Guyana: Crime of the Century (also known as Guyana: Cult of the Damned) is a 1979 English-language Mexican exploitation drama film written and directed by René Cardona Jr. The film, which was shot in Mexico, is based on the Jonestown Massacre. It stars a number of American actors such as Stuart Whitman, Gene Barry and Joseph Cotten. The names of central characters are slightly tweaked from the historical ones: the film is set in "Johnsontown" rather than Jonestown, the cult is led by "Reverend James Johnson" (Whitman) rather than Rev. Jim Warren Jones, and the murdered Congressman is "Lee O'Brien" (Barry) rather than Leo Ryan.
An unabashedly terrible bit of exploitation on the Jonestown cult. There's way more to be said, but this is a good movie to watch if you ever want to see halfway decent actors interacting with terrible actors reading terrible lines. There's just enough titillation, thrills, and extreme liberties taken with the story itself (I find that to be a neat sub current of this movie) to kind of keep you going until the end of the movie, although it's a slog. You know how it's going to end, yet...this ending is still so...so...well, you just have to watch. I can't quite call this the worst of the worst but it's pretty dismal overall.
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