Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones (1980)

Cult leader Reverend Jim Jones' (Boothe) life is chronicles from his days as an idealistic 1960's activist who runs scams and spends his nights as a womanizer, to a self-proclaimed modern day Messiah. Jim Jones styled himself after 1930's religious leader Father Divine, played in flashbacks by James Earl Jones. The 1978 mass suicide of 913 followers at the settlement of Jonestown, Guyana, in South America is staged in a chilling documentary style of events. Powers Boothe's dynamic performance as the charismatic self-styled preacher won him the Emmy Award as outstanding actor.

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One of the best TV movies of all time but....

This is without a doubt one of the best TV movies ever. The acting by Powers Boothe alone is worth seeing. However, this version is not remastered & quite frankly looked much better on TV in 1978!
Buy another version. The clarity & the sound are awful! February 9, 2008

5 Star Movie excluding DVD packaging

The movie is recorded on a DVD-R. This info should be included with ad. Quality is very poor as if it is a bootleg. July 22, 2007

Very poor DVD...Avoid at all costs!

The quality of this DVD is horrible. In the bottom right of the picture throughout the film there is a logo that says "RE", which stands for Reel Enterprises. Hopefully a "real" company will release this film with a decent transfer, not one that's been transferred from a VHS tape. June 11, 2007

Movie-5, Quality-0

The Film: What we have here is a star-studded, made-for-tv docudrama centered around the life & death of Jim Jones and his People's Temple. Powers Boothe, while he doesn't necessarily look or sound like the real deal, captures the darkness of Jim Jones' persona. The film begins in Jonestown with a mock "loyalty test" after which Jones, tormented, takes a trip down memory lane. We see his childhood, during which he frequented church services, conducted pet funeral services with childhood friends, witnessed the abusive nature of his parents' relationship(his murder and torture of small animals was left untouched). We witness his becoming a pastor, the first pastor to conduct integrated services in Indianapolis,IN,his marriage, and ultimately, after the success of the People's Temple as a congregation and humanitarian effort, we see his moral and mental decline:drug usage, bisexual affairs, pro-claiming himself divine, physical/verbal abuse of members, all culminating in Jonestown,Guyana with the murder/suicide of nearly 1,000 People's Temple members, Congressman Leo J. Ryan and others. As with many other docudramas, there are a few changes of identity & fact to protect the innocent(and to captivate the audience via dramitization. As a film, Guyana Tragedy is a masterpiece...as gripping as it is chilling. As a film I give it 5 stars.

DVD Quality: Having waited nearly 2 decades for this movie to make it to dvd, I placed my order immediately upon learning that the film had finally come out in dvd format. However, upon it's arrival in the mail, and having just watched it from start to finish...what one can expect from the quality of this product is what happens when major distributors decline the marketing of movies such as Guyana Tragedy, when the VHS tapes are old enough to decay, and when an indpendent ompany picks up a film and makes a last minute, amateur,desperation effort to transfer the movie from VHS to dvd. There are no menus, no special features/extras, no interviews...just a poor transfer from VHS to dvd, and you can tell because the film skips, is obviously NOT remastered(cloudy, grainy, discolored, the sound tends to rise and fall when it's not skipping out,etc), particularly toward the end of disc 1 & 2(at one point the movie scrambles a bit, blacks out, and repeats a scene during the climax). Awesome portrayal of one of the most tragic mass suicides in history...poor dvd. So while I give the movie a 5...the quality gets a 0.

Therefore, the best I can give this product is a 3...the other 2 stars will be added when they remaster/re-release the film. In the meantime, may the Lord bless & keep the families/survivors forver impacted by the tragedy. May 30, 2007

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