L'envoûtement

Sorry, but "Ticket to Heaven" (released the same year) is a much better film about the same subject. While it's an important one, "Split Image" treats it a bit lazily, as another reviewer here pointed out, especially the deprogramming, which is seriously amateurishily done and probably wouldn't have worked in real life.

Moreover, the script gets itself entangled into a touch of reasoning about the duality of humankind - not too subtly, with Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde in the first act and all, but doesn't do that very well. It just becomes a distracting half-baked idea.

To cover up the poor writing, a lot of special effects, music, and violent action are being used, but that cannot conceal the shortcomings of this movie. Compare that with how "Ticket to Heaven" avoids all that completely and becomes much more powerful for it.

Still. I'd rather have you watch this movie than none at all about cults, since the timeless issues of mind control and mankind's yearning to avoid thinking for themselves sadly are as up to date today as they were then.

This 1982 film is supported by a great cast and film score by Bill Conti (Rocky, FX.) Filmed largely in Dallas and Texas, this anti-cult film deals with basically the same subject as a Canadian film released the previous year. Ticket To Heaven (1981) also has a great cast and for me is a much more entertaining and realistic film. TTH deals with the true story of a depressed young man getting caught up in the cult of Sun-Yung Moon, while Split Image portrays the identity crisis of a young man who is seeking answers beyond the sometimes shallow lives of his family and friends. His confusion leads him to a new-age cult, where he finds the leader to be even more sinister and devoid of answers than those he runs away from. While many of life's questions can be answered by the Bible, proper spiritual guidance and direction is essential, particularly for those who are not mature enough to seek God on their own.

Overall I really enjoyed this movie. The acting was terrific, with a lot of nuance and subtlety conveyed by the actors all around. The plot was interesting and it felt very authentic.

Whether or not this is how cults recruit/operate, or how intervention deprogramming happens, I don't know. However I suspect it is close to real life. My parents sent me to a fundamentalist church camp one summer when I was a teen and it was eerily similar to this movie. As a teen it felt like pure (albeit very strict) love, but as an adult looking back many decades ago, I can now say that my summer camp experience was creepy and inappropriate. In any event, because of insight from my personal experience, this is why I suspect that cults operate similar to what was portrayed in this movie.

One funny thing about this movie is the musical score which sounds is really dated. It was neither distracting nor annoying, but, my gosh, it just sounded like it was 100 years (even though it's only 1982).

This movie is definitely worth a watch for the entertainment value, plus it's a very well made movie overall, considering the period and content.

This film comes across more as a made for TV movie than an actual piece of Hollywood cinema. The biggest flaw takes place in the first act with the very lazy telling of the Olympic hopeful gymnast's conversion to a cult.

We are expected to believe a pampered spoiled upper middle class athlete training for the Olympics can be brainwashed to join a cult over a 3 day weekend. His home life is happy and comfortable until he hits on a cute cult groupie. It's clear he went to the commune only in the hopes of bedding down the cute chick with issues. After spending the first two days being appropriately appalled at the clear cult activity, somehow on the 3rd day he has drunk the kool-aide.

It's a bit silly to think after 3 days of singing Kumbaya around the campfire and abstaining from masturbation is enough to make even the most disenfranchised youth shave his head and change his name. Yet there was no back story to suggest he was even slightly unhappy with his normal life.

A bit of real mind control factors are briefly explored. The athlete being initially approached by an attractive girl takes a page from the real practice of "flirty fishing" from the Children of God child molester cult known as The Family. They also briefly touch upon sleep deprivation and starvation (proven mind control techniques) but only in the briefest sense.

Everything else that follows is as lazy. The deprogramming is just as over the top and poorly executed as the original conversion. Cults and mind control are a very real thing and this movie does not educate or inform. It's a very cartoonish depiction of a very real thing.

This movie was released in 1982. This was an era when the original flower children of the 1960s grew into young urban professionals. It is truly a representation of the boogeyman that the baby boomers (who had now become parents) thought would come in the night to steal the American dream. This movie is best enjoyed only as a cultural snapshot of what parents feared in the halcyon days of Ronald Regan.

Anyone who is unfavorably commenting about Peter Fonda's performance seems to forget just how much of a trippy hippie he himself was in the 60's. His role here was absolutely brilliant as the manipulative Neil Kirklander. James Woods; well, as usual, simply stellar! My favorite roles for him are exactly personified in this one: sleazy, unrefined, unkempt, easily angered and irritable, and doesn't care what the world thinks. He makes being disgusting look like such fun (when he spits on Kirklander's picture as a sort of de-programming method for Danny). O'Keefe and Dennehy are equally superb and convincing. Karen Allen is as we always expect; vulnerable and adorably sensitive. Fonda takes it all on this one for me, the man who gave John Lennon "I know what it's like to be dead." Excellent!