them serve this horrifying tale better than the PBS movie... a must-see!